At the Centre of Everything: The Seed of Power and Potential

At the Centre of Everything:
The Seed of Power and Potential
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by Peter Barreda, January 2, 2003
(Copyright 2003, all rights reserved)



You are a pebble and the world a pond, and everything you do and say and think stretches outward in rippling waves to touch the lives of everyone you know and many more that you do not. You are a vast collection of events, past, present and potential. You are the center of a universe of possibilities-- to be the center is to be connected, and through that connection, empowered. You are the core of your own personal reality, the hub, and as such you have a very real power to affect the world you live in, your life-mandala. To know this, to realize the effects we can have in our lives, is a sobering realization. Most people, if they thought about it at all, would probably recognize that they routinely make such day-to-day decisions as what to wear and what to have for lunch, and recall such life-determining decisions as what career they chose or whether to start a family, but the overriding impression is that people coast through their lives on a wave of circumstance, riding the ripples of others. And too many people do just this. The modern mind is so plagued by the worries and concerns that society heaps upon us that any spare minute not working or sleeping is desparately filled with activities that help us forget about all the issues that disturb our inner peace.
The implication inherent in such behavior is that the troublesome issues in our lives are beyond the scope of our control, but in reality nothing could be further from the truth. Everything in your life, from a painful relationship to a demeaning boss to a frustrating weight problem, are all wholly connected to you. It seems that we think it is the other way around, that these problems are a heavy iron anchor and that we are inconsecuential spirits chained to its immovable weight. But that is not the reality. The reality is that you are a being of power and potential greatness, and these difficulties in your life are merely an arrangement of circumstance and consequence, some of your own doing, some not. But as it is all connected to you, it can all be affected by you. To truly realize this is to break the chains and let the anchor drop, freeing yourself from a life of random cause and effect and beginning a life of purpose and decision. Even if you don't yet know exactly what you want out of life, you probably know what you'd like to avoid. Often it is these common unpleasantries that cloud your vision, preventing a clear ability to focus and see the many paths open before you.
Progress is a grand quest that begins by simply opening a door and stepping through it. Start with little things like analyzing your goals, clarifying what you want to achieve or to change. Assert yourself just a little bit more each day. Walk with your back a little straighter, your chin a little higher. Think often and actively about the things you want, the way you want your life to be. By doing this, you will subtly cue yourself into modes of behavior that will instinctively point you in the right direction. If a particular act or attitude feels wrong to you, stop doing it. If your integrity questions it, there is certainly a reason. Behaving in accordance with your personal morals is a first, and significant, step toward improving your connections within your life-mandala. Many negative circumstances of your life are a result of actions you take, and if those actions are wrong or questionable even to you, then the effects they spawn will undoubtedly be even more so. By living rightly and according to your personal morals you will clean up a good share of the things in your life that are troublesome.
This also puts you in a much clearer frame of mind to analyze where you are in life and what path you wish to follow. So many of the pressures that burden us are simply vaguely troubling sensations, feelings of dread or worry that we just can't put our finger on. Living according to our own integrity lifts those burdens from our shoulders and opens the world to our vision. You may still have many things in your life that you want to fix, but now you will have the clarity of vision to do something about them. With clarity and purpose, you can change your relationships, careers, health, anything-- all for the better.
That is the practical side of the matter. The other more philosophical aspect is no less true and no less meaningful. In a very real sense, your world exists mostly in your mind. There is such an abundance and variety of factors in the world, an infinity of elements that can describe the universe. But they are not at all concrete-- the universe is not absolute, but relative. Think for a moment about your world-- not your life in particular, but the Earth as you perceive it to be. The prevailing attitudes, the people, the goals and direction of society as a whole. These are essential qualities of the character of the world and our species. But in actuality your view of humanity, the picture of our planetary culture that you just envisioned, exists only in your head. For an extreme comparison, consider that someone who herds yaks in central Asia would find little agreement with your personal image of the world. As would a South African policeman or an Australian Aboriginal farmer or an Argentine banker. And it is not merely a question of education or political upbringing or religious inclination, although these elements certainly play a part. But we need not go very far from our own home to see this relativity come into play. Consider also the different worlds of a middle-aged accountant and his teen-age daughter-- both under the same roof. The doctor's view of the emergency room is a completely different interpretation of that world than that of the patient rushed in for treatment in the middle of the night.
Our perception is a considerable aspect of the image of the life-mandala that stretches out from us. Different people interpret the same factors in completely different ways, depending on their temperament, attitudes, beliefs, and these differences essentially customize each world into a unique realm of interpretation for each of us. An incident that would be crushing to one person might be casually shrugged off by the person standing next to them. This fact should not be dismissed lightly, because-- and think carefully on this-- it is completely within your power to be either of these two people. It is simply a matter of casting a specific perspective onto a given situation. Now, it's true that your reactions and your viewpoint are fashioned to a large degree by your past, but there is also a seed within you that has control over these factors, a bindu-self with immensely far-reaching potential. You are not a slave to your past or your environment, but rather a creative force with the ability to exert a will and a purpose. This fact is not always obvious, however, which is precisely why most people tend to coast through life, reacting when they should be acting. It is a simple matter of realization, of seeing the fact that you have a very real power at your disposal. By simple I do not mean easy-it's like an optical illusion that takes some thought and effort to perceive, but once you've got it you suddenly can't imagine not having seen it before. Your power is obvious yet subtle in this very way.
Do it. Change your life, achieve your dreams. The connection between you and your world is a powerful one, as is your ability to work through that connection to improve the world and your place in it. Impotence is an illusion. If you perceive an inability to affect your station in life it is because you are not seeing the pattern and your position of power within it. You must clear your mind of preconceptions, imagined restrictions and self-fulfilling prophecies. Each of us sets our own limitations, perhaps from fear of success or change, but self-imposed without a doubt.
Deep truths often seem like simple truisms, but that doesn't diminish their strength. When something bad happens, you have the ability to shrug it off, to lessen its impact on you. If you are in a place in life you don't like, you have the power to change it. This may be a slow process, and at times a difficult one, but it is absolutely within your ability. Time and effort are all that stand between you and your goals, and in the end they are rather insubstantial obstacles, aren't they? Consider the long, flowing path that is your life, and cast these roadblocks aside like bothersome sticks in the dirt. And the way shall lie open before you.

Flowers of the Universe

Flowers of the Universe:
Blooming into the Void
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by Peter Barreda, April 9, 2004
(Material copyright 2004, all rights reserved)

Imagine a tree, vast and ancient, reaching high into the unknowable distance. Imagine its trunk so thick, so strong, that it takes up all of space. Its bark is deeply gnarled with the ravages of time, the rings within its heart a remnant of its passage through the ages. Imagine its roots, so deep and ancient that their origins are a mystery, their very existence the source of countless myths. Imagine the infinity of branches that spring from this tree, growing from the energy emanated by the trunk, pouring forth from the roots, these branches taking every shape, in every direction possible. Imagine that on some of these branches-- with the proper conditions, a conducive environment-- springs forth a richness of leaves, bursting with evident life, swaying, moving, seeking light and swaying in the breezes of time. And imagine, finally, that on some of these green branches, when the air is just right, when the sun grants its warmth and the water flows freely, there sprouts a profusion of bright and vibrant flowers, colors never before seen in the history of this ancient tree, images electric and diverse that pulse with energy and beauty and the everlasting fire of wonder.
Imagine that this vast living tree is the whole of the universe. The roots are its birth, the trunk its space, the branches are the myriad structures that have formed from the fantastic interplay of forces and matter. The leaves, rare and precious but ultimately inevitable, are the glimmering bastions of life. And even more difficult to find, necessarily more challenging to achieve, are the flowers of consciousness, the sentient, living vibrancy that reaches far beyond itself to probe the very boundaries of reality. This blooming, beautiful awareness is a product of all that came before it, born of all of the growth and energy seeping from the heart of the tree, the very motion of the universe.
This way of looking at the universe is as accurate as it is beautiful, and it shows us our true place within the course of all things. We are part of the universe, as flowers and leaves are parts of a tree. We are a brilliant and amazing presence, with the ability to see and know and think and wonder. But imagine now that the flowers have become so occupied with the business of thinking, of analyzing, of learning, that they've forgotten that they had once sprung from the tree itself. Imagine that the flowers look down at the branches from which they grow and ask themselves, "How did this branch come to be? What is at the heart of the trunk? Where do the roots reach, and upon what do they feed?" Given the wondrous variety of flowers, there are of course many possible answers to these questions, and these differences of opinion result in a most powerful tension and hatred between the flowers. They take up arms against each other, cut each other to pieces, vowing revenge and destruction in endless cycles of violence. That is precisely where we are as a species-- pointlessly arguing about origins and ways. Worse than arguing, we are killing, destroying, and butchering each other to prove one point or another. And all we need to do is to realize, in one breathless moment of enlightenment, that we are all one, inextricably united with each other, with the animals, the rocks, the sun, the very breath between the stars. To realize this truth is to cast away all thoughts of divisiveness, of elitism, of selfishness, of condemnation. To realize this truth is to see that if you hate your neighbor, you hate yourself.
This vision of holistic unity and inevitable progression in the course of the universe, of life, of sentience, displays the underlying connections, not only among us as a species but also between ourselves and the universe around us. It is a fine and tiny point, so evident that it borders on trite truism. Yet it is as crucial as anything can be, essential to the future of the human race, and it is this-- we are of the universe, not just in it. We weren't placed here as if upon a stage, to strut and fret away our precious few hours of life. Just as a tree, given the right conditions, grows leaves and flowers and even fruit, so does the universe grow us. We are an element in the totality of the universal process, not to be isolated or separated by frivolous illusions of divinity. Such ideas serve only to draw us further apart, from each other as well as from the wondrous drama unfolding around us. We are not foreign creatures crawling about this grand universal tree, but rather flowers that have bloomed from its very branches. As such, we share the same roots, the same essence, the same destiny.
The bottom line is that we all share this amazing gift of consciousness, whatever precisely that may be, and we are all here and alive to enjoy it, wherever we may have come from. Is it so difficult to stand peacefully next to someone who thinks differently than you do? And if it is, might that difficulty have more to do with what's going on in your head than what's going on in your neighbor's? There is an apt saying from the Native American culture that observes: "There is no tree so foolish that its branches fight among themselves." Yet that is precisely what we do, at great cost to ourselves and to our future. By ignoring the unifying truth of our existence, we generate physical and spiritual suffering in ever-increasing cycles of fear, anger and retribution. All of this violence is utterly pointless and unnecessary.
This is the eternal message of the mandala. It is a message of unity, a demonstration of the interconnected relationships between every thing in the universe. We are certainly all linked together-- spiritually, historically, sociologically-- but also consider the awe-inspiring idea that we are all connected through the material and energetic fields that surround us. We see this clearly in the mandala. True to the relativistic aspect of all universal truths, we are each the center of the mandala. There is no conflict in that, for there are as many centers as there are points in the universe. But as important as the center is the whole, and just as the bindu of a mandala anchors it in space and time, so does the rest of its wondrous and endless variety bestow upon it wings with which to fly. A mandala is infinite potential, infinitely alive. Imagine the universal tree we spoke of earlier, viewed from some extra-dimensional position so that we may look upon it from "above". What would we see? A massive circle of a trunk, now so dwarfed by its myriad branches that it has shrunk to a point in the center of everything. Around this point swirl the curving lines and filigrees of universal evolution, growth and time and matter, actual and potential-- past, present and yet to be. Interspersed throughout this spherical infinity you will see glowing gardens of life, green and thirsty, and within a few of these, the breathtaking vibrancy of the flowers of consciousness. And each and every point within this mandala is also the center of a mandala unto itself. One of these is you, and in this way you are connected to the whole.
The crucial point, what we must all realize, is that we do not occupy a place in the universe, rather we are an essential part of it, born of its ages-long symphony of time and space and energy. Look around you, every day of your life, and realize that you are this glorious, intricate tree, and it is you. Our thoughts and dreams are the glorious flowers on this magnificent universal tree, shining out upon the void with brilliance and wonder and light.

Mandala Research

Mandala meaning "circle" or "completion" is a term used to refer to various objects. It is of Hindu origin, but is also used in other religions, such as Buddhism. “In practice, mandala has become a generic term for any plan, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically, a microcosm of the Universe from the human perspective.”


In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of aspirants, as a spiritual teaching tool, for establishing a sacred space and as an aid to meditation. Its symbolic nature can help one "to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises." The mandala is "a representation of the unconscious self," and is believed to be that paintings of mandalas enables one to identify emotional disorders and work towards wholeness in personality.


The process of creating a mandala is as important as the finished product. It takes years of preparation and training to gain the skill and knowledge required to paint. Even when one is able to begin, meditation for three days must occur before brush can be put to canvas.


Our culture is familiar with mandalas primarily because of the work of Carl Jung who became interested in them while studying Eastern religion. Jung saw the circular images his clients experienced as "movement towards psychological growth, expressing the idea of a safe refuge, inner reconciliation and wholeness." For Jung, mandalas are "vessels" into which we project our psyche. It is then returned to us as a way of restoration. He recognized that archetypes from many cultures were seen in this spontaneous expression of the unconscious. Circles are universally associated with meditation, healing and prayer.