Pages

Monday, April 11, 2011

Opening with Love


Opening with Love (Circle of Love series) © Sue O'Kieffe 2011
source image  - currently unidentified

After a  lovely Facebook convo with the very wise Julie Bernstein Englemann, who suggested I ask the spirit of Mandala how it would like to be created, I tuned in and did just that. The response I felt was that she would like to be created with the more traditional four-points. I realized, once I began creating again,  that I have been craving the expansiveness of this configuration. I love the harkening to the four directions and the four guardians who sit at the corners of the central diamond. I see angels. I feel the burst of spring.  As of this writing, I do not know the name of the plant used for the source image, but I am sure it is related to Queen Anne's lace and cow parsnip. If anyone out there can identify it, I would be grateful to know.

The thing is, I have been feeling stuck, unworthy, constricted. I haven't felt like this for a long time, but I recognized the feeling. This was the feeling of giving up, and it scared me. A lot.

I have decided to share my heartspace with you all here, because I know we all have those feelings from time to time. But they sure aren't a stopping point. I wanted to work myself out of this funk I would much rather live in a place of excitement and joy. Joy trumps funk any old day. And as the entity known as Abraham points out  The best thing you could do for anyone that you love, is be happy! I'm pretty sure that translates to our art as well.

So  I have decided  to create a series of these four pointed mandalas, and then morph them into new iterations using the mehdi Photoshop plug-in as I described on this blog posting.

Opening with Love 5x5 (5x5 series) © Sue O'Kieffe 2011
source image - Opening with Love Mandala, Circle of Love series

The creation of art is a reflection of our inner landscape. My inner landscape was feeling a little ouchy and needed to be treated with kindness and love. I hope this is reflected in these mandalas as well.

I'm looking forward to this meditation on Love and the Four Directions.

Bright blessings!
~Sue O'Kieffe
Sacred Circle Mandalas

3 comments:

Julie Bernstein Engelmann said...

Thank you so much for the honor, Sue!

And thank you for baring your heart. I think you must have already retrieved yourself way back from ouchy if you can snake your tub drain all by yourself.

I love this Opening with Love mandala. It seems freeing to create both kinds of mandalas using the same image.

I am so happy that the Spirit of Mandala is dancing with the Spirit of Sue!

On Slender Threads said...

Sue, your honesty tingles with expansion as you continue to create so poignantly.
Be in touch!

jcsvisuals said...

Thank you for sharing universal feelings. We all experienced the need to review our inner landscape.

Thanks for sharing...