Healing Imagery

The use of imagery in healing by Suchinta Abhayaratna, Th.D. – Extracts

The famous psychologist Carl Jung writes in his book, Man and His Symbols, that symbols and images can express complex concepts that may not be adequately expressed in words, and make them relevant across cultural barriers, far beyond their point of origin.

Jung writes, …a word or an image is symbolic when it implies something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. It has a wider unconscious aspect that is never precisely defined or fully explained. Nor can one hope to define or explain it. As the mind explores the symbol, it is led to ideas that lie beyond the grasp of reason.

Jeanne Achterberg writes that imagination is a mental process that is “the communication mechanism between perception, emotion and bodily change.” Jung, C.G., Man and His Symbols, (NY: Dell Publishing, 1968), 3 – 4

It is “the world’s oldest and most effective healing resource, affecting the body intimately on both seemingly mundane and profound levels.”Jeanne Achterberg, Imagery in Healing (Boston: Shambala, 1985)

Dr. James Oschman, a pioneer and researcher of Energy Medicine writes that, “…looking at a symbol, or even thinking about (visualising) a symbol results in considerable neural activity involving measurable electrical and magnetic fields.” According to him, writing or drawing the symbol can activate sensory and motor pathways and therefore bring in many more electrical and magnetic fields. Viewing, visualising or writing a symbol can trigger specific patterns of electrical and magnetic fields in and around the body that can be healing. It is also possible that some of these energy fields might be beneficial to a nearby person.

Dr. Judith Cornell describes the mandala as “a concrete symbol of its creator’s absorption into a sacred center.” In its most elevated form, the sacred circle (mandala) mirrors an illuminated state of consciousness through a symbolic pattern – making the invisible visible. It is meant to draw creator and viewer into an encounter with animating sources of numinous (spiritual) energy. The Navajo call this center “a spiritual place of emergence” for sacred imagery. By focusing on it, both mandala artist and mediator can open to the divine energies of deities and to the contents of his or her own spiritual and psychological self. When a practitioner wilfully illuminates and embodies a sacred image from within the psyche while in a meditative state, spiritual transformation, physical healing, and the integration of personality fragments can result.

 For Cornell, the creation of a mandala is about healing and self-realization.

All the pictures are from Judith Cornell’s book.

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MANDALA MAKING MORNING

Every Mandala you make will bring you closer to the truth of who you are! Based on Dr. Judith Cornell’s Mandala Luminous Symbols for Healing program, this is a week by week themed mandala making program with the intention of making joyful and light-filled discoveries.

Events are on Thursdays and Saturdays. Event timing is flexible depending on participants’ time zone. Pls enquire at the contact from below! Thank you.

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FACEBOOK EVENT

Read more about MANDALAS @ THIS LINK

 

The Sacred world of MANDALAS

Why create a Mandala?

♦ Because it has the regenerative and curative power to activate the latent powers of the mind. The meditative process helps to focus and open the heart to the healing power of unconditional love.

♦ Because it has a calming and relaxing effect on the mind and body, thus focusing and strengthening the will to heal.

♦ Because it can bring joy as it facilitates the healing of a sense of psychological fragmentation.

♦ Because it can make the invisible visible—expressing paradoxical situations or patterns of ultimate reality that can be expressed in no other way.

♦ Because it can reveal unity between human existence and the structure of the cosmos—opening up a perspective in which things can be understood as a whole.

♦ Because it can give form and expression to an intuitive insight into spiritual truth by releasing the inner light of the soul.

Source: Judith Cornell Mandala Luminous Symbols for healing

With the power of your mind you can work changes in the life in the body as well as in the body itself. . . . Mind [consciousness or soul, including intelligence, will, and feeling] can enable you to do anything you want, but you must experiment first in little things until you fully develop that power. If you don’t constantly work at developing mind power, don’t try suddenly to depend wholly on it. . . . those who are fanatical and refuse medical help when they need it often do great injury to themselves. . . . You must use common sense.

Paramahansa Yogananda

The ultimate aim of these practices is Self-realisation—the recovery of one’s authentic Self, not the ego-personality bound by one’s individual circumstances. This greater Self is an aspect of transcendental Reality. The recovery of this Self, synonymous with enlightenment, is the mystical experiential knowing and remembering in mind, body, and soul that we are one with God.

A mandala, the Sanskrit word for “circle,” is a concrete symbol of its creator’s absorption into a sacred center.

By focusing on it, both mandala artist and meditator can open to the divine energies of deities and to the contents of his or her own spiritual and psychological self. When a practitioner wilfully illuminates and embodies a sacred image from within the psyche while in a meditative state, spiritual transformation, physical healing, and the integration of personality fragments can result.

Source: Judith Cornell Mandala Luminous Symbols for healing

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