"Everything I see, hear, touch, feel, taste, speak, think, imagine,
Is completing a perfect circle God has drawn" ~ Meister Eckhart
JULIA WEAVER, LMFT
Heart of Luminous Darkness ©2002
My work utilizes art as a healing modality. Combining sacred intention with creativity and action, we can deepen and heal our relationships with our communities, the Earth, and ourselves.
A circle symbolizes the entire cosmos. It is a sacred container for Creativity. All life on Earth begins in a circular container. A tree evolves from a seed. A bird hatches from an egg, within a circular nest. A baby gestates in a womb. Cross-culturally, many creation stories describe the Universe originating within a cosmic egg. Mandala means sacred circle in Sanskrit. Mandalas are visionary tools for meditation in many cultures including Hindu, Buddhist, Navajo, and Huichol. Psychologically, circles provide a supportive space for transformation and individuation. They represent healing and wholeness.
I create mandalas through a visionary process, which combines meditation, prayer, and sacred sounds. Visualizing does not come naturally to me. Usually, I first receive energetic impressions during both sitting and moving meditations (which include hiking, dance, creating and walking labyrinths, chanting, qigong and swimming with dolphins). These sensations are translated into emotions, then visual images, and later psychological meaning.
A circle symbolizes the entire cosmos. It is a sacred container for Creativity. All life on Earth begins in a circular container. A tree evolves from a seed. A bird hatches from an egg, within a circular nest. A baby gestates in a womb. Cross-culturally, many creation stories describe the Universe originating within a cosmic egg. Mandala means sacred circle in Sanskrit. Mandalas are visionary tools for meditation in many cultures including Hindu, Buddhist, Navajo, and Huichol. Psychologically, circles provide a supportive space for transformation and individuation. They represent healing and wholeness.
I create mandalas through a visionary process, which combines meditation, prayer, and sacred sounds. Visualizing does not come naturally to me. Usually, I first receive energetic impressions during both sitting and moving meditations (which include hiking, dance, creating and walking labyrinths, chanting, qigong and swimming with dolphins). These sensations are translated into emotions, then visual images, and later psychological meaning.
"Bee*ing & Bee*coming" c 2008 J MandalaWeaver
Mandalas are vehicles for journeying to the center of one’s being. Bridging individual and collective consciousness, they invite participants to rest in the core of their own hearts and, simultaneously, in the Heart of the world. I use black charcoal paper and white pencils. The black vast open space evokes the divine feminine, already pregnant with endless possibilities. The white pencil is the light of Consciousness desiring to see and be seen. Just drawing the circle on the paper inspires a feeling of relaxation. Now I have a place to rest: a nest for the mystery of my soul to reveal Itself. Mandalas are tools for awakening into this present moment; step by step, one pencil stroke at a time; we directly touch here-and- now.
In February 1996, I made my first of many pilgrimages to the Big Island of Hawaii, fulfilling a lifetime desire to swim with wild dolphins. The very first day, I had a mystical experience, which altered my orientation to art and life. A spontaneous shamanic death and resurrection occurred, opening a visionary channel in which I received detailed, luminous mandala images. Receiving the mandalas shape-shifted my artwork into deeper dimensions of healing and spiritual practice.
Following this experience, I immersed myself in the language of mandalas. During a week long intensive, participants envisioned a mandala to symbolize our “work in the world that would embrace unity and celebrate diversity”. My vision, Celebrating Diversity revealed my hand transformed into a tree (unity). Various kinds of fruit (diversity) grow from each finger. Two salmon swim toward each other at the base of the tree.
In February 1996, I made my first of many pilgrimages to the Big Island of Hawaii, fulfilling a lifetime desire to swim with wild dolphins. The very first day, I had a mystical experience, which altered my orientation to art and life. A spontaneous shamanic death and resurrection occurred, opening a visionary channel in which I received detailed, luminous mandala images. Receiving the mandalas shape-shifted my artwork into deeper dimensions of healing and spiritual practice.
Following this experience, I immersed myself in the language of mandalas. During a week long intensive, participants envisioned a mandala to symbolize our “work in the world that would embrace unity and celebrate diversity”. My vision, Celebrating Diversity revealed my hand transformed into a tree (unity). Various kinds of fruit (diversity) grow from each finger. Two salmon swim toward each other at the base of the tree.
Celebrating Diversity" ©1996
In 1998, I emerged from a 12-year cocoon. My focus shifted from a very personal worldview as a psychotherapist in private practice, into a larger vessel of community. I realized that my vision seen in Celebrating Diversity was not only a metaphor but also a literal representation for my work in the world. That year, I birthed a long-term vision to facilitate community-based environmental art I call “Healing Hearts-Healing Earth”. It combines planting fruit trees, herbs, native plants and/or flower mandala gardens with individual’s heart-inspired drawings and prayers for personal, community, and global healing. I had already committed myself to facilitating several site-specific installations before I recognized the multiple levels of meaning in the symbols. It was a humbling and joyful revelation! The mandalas continually return me to the great mystery of Creativity.
These site-specific installations include the following elements:
1. Creating mandala drawings of heart wishes/prayers for a community, global peace, specific animals, habitats, or the Earth as a whole.
2. Planting a tree or mandala garden as a life-affirming action.
3. Painting stones as earth mandalas to encircle the garden site.
4. A community ritual for healing or celebration, which includes poetry, songs, and other creative expression.
These site-specific installations include the following elements:
1. Creating mandala drawings of heart wishes/prayers for a community, global peace, specific animals, habitats, or the Earth as a whole.
2. Planting a tree or mandala garden as a life-affirming action.
3. Painting stones as earth mandalas to encircle the garden site.
4. A community ritual for healing or celebration, which includes poetry, songs, and other creative expression.
Image © Julia Weaver
Image © Julia Weaver
In the fall off 1999 I heard Julia Butterfly Hill speak from her nest in Luna. Three times she used the phrase “celebrate diversity”, to describe how the Redwood Forest, as a living ecosystem, naturally thrives. The synchronicity of her message with the image of my mandala Celebrating Diversity was obvious. In collaboration with Julia Butterfly, I donate 100% of the profits from the sales of my Celebrating Diversity mandala cards to her efforts. I have contact information about The Plight of the Redwoods (an educational project co-created by Julia Butterfly and Redwood Mary) printed on the back of each card.
In my psychotherapy practice, I have explored tools for navigating the terrain between personal boundaries and the transpersonal experience of no boundaries. I experience mandalas as a doorway connecting the two. My prayers are for personal and global healing. Addressing animal rights and environmental issues, my mandalas are vehicles for public education and inspiring right action. I feel called toward helping others to create mandalas in the spirit of environmental education and inspiring pro-activity (hands on work, and political action).
I have created mandalas with children and adults to honor the California Oak trees and educate the community about Sudden Oak Death. Through the mandala process I have also promoted awareness of the Navy’s sonar project which is life threatening to marine mammals, and campaigns to respond to "9/11" (see below), the Tsunamis of 2002 and 2011, and in protecting the rainforest in Borneo in 2014.
The Peace Garden was initiated at Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s 2000 Family Retreat. Elements included 50 children creating hand mandalas to express “Loving Kindness" (Metta) toward themselves and the world.
In my psychotherapy practice, I have explored tools for navigating the terrain between personal boundaries and the transpersonal experience of no boundaries. I experience mandalas as a doorway connecting the two. My prayers are for personal and global healing. Addressing animal rights and environmental issues, my mandalas are vehicles for public education and inspiring right action. I feel called toward helping others to create mandalas in the spirit of environmental education and inspiring pro-activity (hands on work, and political action).
I have created mandalas with children and adults to honor the California Oak trees and educate the community about Sudden Oak Death. Through the mandala process I have also promoted awareness of the Navy’s sonar project which is life threatening to marine mammals, and campaigns to respond to "9/11" (see below), the Tsunamis of 2002 and 2011, and in protecting the rainforest in Borneo in 2014.
The Peace Garden was initiated at Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s 2000 Family Retreat. Elements included 50 children creating hand mandalas to express “Loving Kindness" (Metta) toward themselves and the world.
Image © Julia Weaver
Image © Julia Weaver
Adults and children also painted their visions for world Peace on round river stones. Luminous paints symbolically expressed the feeling of bringing Light into the world.
Image © Julia Weaver
The retreat culminated with a tree planting ceremony on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, co-facilitated by singer/songwriter Betsy Rose, master gardener and dharma teacher at Green Gulch Meditation Center Wendy Johnson, and senior dharma teacher Achan Amaro. Offerings of Peace were made through song, prayer and the stones, which were placed around a cutting of a Polonia tree (the only tree to survive the Bomb).
Image © Julia Weaver
We also made Peace Cranes (Japanese origami) honoring those who have died, sending Compassion and Loving-Kindness on their wings into the world.
In September 2001, I began creating large-scale interactive Peace mandalas called “One World, One Heart, One Love Peace Mandala” as a vehicle for community to commune and heal from the events of 9/11. (5 x 6 ‘ @ CIIS 2001). Around the outside of the circle is the word "peace" as expressed in many languages. The original collage was comprised of National Geographic photos of our global community.
In September 2001, I began creating large-scale interactive Peace mandalas called “One World, One Heart, One Love Peace Mandala” as a vehicle for community to commune and heal from the events of 9/11. (5 x 6 ‘ @ CIIS 2001). Around the outside of the circle is the word "peace" as expressed in many languages. The original collage was comprised of National Geographic photos of our global community.
Peace Mandala © Julia Weaver
Images © Julia Weaver
An ongoing and evolving process, the Peace Mandalas have ranged in size from 3 x 5’ wall hangings to a 5 x 34’ expanding standing altar. They have been utilized in varying environments including: The California Institute of Integral Studies, The Berkeley Ecology Center, Dominican College, The Labyrinth Society Conference, Center, and Middle East Peace benefits.
Five other mandalas support environmental educational non-profits including:
The Sea Turtle Restoration Project, Earth Island Institute’s International Marine Mammal Project, the San Francisco SPCA’s Kinship with all Life, Tara Mandala Buddhist Retreat Center and Treesisters.org.
Each mandala has been a gift of Grace in my life. They reflect a marriage of our divine and human natures. For me, each mandala is an invitation to perceive and reveal the Light that is inherent in all Life. Experiencing and expressing this Light is more important to me than the image itself.
Julia Weaver, MFT is the founder of Art & Soul, a resource center for sacred and healing arts. An Environmental Arts Educator, she designs and facilitates rites-of-passage ceremonies and combines the Mandala Process with tree planting and gardening and community collages to promote community re-vitalization, ecological healing and world peace.
Julia is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice, with 30 years experience incorporating the arts as a healing modality, and is an exhibiting and widely collected visionary artist. She has offered workshops for adults and children in her studio in Northern California and across the US and UK, as well as dolphin swim retreats in Hawaii. Her practice includes embodied spiritual psychotherapy sessions by phone and Skype for individuals at a distance.
Her adult workshops were featured in The New Age Journal’s Body and Soul, in “The Picture of Health” (Spring 2001). Julia co-facilitated a workshop for children with Julia Butterfly Hill and Jane Goodall at Kinship with All Life conference held in San Francisco.
While swimming off the Kona coast in 1996, Julia had a mystical experience where she spontaneously received mandala images that took her artwork into deeper dimensions of healing and spiritual practice. After receiving the mandalas, she was joined by a small pod of wild spinner dolphins. Julia makes annual pilgrimages to Hawaii, where many of her paintings are created. She has experienced deep physical healing and spiritual awakening through her contact with these highly evolved beings.
Julia is an exhibiting and widely collected visionary artist. Her mandalas have been published as limited edition prints and cards. She donates 100% of the profitss of 5 of her images to different environmental/non-profit organizations.
It is her deepest joy to invite others to experience their own luminous divinity through private counseling, retreats, classes, and publishing her visionary art mandala paintings. More information about her work can be found at www.mandalaweaver.com, or by calling Art & Soul at 415-455-5989.
Five other mandalas support environmental educational non-profits including:
The Sea Turtle Restoration Project, Earth Island Institute’s International Marine Mammal Project, the San Francisco SPCA’s Kinship with all Life, Tara Mandala Buddhist Retreat Center and Treesisters.org.
Each mandala has been a gift of Grace in my life. They reflect a marriage of our divine and human natures. For me, each mandala is an invitation to perceive and reveal the Light that is inherent in all Life. Experiencing and expressing this Light is more important to me than the image itself.
Julia Weaver, MFT is the founder of Art & Soul, a resource center for sacred and healing arts. An Environmental Arts Educator, she designs and facilitates rites-of-passage ceremonies and combines the Mandala Process with tree planting and gardening and community collages to promote community re-vitalization, ecological healing and world peace.
Julia is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice, with 30 years experience incorporating the arts as a healing modality, and is an exhibiting and widely collected visionary artist. She has offered workshops for adults and children in her studio in Northern California and across the US and UK, as well as dolphin swim retreats in Hawaii. Her practice includes embodied spiritual psychotherapy sessions by phone and Skype for individuals at a distance.
Her adult workshops were featured in The New Age Journal’s Body and Soul, in “The Picture of Health” (Spring 2001). Julia co-facilitated a workshop for children with Julia Butterfly Hill and Jane Goodall at Kinship with All Life conference held in San Francisco.
While swimming off the Kona coast in 1996, Julia had a mystical experience where she spontaneously received mandala images that took her artwork into deeper dimensions of healing and spiritual practice. After receiving the mandalas, she was joined by a small pod of wild spinner dolphins. Julia makes annual pilgrimages to Hawaii, where many of her paintings are created. She has experienced deep physical healing and spiritual awakening through her contact with these highly evolved beings.
Julia is an exhibiting and widely collected visionary artist. Her mandalas have been published as limited edition prints and cards. She donates 100% of the profitss of 5 of her images to different environmental/non-profit organizations.
It is her deepest joy to invite others to experience their own luminous divinity through private counseling, retreats, classes, and publishing her visionary art mandala paintings. More information about her work can be found at www.mandalaweaver.com, or by calling Art & Soul at 415-455-5989.
As you gaze at each mandala, take a few deep breaths, and let your eyes relax.
See with your heart, and listen for inner guidance.
Gently open to your own your own luminous Divinity.
See with your heart, and listen for inner guidance.
Gently open to your own your own luminous Divinity.