The first time I learned of mandalas, it was during my junior year in high school. And I mean really learn. As a first grader, I would often spend hours sprawled on the beige carpet of my living room floor, segregating colors within certain shapes that filled mandalas to guarantee some sort of symmetry, unaware if my color construction had any true cosmic significance pertaining to my subconscious mind.

Flipping through my high school psychology book years later, I came across a small insert within a much longer section on subconscious thinking. The section provided explanation of psychologist Carl Jung’s admiration of mandalas––”the psychological expression of the totality of the self.” Therapies to this day derive from Jung’s love of mandalas as it inspires certain psychologist to task their patients with sketching their own mandalas in hopes of drawing conclusions of a person’s individual mental experience.

Today, I went to the woods with a mission: to sketch my own mandala. Inspired by “Forest Unseen,” I became increasingly fascinated with it. After a quick bike ride––the crisp air still leaving my fingers numb––I at last reached my own mandala. My mandala, I thought, has no physical boundaries but is rather everything I experience in this spot. My thoughts. My sights. The sounds and the touch and that particular smell in the air when winter slowly deteriorates, inviting spring to take over.

I’ve never been much of an artist. In elementary school, I was certain I was terrible at art. When teachers would hang the “best of” art projects on bulletin boards, mine––which felt sparsely picked––were always considered by myself to be displayed out of pity. Convinced my teachers only did so out of fairness to the lesser talented painters; positive I would never be as talented as the others. This apprehensive self-consciousness never settled as I evaded high school art classes (besides photography, which I oddly found more conventional). Sketching in class self-consciously even brought feelings of artistic inadequacy––worried everyone sitting around me would find my sketch attempts futile.

In the woods, within both my physical metaphysical mandala, all of these insecurities disappear. One of my favorite aspects of nature is that you do not have to compete with its beauty. In life, all of us filled to the top with heaps of self-depreciating insecurities and questions. We remind ourselves of our inadequacies as we look at others to compare. Why am I not smarter or successful than them? How do I stack up against a significant others new girlfriend? These looming questions conquer our thoughts. The feeling of inadequacy is incidental and inherent––a seemingly unavoidable aspect of the human experience. In the woods, though, nothing in comparable. It’s beautiful, and its something that is a part of your essence.
Sketching my mandala soon becomes second nature. I am calm, the water breaking through the rocks and flowing down the water bringing me solace. The tip of my pen begins to travel in waves with rounded edges and gradual falls. The dynamic of waves, from the trough to the crest, reflects life in many ways. “The highs and the lows.” “The dark times and the happy times.” The resilience of a wave is what I admire most. How, after violently crashing, the wave will always rise again.

Embodying my explorer in the spirit of Lewis and Clark, I am struck by rustling behind me. Bracing for the worst, I soon meet the wildlife I have been waiting for: two bunnies standing feet part with unwavering stares directed at each other. One bunny breaks the tension, chasing after the other until they are both traveling circularly, going round and round and round for minutes. Looking at my mandala, circles embody aspects of the mandala until it is whole.
Gazing at my mandala, I am filled with joy. With other artistic expressions, judgement by others is daunting, thought-consuming and leaves you feeling unconfident. But…this! This is mine. This mandala is mine, and it is me. The interconnectedness, the impermanence, the smaller pieces––its all what makes up not only me but also the universe.