I feel so fortunate that I live in a part of the country with visible changing seasons. They are a forever reminder of transformation. Whether we are moving from spring into summer, summer into fall…change is always occurring around us. As we have moved into the fall with winter on the horizon here in the midwest it is a reminder for me of our own transformation that occurs daily with or without our knowing.

Fall is the season when leaves change to hues of red, gold, and orange. They then dry up, fall of their supportive branches, die and are left there on the ground. The tree has changed from green to vibrant colors to bareness…an open nakedness as she weathers winter cold and snow. But, as we know, this transformation needs to happen..spring will arrive, the lovely maple trees will feed us their sap, leaves will be reappear or could we say reborn, and they will shade us from the warmth of the sun in summer. It’s a cycle. A mandala if you will. A circle of transformation.

I often share in my teachings from this understanding as well. Our bodies are always changing…every year, every day, every breath. We feel it in our joints and bones when we no longer can move in a way we did years earlier, we feel heartache in our hearts when we experience the death of a loved being but then can feel a calming joy when we recall a special memory, we feel frustration and anger when someone cuts us off on the freeway but yet a gratitude when someone opens the door to the coffee shop for us. Our physical bodies, emotional and mental bodies are always changing.…we are always transforming. We are our own mandala. On the larger scale, our life time is a mandala. From birth to death, a complete circle of life happening with every breath until we run out of breath.

But what if we began to think that there is something beyond our physical dying. Yes, the tangible, physical body is no longer present but does our mandala continue, is it still open, long after we are gone? Like the dried leaves on the autumn ground that provide nourishment to the earth, home to insects over the course of a long winter, maybe we too provide nourishment to the world or to the people that we leave behind? Perhaps if we entertained this thought, we would spend each day of our mandala a little more mindful, a little less negative, a little less in the ‘me’ ‘mine’ and little more in the ‘us’ ‘we’. How do you want your mandala to continue beyond just you? Would we transform our way of treating other people (in thoughts, words and actions), would we begin to see the earth as our mother and treat her more compassionately instead of for our own selfish, ego-pleasing reasons, would we spend more time just ‘being’ instead of ‘doing’? As my mandala is now in its second half, I continually feel a transformation happening through me, not to me. I hope my mandala continues on in kindness, compassion and peacefulness.

This reflection rose from the approaching Dia de los Muertos, the falling leaves, the winds of change and ‘Be’ meditation.