Truth Mandala (online)
A Community Ritual for Honouring Our Grief, Anxiety, Anger, Hope and Love for the world.
Location
Online
Refund Policy
About this event
- 2 hours
The Truth Mandala is a community ritual for honouring our grief and love for the world…
…also our fear, anger, hope, care: it's all welcome!
It comes from The Work That Reconnects: a framework for personal and social change from Joanna Macy.
The Truth Mandala provides a simple, respectful, whole group structure for owning and honouring our pain for the world. The practice emerged in 1990 amid a large, tension-filled workshop near Frankfurt, on the first anniversary of the reunification of East and West Germany. On arriving to the workshop, ready to deliver the activities she had planned, Joanna Macy quickly noticed how the official reunification celebrations had triggered painful and unprocessed emotions in the workshop’s participants; she found people talking loudly at each other and realised it was important for people to have the chance to allow, express and process their feelings without turning on one another. In this moment, she abandoned her original plans and the Truth Mandala was born.
Join me, Raphaela, for this sacred ritual:
7th May 2024, online.
6:45pm - 8:45pm (UK).
Please read the information below before signing up, and contact me if you have any questions or concerns.
The Truth Mandala is a nourishing ritual from The Work That Reconnects that creates an all-welcoming, honest, honouring space to experience, witness and express (if you choose) your feelings about the conditions of our world, as well as feelings relating to your personal life.
It is rooted in the recognition that emotions - when not experienced or expressed - can create blockages in our bodies, minds and spirits. The Truth Mandala can be transformative and healing whether you opt to speak or not. It reminds us we are not alone, and can bring relief and release. It affirms the deep, reliable support of our interconnection with all beings and the power of community. It also can provide a chance to re-evaluate how we wish to meet our experiences, renewing our commitment to care and compassion.
Everyone is welcome, whether you have experienced a Truth Mandala before, or not.
Note:
- Everything shared in the Truth Mandala is confidential.
- You can participate in whatever capacity feels true for you. In other words, no one is required to share out loud: the invitation is there for you to share if you wish to, and your presence is valuable either way.
- This particular offering is aimed to give adults (16+) a space to freely express themselves. If you are interested for someone younger than this, please contact me. I would love to offer a Truth Mandala for children at another time.
- Please arrive on time. Please also give your full attention to the ritual and make sure phones are on silent or turned off. Drinking water/hot drinks is fine.
- This ritual is suitable for both newcomers and those who have experienced a Truth Mandala previously.
The ritual
People sit in a circle to create a containment vessel for holding the truth (this offering will be online so we will create an imaginary circle together). The ‘circle’ we make has four quadrants and each quadrant represents a symbolic object: a stone, dead leaves, a thick stick, and an empty bowl (you can collect these objects and have them with you to use during the ritual if you wish).
The stone is for fear. It’s how our heart feels when we’re afraid: tight, contracted, hard. With this stone, we can let our fear speak.
The dry leaves represent our sorrow. There is great sadness within us for what we see happening to our world. Here the sadness can speak.
The stick is for our anger, for our outrage. Anger needs to be spoken for clarity of mind and purpose. As you let it speak, grasp this stick hard with both hands. It’s not for pounding or waving around.
The empty bowl stands for our sense of deprivation and need, our hunger for what’s missing—our emptiness.
Maybe there’s something you’ll want to say that doesn’t fit one of these quadrants. You are welcome to give voice to it – be it a song or prayer or lines of verse.
You may wonder where is hope? The very ground of this mandala is hope. If we didn’t have hope, we wouldn’t be here.
Once the ritual starts, one person at a time, randomly and spontaneously, raises their hand or unmutes themselves. They take an object into their hands and share what they would like to share, speaking their truth in that moment. When they sense they have finished they will say “I have spoken”, after which everyone listening responds with “We see you, we hear you”. We will follow this with a moment of silence in honour of what has been spoken, and to be-with our own experience of what has been shared. Then the next person may speak.
- A person can speak from just one quadrant, or move from one quadrant to another.
- People may come in more than once or not at all; there is no pressure on anyone to share.
- It’s ok to just hold an object and not speak.
- You may want to express feelings with song or movement, or in a wordless way.
- Confidentiality is essential; what’s said here stays here. A person’s words in the Mandala are not to be referred to afterwards, including to the one who said them.
- No personal references to those present will be made, and no “cross-talk” or responses to what others have said.
- Concerns about our personal lives are as welcome as concerns about the world: it’s all related.
- Feel free to speak in your mother tongue.
- Feel free to speak as another being, and let it be clear to us when you are doing that.
- Refrain from comforting. When people are expressing heavy emotion, gestures of comfort may be taken as a signal to shut down.
Together we hold sacred space for what wants to be shared: the space is made sacred by our truth telling.
I’m deeply grateful to Joanna Macy, Molly Brown, The Work That Reconnects Network, Deborah Eden Tull and Nina Simons, for their support and guidance, and the way this has allowed me to step into offering this beautiful ritual. I have also been deeply supported in facilitating The Work That Reconnects by participating in the Spiral Journey Facilitator Programme.