30/05/2026
First tentative foray out of the flat for a few days yesterday evening, now that the temps are more manageable for me. We went down to the river by the racecourse and my husband secretly snapped a pic of me herb-bothering! The evening light was really beautiful down there as usual. I collected tansy and mugwort for cleansing incense and insect-repelling and it was lovely to see the elderflower and blackberry now in blossom 🤍🥰
It was a very slow amble along as my energy has been completely depleted by the heat. I’m the only person I know that comes out of a summer heatwave looking pastier than before! 😆
Last night we found a path down to the rivers edge and were mesmerised by the ripples on the surface of the water made by flies. There were so many meditative, intersecting concentric circles rippling out and occasionally back to their centre. It reminded me of my Dharma teacher Lama Shenpen Hookham’s teachings on “Mandala Principle”. A mandala is anything with a centre and periphery/boundary and that underlying principle/dynamic is everywhere in the universe - seen/unseen and felt, from a single cell and smaller, to the solar system and beyond, and everything around and in between!
This also means that whatever we hold at our centre (usually identifiable by our thoughts and feelings,) it ripples out, meeting and intersecting with all the boundaries and peripheries all around us. What ripples out can then strongly ripple back to us when we create a strong enough ‘container’ for the ‘ripples’ we send out, which can be created through our intentions, wishes, integrity, actions etc. As a dynamic it explains the principles behind things like the well known ‘law of attraction’ from a Dharmic point of view.
That’s only part of my very simplistic understanding of such a complex universal principle! I’m not doing it justice, but it was fascinating to remember and contemplate the microcosm of the river, mirroring the macrocosm of the entire universe in front of our eyes! 🤩 It very much demonstrated the ‘as above, so below, as within, so without’ 🙏🌀💚
