Annotated Contents

Introduction: The class with the mandala! Discusses the impact drawing the mandala can have us and outlines several reasons for engaging fully in the project.

Suggested approach and mandala links: The "Suggested Approach" gives an overview of the unit and discusses the importance of resonance when choosing symbols and drawing the mandala. This section offers suggestions for getting the most benefit from the project and includes video links to on-line resources.

Activity One-Three: Five-Items Lists: The first three activities in the project help you generate symbols for important, real-life items, people and events in your life. The most resonant of these symbols could become powerful elements in your final mandala.

- Five Important Items

- Five Important People

- Five Important Life Events

Activity Four: Animal Spirits Chart: The animal spirits chart is the first of three activities designed to help you generate symbols for abstract or intangible elements in your life and personality. This activity involves a bit of role-playing, thinking from the point of view of your spirit animals.

Activity Five: Five Elements of Human Character: In some traditional Eastern philosophies, humans are seen as falling into five personality types, represented by five basic elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. This activity guides you through discovering your "elemental" personality type.

Activity Six: Mirror of Experience: The most challenging of the symbol-generation activities, the "Mirror of Experience" explores the "sun" and "shadow" sides of various elements in your life and personality.

Drawing the Mandala: This section helps you create your mandala in a way that is both personal and unique to your life and personality. It involves three steps:

- Reviewing common mandala patterns,

- Brainstorming ideas with practice circles, and

- Drawing your final mandala.

Building Meaning: The mandala project would be incomplete without taking time to step back and explore the mandala's meaning and reflect on what it tells you about yourself and your life. Each of these activities approaches this reflection in a different way, challenging you to examine, through your symbols and design, the mandala's insights into your life.

- A Virtual Tour through the Mandala

- Autobiographical Reflection

- A mandala for your favorite fictional character

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GUARANTEE: If within 30 days of downloading, you decide that you are unhappy with your purchase, contact me and I will issue an immediate refund. I ask only that you tell me what the problem is so that I can correct it for the future.

About the Author

Reg Harris has 33 years of experience teaching at every level from middle school to college post-graduate programs, including more than a dozen years teaching the mandala.

His area of expertise is the Hero's Journey, which he began using in the classroom in 1975. He began researching and writing about the Hero's Journey in 1986. He has a master's degree humanistic and existential psychology, with a focus on the transformative processes driving the Hero's Journey experience.

Harris' original teaching guide, The Hero's Journey: A Guide to Literature and Life, won the 2002 National Youth Storytelling "Teaching and Coaching" Pegasus Award. That guide and its revisions are currently being used by schools in 42 states and 17 countries.

Harris has presented dozens of workshops, including at state conferences in Oregon and California, and, in 2007, he was a featured speaker at the 30th Anniversary Celebration of the original Star Wars.

For the story of his exploration of the Hero's Journey, see "My 40-Year Journey into the Hero's Journey".