Sunburst II: A creative fire in the mind.

This post will make more sense after you've read my first "Sunburst" post.

...So, I've had this meditation for years, and found it very helpful when I feel uninspired, afraid or even angry.

Then, two years ago we bought a house. A serious fixer, in addition to the interior needing lots of work, the back yard was essentially an uneven slope of weeds with one big tree in the corner.


I was surprised once we moved in how motivated I was to develop the garden, I had always considered myself a brown thumb, able to kill any house plants I neared. But now I was burning with desire, and spent every waking moment either working on it or meditating on it.


The process has been one of the most important "wizard classes" I've had, I feel I have learned a host of new skills (I could use that new vocabulary about now) in both creation and collaboration.

One of the many learning's I had from this process was a new understanding of my sunburst. Without trying, I would find it floating in front of my minds eye.

As I watched it and pondered, I noticed its character became clearer to me, the texture was no longer just undifferentiated glowing light, now I could see that it was made up of something related to flames that are somehow also sparks.

Constantly in motion, its like a jewel with limitless facets that endlessly turn in on themselves. (The motion reminded me of computer animations of theoretical 4th dimensional objects, such as hypercubes.)



I noticed that it came up most strongly for me at the point where I was shifting from "conceptualizing" my garden plans and moved into the physical "action" of landscaping.

One day, a moment of inspiration hit me that set off a series of profound inner experiences. I had the strong sense that this image, was a representation of what I now call the "reality engine".

I have long believed that we create our reality in a sort of subconscious state, and then somehow translate that into three dimensions, I am now convinced that this image is symbol of the process we use to do that.

What's more, I now think that this is not a completely subjective, abstract vision based on my meditation, but instead a universal symbol of reality generation.

You see, I started to realize its uncanny resemblance to the ancient symbol of the mandala. For awhile, every time I would see a mandala, I would say to myself "that's it!"

But it didn't stop there, soon, I began to see how often in nature we experience a burst of life in a similar visual pattern, suddenly they all seemed to be symbolic representations of the reality engine; a flower opening and our sun of course are two obvious corollaries.

The image even came up in my artwork.

Although I knew nothing of the official ideas of what a mandala is, a simple "Googling", found this, which sounds very close to the understanding I came to by myself.

I would love to hear if any of you have had any similar experiences.

Sunburst Meditation

About twenty years ago, I sort of inadvertently invented what I call my "sunburst meditation".

I loved it because it seemed to fit all my values, yet it was a simple concept I hadn't heard before. Probably inspired by Thaddeus Golas' eminently practical concept in "The lazy mans guide to enlightenment" that "When you learn to love hell you will be in heaven".

Essentially, I would envision a glowing sphere in my minds eye, But unlike like a sun or star it did not only send out its love in the form of glowing energy, but was a kind of energy magnet as well.

Conceptually any energy could be sent its way, and because it was vibrating at such a high level, (loving everything that came to it) by the time any energy got to it, it would automatically be vibrating so high as to be pure love.

I saw this as not only a meditation focus, but also kind of psychic shield, because I could imagine myself in it or as it. People could send me negative vibes and instead being effected by them or even "bouncing off", I could absorb them and elevate that energy, and send it back out in positive ways. Simply stated; I could LOVE them.

When I invented it, I had a deep and satisfying meditation on it. Leaving me in a surprisingly good mood considering the dark time I was going through. The very next day I was with a group of friends who knew nothing about it, (at the time I didn't share things like this) we were in a perfect strangers house.

I was absently leafing through a home decor catalogue on his coffee table when I remarked about a beautiful gold sun shaped convex mirror (they are popular now, but at the time I'd never seen them before) in the catalog, of course it had instantly reminded me of my meditation.

Our host responded a bit disdainfully: "Oh you like that?" obviously he didn't think much of it, but he promptly got up and left the room, returning a moment later with the very same mirror, still in its bubble wrap. "Here" he said, giving me the mirror. "I work for that magazine, and we get returns all the time. I was gonna put it on the side walk, but if you like it..."

The sunburst mediation has been with me ever since. In fact, lately its grown and taken on even more dimensions. Which I will post about soon.

But for now, I'd love to know; Do you have a meditation or focus point that has made an impact on you? I'd love to hear about it!