A couple nights ago, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ was on television. This childhood classic is one of my favorites to watch again and again. I never get tired of this epic adventure through a land of fantasy. Watching it again reminded me of a mandala I created several years ago. For this mandala, I had asked the question, “where can my healing take me?” This mandala makes me smile every time I see it.  The message was so clearly that my healing can take me “over the rainbow”.

My mandala is full of not just one colorful rainbow, but four of them!  They are joined by a dainty lace-like trim.  In the center, there is a blossoming flower surrounded by hearts and another flower.  Symbolically, rainbow colors are related to wholeness.  When they all come together, they bring beauty to all who spot them in the sky.

I took this mandala to mean that there is no limit to the healing we can experience.  When Dorothy and her pals made their trek to the Emerald City to see the Wizard, they were all in search of something they thought they needed or lacked.  To their surprise, they each found out that they had everything they needed within all along.  Scarecrow did have smarts; Tin Man did have a heart; Cowardly Lion did have courage; and Dorothy already had the power to return home. Their power was deep within each one of them all along.  It was simply a matter of believing in themselves and invoking their own power.

How often, when we face a problem or challenge, do we doubt our abilities to handle the challenge? How often do we feel we are lacking something that everyone else seems to have? I think the human condition set us up to feel this sense of lack. Our ego speaks to us all the time. It is the voice that likes to keep us feeling separate and small. I laugh every time the scene comes on where Toto reveals the man pulling the levers behind the curtain and this small man says, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” This reminds me of our ego, pulling the levers and strings, making itself into the ever powerful and knowledgeable master in our lives. But, the truth is, our inner spiritual wisdom knows this is false. The man behind the curtain is simply pretending to be more powerful than he really is.

In my life, I have been on a healing quest for more than 20 years now. The first 20 years of living with chronic Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis was all about survival – just getting through each medical crisis and trying to live day-to-day life and go to school. After graduating from college and starting my career, I had to face the challenge of living independently and I welcomed that challenge. I had to erase the messages that I was weak and incapable of truly being independent. Over the years of my life, I accumulated a lot of physical scars and emotional scars. My healing quest has been all about appreciating my body’s ability to heal from each surgery, each fall, each set-back, and each JRA flare. On the emotional side, I struggled more with the healing of the emotional scars from feeling so different from other people and feeling misunderstood throughout my life. I was so happy when I discovered the mandala art form. It opened up this whole new way for me to work on healing those emotional scars. I feel like Dorothy discovering she had the power all along to return home. I have the power and intuition inside me to heal and become more and more whole.

I truly believe that whatever it is we need to heal from, we all have the power within to complete that healing. So please take a journey down the yellow brick road and join me in claiming our power!

Namaste!