Mandala Narrative: An Introduction

Infinite Imaginarium is a product of The third mind, an individual mind which functions as a collective mind... it is a mind composed of a variety of minds, each contributing to the whole, each functioning independently or interdependently as the case may be. 

In the beginning there was @cartman1 and @thewildcard who form this idea for 24hr Imaginarium, @satorid then made it Infinite Imaginarium. As Digital Creators, ebb and flow thru out the different Eras of Infinite Imaginarium, there is always some kind of third mind principle at play. When @curryhobo and @MacVogt found there way to the Infinite Imaginarium shores, what came before was washed back into the sea of infinite possibilities, and something totally different emerged out of this creative energetic ocean [Just Vibin and troubleshootin The MPC Mixtape No.1]. 

There is another New Dawn within Infinite Imaginarium, and the form that has emerged from third mind, is Mandala Narrative. The image above, is the first mandala collective expression. It was made by @giuliana_design, while Satorid was talking about shrooms, language and consciousness. This wonderous mandala of the harmony of mind and nature, has within it structural clues to group dynamics that lay just beyond third mind, with the mechanics of the ecology of mind.   

“It is as if the stuff of which we are made were totally transparent and therefore imperceptible and as if the only appearances of which we can be aware are cracks and planes of fracture in that transparent matrix. Dreams and percepts and stories are perhaps cracks and irregularities in the uniform and timeless matrix. Was this what Plotinus meant by an 'invisible and unchanging beauty which pervades all things'?” ― Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature

JUN AQ’AB’AL (Today’s Ch’umil), speak of a new dawn, an energy that reminds us that we only have is this moment, that with each dawning day comes a new beginning, a new opportunity...Somewhere in the darkness, light begins to make its presence known...

Satori decided it was as good as anytime to reset Infinite Imaginarium, upgrade Imaginarium's calendar to Tzolkin, this means there will be 13 days Creative Imaginarium Weeks. We are going to learn, grow and unlock the mysterious of the galactic tones, then stack on Fiorenza style moon phases for good measure.

Within the darkness, there was a simple lil new light that began to emerge, when Jonnatello first reach out to Satorid on discord:

Hey SatoriD, I watched several Imaginarium videos yesterday and dug them
I have some fascination with generative meta-ideas that might dovetail nicely
Like, in Present Shock chapter 1 where Rushkoff talks about RPG games: the landscape of possible games
I used to think about that stuff constantly as a kid (what else are ya gonna do in this Heaven you're being told about?)
Anyway... you said in one of the vids you were open to playing around with people's ideas for different framings for content

oh man, this is right in our groove. we use to do this open mic night
it was hard to keep it up but when it was good
this is something that was emerging that I really wanted to play with
and what your thinking is too in sync with it

Poetic Double Dutch, Collective Expression and SatoriD's remixing and mashup audio/visual mixtapes practice, has been core to the process and development of Imaginarium. So when Jon said:

What's funny, is I could feel the change in style with this coming into the i i community (I mean, I could feel it shifting to the i i signature)
I've had some other ideas for combining images and sound that would be more like illustrative storytelling. Drawing larger pieces to pan over
I have an unfinished sci-fi concept album idea that includes a highly detailed, mandala-like and movie poster-like piece with elements from various songs and story elements
Have you thought about mashing together different clips from Team Human episode openings?

Satorid, FrostedRose and some other core members were having Team Human Hangouts and then developed this Team Human Mixtape: 

yeah mandala like
its something I been doing
so I been working with TEC DAO and I want to do this NFT Redux project
but central to idea is this collective co-creative mind mandala
so like these mandala "show" your attention, time and work towards this commons
and gives you access to this network of people, information
its tied to this project for a TE Consilience Library
so one of my ideas is to like put teamhuman right in the center
I been thinking we can like crowdsource, teamhuman essentials and its like the team curates the core values of team human
and why its important to have humanity the center
we together are the soul in the machine
and it should be multi media as well
we can do these clips and then our lil sci-fi mandala stories
to give it team to the human

Interesting... I might be able to help with storytelling mandalas

Storytelling mandalas, later becomes Narrative Mandalas and/or Mandala Narrative. Satorid takes that seed of the idea and creates spore mandalas along with organic collaboration with @withinthevacuum. But the infinite balloon tossing of Jonnatello and Satorid was just beginning. There has been many different starts and stops within the process towards Mandala Narrative. 

SatoriD was stirring things up in TEC DAO;
for my project are 3 core parts, Disembodied Poetics, NFT Redux, Mandala mind map/Narrative
then I think under this research phase, we will discover that Mandala Narrative research will need its whole grant, this research helps with NFT Redux self-discovery puzzle game
Dynamic Energy Budget, is another project in this research eco-system, in which imaginarium style creative jam session, helps to curate "research" and content as "proof of concept" for future funding
For Imaginarium Style, this is protype of "hypercontextualization" or Mandala Narrative, in this power of 3 way, each text, visuals and audio, plays meaningfully with each
so Dead Spoken Word and doing the co-creative stuff, is the research and "value" add to approve future grants

SatoriD had this sense from the start that whatever this thing that was emerging out of their third mind exchanges, it was a whole thing of it's own. 

We've been sitting with this name for a while, but getting to a stage lately where I’m reading a lot of meaning comparatively into phrases like that, and I’m wondering what the zoom is like on this one. When I *think* about “Mandala Narrative” might mean, it seems like a likely enough match to the nature of this path we’re on—but that’s just the thing: I have to *think* about it. The name is abstract, but this is a piece that’s important enough to warrant some zoom…

In our Present Shock Culture, we no longer share the same communal, for whom the tribe is a sacred social unit, mandaloid consciousness of our ancestors, but still individually we still bring ourselves to the same primal existential condition. It really doesn't matter how civilized we think we have become, we must still answer for ourselves the basic question of self-orientation, and in this respect, our condition today is no different than that of our first ancestors steeping out of the forest into the light. In this situation the inherent healing power of the Mandala begins to reassert itself. 

In Sanskrit Mandala, literally means circle and center, its traditional design often utilizes the circle- symbol of the cosmos in its entirety- and the square- symbol of the earth or of the man-made world. In the I Ching, one of the most ancient of texts, this symbolism corresponds to yang- the male, originating, celestial principle- and yin- the female, receptive, earth principle.

In Tibet, the Mandala has achieved its fullest and most complex development-both as an artistic form and as meditative ritual emphasizing cosmic integration. The center, the abode of the deity, is contained within the square- the palace of inner being- surrounded by a circle or series of circles, each symbolizing a particular phase of initiation or level of consciousness. 

… every event in the visible world is the effect of an "image," that is, of an idea in the unseen world. Accordingly, everything that happens on earth is only a reproduction, as it were, of an event in a world beyond our sense perception; as regards its occurrence in time, it is later than the suprasensible event. The holy men and sages, who are in contact with those higher spheres, have access to these ideas through direct intuition and are therefore able to intervene decisively in events in the world. Thus man is linked with heaven, the suprasensible world of ideas, and with earth, the material world of visible things, to form with these a trinity of primal powers. -Richard Wilhelm's introduction to The I Ching. 

The process of the Navajo sandpainting offers many parallels to the Tibetan Mandala Ritual and yantra: all are by nature a complete meditation, with the mind in right perspective so that it can't escape anywhere. The formal similarity between the Tibetan and Southwest Native Mandalas reveals healing - the curing of psychosomatic symptoms- as an integral aspect of meditation. The basic structure of the sandpainting exemplifies the universal characteristics of the Mandala: its center of the cosmos, the place where the person being healed may sit. Symmetrically placed about the center is the cardinal points, often symbolizing unity in time by virtue of their relationship with the one eternal center. 

The healing, meditative, integrative purpose of the Mandala has its beginning and its roots in human's attempt at self-orientation. We are at the center of our own relative time/space locus from which we receives a cosmic consecration. Whatever is in front, behind, to the left, and right of us becomes the four cardinal directions; whatever is above and below becomes time past and time future- and the center is always the individual, the bearer of the awareness of the eternal now. 

We feel the impulse towards wholeness but yet we steer towards emptiness. It motivates our thoughts, permeates our attention and resides in all that we construct. Mandalas, as those of most of the 'primitive', pre-industrial world, there is a place, axis mundi, a contact point that is the center, not only of Mandala but also of the entire cosmos. We are dealing with what is essentially a sacred principle, or a sacred state of consciousness of One Divine Whole. Sacred Consciousness, of which the Mandala is a structural model, confirms to the Hermetic statement, "God is an intelligent sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."

A step becomes obvious once someone takes it, explore and engage with experiments within this emerging Mandala Narrative:

• An Intro to Binary Web of Infinite Eclipsing Spores; Satorid gives a crash course in the creative process that goes into creating something like a Mandala Narrative. There is info on ways to get gifted an NFT spore mandala and also about MTCG Token ecosystem on Mintme, so that we can set up SatoriD Token Bounties for creatively engaging with Binary Web of Infinite Eclipsing Spores.
• The Lost Codex; 23 meditations on decoding the nature of Time; The Tzolkin is a harmonic module which contains the cosmic code, the eclipsing binary triplet figure. This is a fourth-dimensional code which completely redefines our relationship to reality, consciousness and the heartbeat of the universe. Also see the full doc on clarity.
• Today’s Ch’umil; is a daily musing/reading of the Mayan 260 day calendar. Exploring The 13 Galactic Tone, Day Signs and Trecana.
• Binary Web of Infinite Eclipsing Spores Playlist; this is an always evolving playlist of video clips and in the mix to create Mandala Narrative Mixtapes
• Join Imagine Station Discord; this is where the bleeding edge of Mandala Narrative Researching is happening.
• Broth Mandala Poetics; Where is the menu to the menu? What is the hand that stirs the hand to stir the pot?

Call All Agents!?!?! 

Infinite Imaginarium Invites all Creators to join us in this Infinite Play of Mandala Narrative. We would ask if want collaboratively create and play with what we got cooking, then please, like, remind and comment below about wanting to join the creative fun and perhaps your creative skill set. Because we want to roll out some superminds for Imaginarium Creators that want to be a part of this creative digital tribe.