
Pilgrimage of Healing and Consciousness
For 2025, we’re embarking on a 52-week pilgrimage of inward healing, growth, and self-discovery…and ultimately, peace…regardless of whether the healing is related to addiction, grief, or any other challenge we seek to overcome.
The eleventh “mile” of our pilgrimage encourages us to explore our hidden side, our shadow self, or more ominously described, our “dark side”. It’s only dark because we keep that which we resist facing hidden away, falsely thinking that by doing so we’ll be happier. Does that really work or help?
Here’s the thing, hidden parts of ourselves don’t like to be hidden. But because we keep them hidden, they do whatever they can to make their presence known…usually showing up as procrastination, self sabotage, and involuntary (sometimes hurtful) triggers.
For example, for me, on a subconscious level, I learned very early on in life that it’s really bad (and it hurts) to be wrong, make a mistake, or look like I’m stupid. For most of my adult life, I was chronically on the defensive, watching out for anyone who might accuse me of any of those things. I would attack anyone who would so much as point out a single typo! It was extreme.
It also turned me into a procrastinator especially with anything new I wanted to pursue or was outside of my comfort zone. The logic being: if I don’t put anything out there, then there’s nothing for anyone to point out as being wrong or stupid.
Neither of these approaches serves me. In doing the journey into my dark side, I could see what my “dark side” behavior was/is doing to me and to others. So now when I feel like I’m going to be triggered, I take a moment, breathe, and then quickly assess whether what is being said is truly a threat or just someone trying to help me. I realize now, that almost every time it was (and is) the latter.
How about you? Dare to look around the basement of your psyche to see what’s hidden in the deep recesses of the room? Are you ready to stop self-sabotaging yourself, to uncover and heal its source?
Wanna color?
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Each Monday or Tuesday you’ll receive in your inbox a free PDF copy of each week’s mandala for coloring. Happy Coloring!

Peace & Blessings,
Maureen
The Mandala Lady
TheMandalaLadyArtsCenter.com
Creating Mandalas 🔆 Awakening Inner Harmony
About the 2025 Mandalas of the Week
Each week I will create a new mandala design to color, along with my coloring of it, and a weekly message and prompt for us to continue on our quest throughout the year. All of which is inspired by Melody Beattie’s book entitled “52 Weeks of Consciousness Contact”.
I will be breaking down each week’s topic into daily insights and images (inspired by Melody’s book) on my blog site: MandalaoftheDay.com where I’ll be creating/building one giant mandala (48”x48”), one puzzle piece of it each day.
