Inspired by good friend and teacher Todd, I’ve been looking for the perfect mala since I *ahem* *blush* lost my sandalwood-bead one somewhere in the sands of Wreck Beach. It was such a silly way to lose a prized possession. Many a mantra was chanted on that ol’ girl before she finally came to moulder with the hippies and little naked kids. Maybe some Québecois homeless guy will find her. Anyway.

My teacher John says that mantra is one of the most effective ways to raise one’s vibration and overall consciousness, since what you’re essentially doing is taking out the broken-record/corrupted-mp3-file of thoughts that are in your head and replacing them with the name of the divine, or a concept that is more useful than the usual monologue. Mantra practice takes you from the dark and cloaked to the light and free in a very efficient path, with minimal self-censure. My personal experience definitely bears this out. But I did bail on mantra for a while, because I couldn’t personify the divine in the way that I used to.

So when my mantra practice was reinspired during the Costa Rica retreat I thought this would be a good souvenir: a new mala. There were some beautiful gem-based ones in the gift shop there, but they were understandably costly. The usual rudraksha beads, although sacred and classic, lacked the inspirational spark I was looking for.

This afternoon, on a tasty and fresh early-spring Sunday, Granville Island called us, and apparently called everybody else too cause it was like a mosh pit up in there. As long as you’re not in a hurry, that’s just fine, really [although I think it makes M's eyes itch; that could be hay fever]. We’ve spent hours poring over the magnificent local handcrafts and salivating in the textile art shops &c., but we usually end up just getting dinner. Today in a remarkable change of pace we went with the leftover blue pot chili and didn’t buy so much as a sprig of anything edible: today was all about handcrafts.

Doesn't really look like a pallet, does it?

I commissioned a pendant from M a while ago, in the way that girlfriends will “commission” favours from their boyfriends i.e. asking over and over again. Initially I wanted a madrone from his family’s property up on Nelson Island, formed into a disc pendant and hung from a silver chain. Unfortunately, madrone, although extraordinarily beautiful in its native state [wine coloured and twisty], makes a pendant the size, shape, consistency and approximate colour of an Alka-Seltzer. An inveterate woodworker and also a hardcore dumpster diver, M decided to go with a recovered cherry-wood pallet that he got out front of our building and made a downward-pointing triangle pendant. I regaled him with tales of the significance of the downward pointing triangle to which he listened patiently [he's a natural tantrika IMHO]. He waited until I was finished and just said, “I thought it would look best as an upside-down triangle in the middle of your collarbone, there.” Aww.

I went with the higher budget option, which I agonized over; have you been shopping for semiprecious stones lately!?!??! they ain’t cheap. But I was focussed on certain types of stones and was inspired by others that I saw at the bead store: I chose one strand each of carnelian, poppy jasper and silver leaf jasper. Carnelian is orangey-clear with milky strands, like a creamsicle. Poppy jasper is opaque and a creamy rust shot through with slate. Silver leaf jasper ranges from dove-feather gray-green to little Saturnesque orbs of dark slate, rust and milk. They all go very well together. I wanted the carnelian because it’s apparently particularly good at warding off bad influences, if you’re into that sort of thing; and the jasper was too good to pass up [turns out it's very grounding and stabilizing, which, don't mind if I do.]

On the Aquabus on the way home I was considering different arrangements of stones: 3 different kinds=108 beads in a mala=12 groups of 9 or vice versa…the possibilities were endless. I, of course, dorked out on different combinations of 3s [I am an accountant's daughter after all]. M, with inherent tantrism, suggested arranging them all in a gradient from dark through to light and back to dark. What a guy. When they were all poured out in a little saucer it turned out I had 5 general colours: orange, dark rust, deep slate, light gray, and translucent white. Because of the mottled quality of all the gems, each of them fed the other. The 5 groups of colours reminded me of the five acts of Shiva, which I recently covered in a workshop at East Side Yoga. I

I love making things. I wish I did it more.

liked how it effortlessly moved through these different spectra without getting hung up or absorbed in each one. In the course of chanting mantra, one would move freely from the most shadowed and opaque bead all the way to clarity. The “head bead” or 109th, right at the end, is the clearest carnelian bead I could find, so it begins and ends with the light.

It takes 5 turns around my wrist so the 5 colours are easily shown†. If you look at each strand on your wrist it looks like 5 separate bracelets that are not attached and have nothing to do with one another, as in life when you are sure you will never heal your heart or feel joy again [or, conversely, like you could never feel pain again].  When you see the whole thing no one colour dominates.  I don’t ever want to forget this lesson.The most amazing thing about all of this is that I DIDN’T PLAN IT. It was a combination of being open to the day, being open to somebody that I love, and seizing the opportunity to create something beautiful. For somebody who tends to plan pretty much everything this felt very meaningful. I learned how to knot them as properly as I could via Martha Stewart. And I LOL’d.

†M would like to make it clear that he does NOT endorse my using the BlackBerry to post these pics. He says the colours are dim and muted. So consider these placeholders while we wait for his high-end analog photos to be developed/scanned/posted.

4 Comments »

April 5th, 2009 Whitney Says:

Absolutely gorgeous Sjanie!

April 5th, 2009 Marcia Wilson Says:

Ah-ha- it looks great!! I have been teaching my kids about mala’s and have been poking around a bit looking at some ideas- I love the way that yours came about so easily- thanks for inspiring me!

April 6th, 2009 Leanne Says:

That is an amazing and beautiful story- just like you! Deeper and deeper eh girlfriend…can’t wait to see it on you in person!

Lots of love~

April 7th, 2009 Brandi Says:

Great little life lesson, Sjanie. I broke my last mala, I still occasionally have its beads physically pop up in my life … lol. I never thought of making my own. On the list of things to create, it goes!

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