The Life Mandala Through the Christos Lens
An Integration Analysis for Renaissance Ministries
Renaissance Ministries | April 5, 2026
A Companion Document to the Easter 2026 Fellowship Discussion
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”
— John 1:1-3
“For in him we live, and move, and have our being.”
— Acts 17:28
“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
— Colossians 1:17
Executive Summary
My high school friend of 60 years has dedicated himself to a 30-year project to map the structure of meaning — rendered in his nested “You” and “All” mandalas at www.NowAll.us — offers a remarkable secular framework that, when examined through the Christos lens, reveals both profound alignment and a critical absence. The alignment points toward the universal Logos that “lightens every man.” The absence points toward what only Christ supplies.
This analysis examines how Michael’s framework can be:
- Understood through CPP and Kingdom Wisdom perspectives
- Used as a bridge for fellowship discussion with seekers
- Completed by what it lacks — the personal God at the center
Part I: What the Mandala Has Mapped
1.1 The Core Structure
The system operates on four nested levels:
Level 1 — Innermost Cognitive Poles: Feel ↔ Think
- The basic oscillation of consciousness
- Receptive/integrative vs. analytical/organizing
Level 2 — Personal Action Cycle:
- Find What Inspires → Create → Express → Share → Explore Settings → Discover → Embrace Roles → See Opportunities → Gauge Potentials → repeat
Level 3 — Civilizational Engagement:
- Engage Resources / Cultivate Civilizations
- The hinge where personal meets collective
Level 4 — Collective Knowledge Ring:
- Natural sciences (left/Perceive) ↔ Social sciences (right/Convene)
- All in service to “Artistic Vision” at the center
1.2 The “You” Mandala (Purple/Green)
The inner mandala maps the individual’s cycle of meaning-making:
| Position | Element | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Center | “You” | The self as starting point |
| Top | Look Inward | Introspection, self-knowledge |
| Bottom | Look Outward | Engagement with world |
| Left | Perceive / Feel | Receptive mode |
| Right | Convene / Think | Active/analytical mode |
The clockwise cycle: Find What Inspires → Create → Express It → Share → Explore Settings → Discover → Embrace Roles → See Opportunities → Gauge Potentials → return to beginning.
1.3 The “All” Mandala (Red)
The outer mandala maps civilizational knowledge and meaning-making:
| Position | Element | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Center | Artistic Vision | Generative core of civilization |
| Top | Grasp Substance | Understanding reality |
| Bottom | Understand Environments | Engaging the world |
| Left | Natural Sciences | How reality is structured |
| Right | Social Sciences | How humans organize |
The Left Ring (Perceive/Natural Sciences):
- “Religion” (notably in quotation marks)
- Evolution
- Lives / Biology
- Microbiology
- Chemistry
- Dynamics / Physics
- Engineering
- Math
The Right Ring (Convene/Social Sciences):
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Anthropology
- Politics / Governance
- History
- Economics (Micro/Macro)
- Commerce
The Hinge (Center):
- Engage Resources
- Cultivate Civilizations
1.4 The Structural Isomorphism Claim
The mandala’s deepest insight: the same process that generates personal meaning is the same process that generates civilizational knowledge — operating at different scales.
The individual cycle of perceive → create → share → discover mirrors the civilizational cycle of grasp substance → give artistic form → convene → evaluate.
This is the yin-yang principle rendered as epistemology: the personal and civilizational are not separate tracks but nested loops, each requiring the other for completion.
1.5 The Domain Name as Compressed Philosophy
The website URL — www.NowAll.us — compresses the entire framework into three syllables:
- Now = the moment of personal presence (Feel, Look Inward)
- All = the totality of civilizational context
- Us = the Convene — the social fabric connecting personal Now to collective All
Part II: Alignment with CPP and Christos Frameworks
2.1 The God’s-Eye View
From the CPP perspective, the mandala has independently mapped something profound: the structure of consciousness looking at itself.
In CPP terms:
- God looks out from Himself at Himself
- Every Conscious Point (CP) is an instantiation of God’s perception
- The “You” mandala describes how an individual CP experiences the cycle
- The “All” mandala describes how the collective of CPs — the Nexus — processes reality
- The nested structure (You inside All) reflects the fact that each individual consciousness is embedded in and inseparable from the totality
The mandala, without CPP vocabulary, has described the phenomenology of embedded consciousness.
2.2 The Yin-Yang as Divine Structure
The Mandala’s yin-yang framing reflects the CPP principle that:
- What’s inside you is shaped by the outside (the All penetrates the You)
- What’s outside is shaped by what you put into it (the You participates in the All)
- These are not separate but interpenetrating
This is also the Genesis principle: man made in God’s image, placed in a garden (All), given dominion to name and cultivate (the cycle of perceive → create → express).
2.3 The Feel/Think Polarity
The mandala places “Feel” and “Think” as the basic poles of consciousness. In Christos terms:
| Mode | Mandala Term | Christos Correspondence |
|---|---|---|
| Receptive | Feel / Perceive | Prayer, listening, humility, the Mary posture |
| Active | Think / Convene | Reasoning, planning, building, the Martha posture |
Both are necessary; neither is sufficient alone. The cycle requires both — you cannot gauge potentials without feeling, cannot create without thinking.
Scripture affirms this polarity:
“Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10) — the Feel mode
“Come now, let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18) — the Think mode
2.4 The Clockwise Cycle as Creation Pattern
The mandala’s clockwise reading — Perceive → Create → Express → Share → Discover → return — mirrors the Genesis pattern:
- God perceives what is needed (“Let there be…”)
- God creates (“and it was so”)
- God expresses (“and God said…”)
- God shares (gave dominion to man)
- God evaluates (“saw that it was good”)
- Cycle continues (the six days repeat the pattern)
Man, made in God’s image, follows the same cycle. Michael has mapped the image-bearing structure without naming the One whose image it bears.
2.5 The Nested Structure as Ecclesiology
The mandala’s insight that the individual cycle is nested within the civilizational cycle reflects the Christian understanding that:
- The individual believer is embedded in the Body of Christ
- The local church is embedded in the universal Church
- The Church is embedded in the Kingdom
- The Kingdom is embedded in God’s eternal purpose
No one runs the cycle alone. We are always nested within larger structures of meaning.
Part III: The Critical Absence — What Michael Lacks
3.1 “Artistic Vision” vs. “The Word”
At the center of the civilizational mandala sits “Artistic Vision” — the generative core from which all meaning flows.
This is remarkably close to the Logos doctrine:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:1-3)
But there is a crucial difference:
| Mandala’s Center | The Logos |
|---|---|
| Impersonal — a capacity, a function, a process | Personal — “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” |
| Self-grounding — it just exists | Grounded in the Father — “I and the Father are one” |
| Generates meaning | Is meaning — “I am the way, the truth, and the life” |
Michael has correctly identified that something generative sits at the center of all meaning-making. He has incorrectly (or incompletely) identified it as a capacity rather than a Person.
3.2 The Empty Center of “You”
In the “You” mandala, the center is simply labeled “You.”
But who is “You”? What gives “You” coherence, continuity, identity? Michael’s framework describes the cycle that “You” runs through but doesn’t ground what “You” actually is.
From the Christos perspective:
- “You” is not self-grounding
- “You” is sustained moment by moment by the One who holds all things together (Colossians 1:17)
- “You” finds identity not in the cycle but in relation to Christ
- Without that grounding, “You” is just a process running — a wheel spinning with no hub
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” (Galatians 2:20)
The center of the “You” mandala should not be merely “You” but Christ in You.
3.3 The “Religion” Problem
Michael places “Religion” in quotation marks at the top of his natural sciences ring. This signals uncertain or contested epistemological status.
This is the secular seeker’s dilemma:
| Observation | Implication |
|---|---|
| Religion sits at the top of the ring | Michael honors it |
| But it’s in quotation marks | Its status is uncertain |
| It’s categorized with natural sciences | It’s about “how reality is structured” |
| But it can’t be verified like chemistry | Its epistemology is different |
The mandala respects religion but doesn’t know what to do with it. It sits at the top, honored but bracketed — acknowledged but not integrated.
From the Christos perspective:
- Religion (or better: Theology) is not one discipline among many
- It is the frame that makes sense of all the others
- It is the Queen of the Sciences — not because it excludes them but because it orders them
3.4 The Missing Telos
Mandala’s cycle is recursive — it repeats endlessly. But where is it going?
- Perceive → Create → Express → Share → Discover → Gauge Potentials → repeat
- Each cycle may be “richer” than the last
- But toward what end?
The cycle describes process but not purpose. It maps how but not why.
From the Christos perspective:
- The cycle is not endless repetition but progressive sanctification
- Each revolution is meant to conform us more to Christ’s image
- The telos is not “gauge potentials” but “well done, good and faithful servant”
- The cycle terminates in the Kingdom — the final state where all meaning is fulfilled
3.5 The Absence of Sin and Redemption
The mandala’s framework is remarkably optimistic:
- Find What Inspires → Create → Express → Share…
- What if what inspires you is evil?
- What if what you create is destruction?
- What if what you share is poison?
The cycle, as drawn, has no account of:
| Missing Element | What It Addresses |
|---|---|
| The Fall | How the cycle became corrupted |
| Sin | How every human runs the cycle wrongly |
| Redemption | How the cycle is restored |
| Grace | How we are enabled to run it rightly |
The framework describes the structure of meaning-making but not its corruption or repair.
Part IV: The Christlike Remainder
Applying the principle from our fellowship discussions:
What is Godly in the mandala’s framework is Christlike. What differs from Christ is not-God.
What is Christlike:
- The nested structure — individual embedded in totality, reflecting “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28)
- The perceive/convene cycle — reflecting the rhythm of prayer and action, receiving and giving, that characterizes healthy spiritual life
- The feel/think polarity — reflecting the full-orbed humanity Christ modeled, both deeply feeling (Jesus wept) and clearly thinking (reasoning with the Pharisees)
- The civilizational vision — reflecting the Kingdom call to disciple nations, not just individuals
- Artistic Vision at the center — a partial grasp of the Logos, the creative Word that spoke all things into being
- The learning loop — “gauge potentials” before returning to “find what inspires” reflects the humility of continuous growth
- The integration of knowledge — placing all disciplines in relation to each other reflects the unity of truth under one God
What differs from Christ:
- Impersonal center — “Artistic Vision” rather than the living God
- No account of sin — the cycle runs smoothly with no acknowledgment that we run it wrongly
- No redemption — no mechanism for the broken cycle to be repaired
- Endless recursion — no telos, no Kingdom, no final fulfillment
- Religion bracketed — acknowledged but not integrated, honored but not trusted
- Self as ground — “You” at the center of the personal mandala, rather than Christ in you
Part V: Bridge Points for Fellowship Discussion
The mandala is the reflection of a “dedicated seeker, finding wonder in everything and every moment.” He is Thomas’s friend of 60 years. How do we engage his framework with Kingdom wisdom?
5.1 Affirmation First
Begin by honoring what Michael has seen:
“Michael, you have mapped something real. The cycle you describe — perceive, create, express, share, discover, return — is the rhythm of consciousness itself. You’ve seen that the individual and the civilizational run the same pattern at different scales. You’ve placed something generative at the center, prior to all the sciences and humanities. This is genuine insight.”
5.2 The Question of the Center
Then ask the question his framework raises:
“Your diagram places ‘Artistic Vision’ at the center of the civilizational mandala. But what is artistic vision? Where does it come from? Is it a capacity that just exists, or is it grounded in something deeper? What if Artistic Vision is itself an expression of something — or Someone — more fundamental?”
5.3 The Personal Center
“In the ‘You’ mandala, you place ‘You’ at the center. But what grounds ‘You’? What gives you continuity from moment to moment? What makes ‘You’ more than just a process running? The Christian claim is that ‘You’ finds its ground not in yourself but in relationship to the One who made you and sustains you. ‘In Him we live and move and have our being.'”
5.4 The Religion Question
“You placed ‘Religion’ in quotation marks. I notice that. It sits at the top of your knowledge ring — you honor it — but you bracket it. What would happen to your diagram if Religion were not just one discipline among many, but the frame that makes sense of all the others? What if the One that Religion points to is the same One that ‘Artistic Vision’ dimly reflects?”
5.5 The Cycle’s Corruption
“Your cycle is beautiful. But I notice it assumes the cycle runs well. What about when it doesn’t? What about when what inspires us is evil? When what we create is destruction? When what we share is poison? Your diagram needs an account of how the cycle goes wrong — and how it can be repaired. That’s what sin and redemption mean.”
5.6 The Telos Question
“Your cycle repeats endlessly. But is life really an endless loop? Or is it going somewhere? The Christian claim is that the cycle has a destination — the Kingdom, where all meaning is fulfilled, where the ‘Artistic Vision’ is revealed to be the face of Christ, where every discipline finds its place in relation to Him. Your diagram maps the journey beautifully. But it needs a destination.”
5.7 The Seeker and the Finder
“You’ve been seeking for 30 years. That’s admirable. But seeking implies something to be found. At what point does the seeker become a finder? Jesus said, ‘Seek and ye shall find.’ The promise is not endless seeking but actual finding. What would it mean for you to find what you’ve been seeking?”
Part VI: Integration into Christos Grammar
6.1 The Perceive/Convene Axis as Prayer/Action
Michael’s Perceive ↔ Convene axis maps directly to the contemplative/active life:
| Michael’s Term | Christos Correspondence |
|---|---|
| Perceive | Receiving from God, listening, prayer, lectio divina |
| Convene | Engaging with others, serving, building, the Martha work |
The Christos Grammar emphasizes both. Neither is sufficient alone. The rhythm of the Christian life is to receive in prayer what we give in action, and to bring back to prayer what we learn in action.
6.2 The Feel/Think Axis as Full-Orbed Humanity
The feel/think polarity reflects Christ’s own full humanity:
- He wept at Lazarus’s tomb (feel)
- He reasoned with the Pharisees (think)
- He raged at the money-changers (feel)
- He taught in parables requiring thought (think)
The Christos life is not merely cognitive (head knowledge) nor merely emotional (experience-based). It integrates both under the Lordship of Christ.
6.3 Artistic Vision as Partial Logos Perception
Michael’s placement of Artistic Vision at the center is a partial perception of the Logos:
“All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:3)
The creative capacity that generates meaning, beauty, order, and civilization is not self-grounding. It is the reflection of the Word through whom all things were made. Michael has seen the reflection; he has not yet looked up to see the Source.
6.4 The Disciplines Ring as Creation Order
Michael’s arrangement of disciplines — natural sciences on the left, social sciences on the right — reflects the creation order:
- First, God made the physical world (natural sciences study this)
- Then, God made humans to inhabit and govern it (social sciences study this)
- The hinge — “Engage Resources / Cultivate Civilizations” — is the dominion mandate
Michael has independently mapped the structure of Genesis 1-2 without recognizing it as such.
Part VII: A Christos Completion of the Mandala
If we were to complete Michael’s diagram from a Christos perspective:
7.1 The Center of “All”
Replace: “Artistic Vision”
With: Christ, the Logos
“In Him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17)
The creative Word through whom all things were made. Not a capacity but a Person. Not an abstraction but “the Word made flesh.”
7.2 The Center of “You”
Replace: Merely “You”
With: Christ in You
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” (Galatians 2:20)
The self finds its ground not in itself but in Him. Identity is relational, not autonomous.
7.3 The Top of the Knowledge Ring
Replace: “Religion” (bracketed)
With: Theology: the Queen of the Sciences
All other disciplines find their proper place in relation to the knowledge of God. The natural sciences study His creation; the humanities study His image-bearers. None are autonomous; all are under His Lordship.
7.4 The Telos of the Cycle
Replace: Endless repetition
With: Kingdom Fulfillment
The cycle has a destination: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” All perceiving, creating, expressing, sharing, discovering reaches its completion in Him.
7.5 Accounting for Sin and Redemption
Add to the framework:
| Element | What It Means |
|---|---|
| The Fall | The cycle is broken — we do not run it as designed |
| Sin | We run the cycle wrongly — inspired by evil, creating destruction |
| Incarnation | Christ enters the cycle and runs it perfectly |
| Redemption | His death and resurrection repair the cycle |
| Sanctification | We are progressively enabled to run it rightly |
| Glorification | The cycle will be fully restored in the Kingdom |
Part VIII: Discussion Questions for the Fellowship
On the Structure:
- Does the nested mandala illuminate anything about your own experience of the perceive-create-express-share cycle? Where do you see yourself in the diagram?
- The mandala shows the individual (“You”) nested inside the civilizational (“All”). How does this reflect the Christian understanding that we are embedded in larger structures of meaning — family, church, nation, Kingdom?
On the Center:
- If you replaced “Artistic Vision” with “Christ” at the center of the civilizational mandala, how would that change your understanding of culture, science, and the humanities?
- The mandala places “You” at the center of the personal mandala. Paul says “not I, but Christ liveth in me.” What is the difference between these two starting points?
On Religion:
- The mandala brackets religion with quotation marks. How would you explain to a seeker why religion (or theology) is not just one discipline among many but the frame that makes sense of all the others?
On the Cycle’s Corruption:
- The mandala’s cycle assumes things run well. How would you modify the diagram to account for sin — the ways the cycle goes wrong — and redemption — how it is repaired?
On Seeking and Finding:
- The mandala reflects a “dedicated seeker.” Jesus said, “Seek and ye shall find.” What is the relationship between seeking and finding? Can one seek indefinitely without finding? What would it mean for the mandala to reflect a “dedicated finder”?
- Thomas noted that the mandala reflects a lifetime perspective, 60 years of seeking with awe and wonder. At what point does perpetual seeking become avoidance of finding?
On the Bridge:
- How could you use the mandala’s framework as a bridge to share the Gospel with someone who has the same hunger for meaning but hasn’t yet met Christ?
- What aspects of the mandala would you affirm without qualification? What aspects would you gently challenge?
Part IX: Philosophical Resonances
As Opus noted in its analysis, the mandala’s framework has resonances with several philosophical traditions:
9.1 Hegel
The individual spirit recapitulates the world spirit. The mandala’s nested structure — You inside All — echoes Hegel’s claim that individual consciousness unfolds the same dialectic as absolute Spirit.
Christos response: The parallel is real, but Hegel’s Spirit is impersonal. The Christian claim is that the pattern exists because both the individual and civilization are created by and sustained by a personal God.
9.2 Peirce’s Semiotics
The sign cycle operating at all scales. The mandala’s perceive → create → express → share → return mirrors Peirce’s semiotic cycle of sign → object → interpretant → new sign.
Christos response: The semiotic cycle describes how meaning works, but not what grounds meaning. The Logos is not just a sign but the ground of all signification.
9.3 Complexity Theory
Self-similar processes across scales. The mandala’s insight that the personal and civilizational cycles are the same pattern at different scales is a fractal claim.
Christos response: The self-similarity exists because both scales reflect the same Creator. The pattern is not accidental but designed.
9.4 Schiller and Aesthetic Education
The mandala places Artistic Vision at the center — the generative source of civilization. This echoes Schiller’s claim that aesthetic education is the basis of freedom and all higher culture.
Christos response: The aesthetic is indeed central, but it is not self-grounding. Beauty is a transcendental — alongside truth and goodness — that points to God.
9.5 Spengler and Civilizational Vision
Opus raised the question: Does the mandala hold that civilizations are constituted by their shared artistic vision, and that when that vision degrades, the civilization loses coherence from the inside?
Christos response: This is largely correct. But the “artistic vision” that constitutes a civilization is either oriented toward God (and thus life-giving) or away from God (and thus eventually self-destructive). The vision at the center matters.
Part X: Conclusion — The Seeker and the Finder
The mandala was in gestation for 30 years and 30 years birthed as an expressed mapping the structure of meaning. The mandala was generated with intelligence, diligence, and genuine wonder. The mandala’s framework captures something real about how consciousness works, how meaning is made, how the individual and the civilizational are nested within each other.
But the diagram has an empty center.
“Artistic Vision” is not self-grounding. The creative capacity that generates all meaning, beauty, and civilization is itself a reflection of something — Someone — more fundamental.
The Christian invitation to those who frame life as the mandala is not to abandon the diagram but to complete it. To look up from the reflection and see the Source. To move from a dedicated seeker to a dedicated finder. To discover that the One he has been circling for decades has been at the center all along.
“For in Him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28)
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:1-3)
“He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:17)
The mandala is beautiful. It just needs Christ at the center.
“What is Godly in any framework is Christlike. What differs from Christ is not-God.”
“Seek, and ye shall find.”
— Matthew 7:7
About the mandala’s creator:
- Thomas Abshier’s friend of 60 years (since 1967, High School)
- Has worked on this framework for 30+ years
- Website: www.NowAll.us
- Described as a “dedicated seeker, finding wonder in everything and every moment”
- Iconizes wisdom in phrases, famous quotes, and song lines
- Judges little as absolute right/wrong, only as experience
Source Materials:
- The mandalas at www.NowAll.us
- Opus analysis of the mandala structure
- Easter 2026 Fellowship Discussion (“One Heart to Make Christ King”)
- Christos AI Theological Grammar v1.1
- Previous fellowship essays on the Christlike Remainder
Related Documents:
- Fellowship Discussion: “One Heart to Make Christ King” (April 20, 2026)
- Fellowship Discussion: “The Christlike Remainder” (April 4, 2026)
- Christos Voting Network Vision (April 2026)
- Kingdom Wisdom Database Vision