I’ve always had a spiritual reverence for the sensory experience of good food. lorijohernandez has posted some cupcakes on her flickr site that evoke mandalas.

I’ve long since been fascinated by the incredibly rich and varied symbolism of mandalas: circular images used as an aid to meditation, transcendence and enlightenment in numerous spiritual traditions.

According to David Fontana (via Wiki), [a mandala’s] symbolic nature can help one “to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises.”

…and a good cupcake, I feel, provides the very same experience.

I know I’m eating great food when I sense the ultimate unity of the cosmos in all its manifold forms. And I’m happy to report that this is a fairly common occurrence.