Light, shadow and shade!

An occasional insight can be transformational! It was while taking some photos of flowers in the garden, it occurred to me a few weeks ago that flowers also speak . The day break followed by the golden hue of the sunrays gave an adorable look to the flowers. I was immersed in that mood of colours and appearances. 

When I took the photos of this Lily below, I noticed how there was a shadow on one flower caused by the flower itself, That intrigued me. The flower was in the shade of a tree that the background looked darker. 

There was the true appearance of the flower, along with shadow and shade in the photograph. 

 

The flower below while editing gave four hues of colours, from a whitish tinge to a bluish appearance. The interesting observation which  engaged me was that the buds remained unchanged in their colour although the open flower changed its hue according to the light that was allowed at the editing stage.

We are born with a wholistic orientation but become fragmented later in the course of our life's journey. The buds are symbols of how we stay protected in the early years of our lives from the influences around us.

There is light, shadow and shade which create the shades of colours in the four phots above.!

The light casts the shadow. The shade hides the light!

It occurred to me that this is the state of truth we carry within ourselves. The light within leads us to the truth. But there are shades of darkness we carry due to our confirmation bias, experiences of the past, wounds and hurts we carry and ideological imprisonment! All of us have shades in our consciousness generated during biography. We can be a like a two years old child, who saw a snake on the road lying coiled up, who when seeing anything coiled on the road shows frightful behaviour thinking it to be a snake even at the age of seven years. The permanency of impressions is not exclusive to children alone. Adults are also prisoners of their beliefs. As we had an Indian Civet strolling in our garden for about two months, any sound I hear around our cottage reminds me of a Civet. On one occasion it was a Greater Coucal who was strolling in the garden!

The shade is another canopy that restrains our openness. The mental shades are opinions formed from our childhood. I was bitten by a non- poisonous snake while walking on a wetland on the way to school. Even now, when I walk in that wet land, that memory comes back to me. This created a fear of snake within me at that time and a trace of it still stays on. In the exercise of biographical script revisions, as an adult, most of us can pay attention to such resident and hidden fear, anxiety, suspicion, obsession or pre-occupations so that we let go of the canopy of shades of thinking, other than the truth we carry with us. 

What was equally revealing was that light can uncover the shade and shadow. That is when the truth makes us free!

 

The photo above is a good illustration of how a flower bunch looks differently due to the effect of light falling on the petals. The flowers on the left in the screen looks more bluish and the ones on the right are more towards a white complexion. 

Most of us carry truth and shades of truth in our belief system. We shal become more truthful each day, if we are seekers of light that can gradually displace shadows and shades from our lives !

That is why adulthood formation is an active process. It is during the mid life years most of us become authentic truth seekers, as that is the season when we have an inner desire to be less dichotomous and more integrated and coherent. 

Nelson Mandela after release from the prison, said, 'Now I am more ready to welcome people without the influence of my experiences of losses'. He was a healed person, freed from most of the shades and shadows in his life. 

Life is a journey towards becoming the authentic self we are called to be!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)