POLL: The Shadow Dance - Indigo Sun Magazine

[oneflewover]

It's fun that we began talking of caves and now we're talking about decor...
One of my other great eye-opening moments was learning that for ancient civilizations every stone, plant, flower, color what have you conveyed a symbolic meaning and speaks to our psyches, as guides and reflections of our inner world...  I want to live in a world soaked in meaning.

Oh me too!  I have so much to look forward to this fall and am really enthusiastic as to how it will inspire me to restore so many things about myself that I have set aside.  It is a much needed spark to reignite many of my passions again.  Cooking, gosh how I have missed this art.  Music consistently filling my dwelling again will just be relished.  I can't play music but my appreciation for it is immense.                 

From another modern-day Lescaux-dweller -- here's to bringing back into our respective environments our passions and joys, the symbols of what feeds us and gives our lives meaning  -- I.S.

Count me in with this commitment I.S.! 

[sashasilver]

I just came across this thread which brought to mind, I guess it's called a sermon as it was delivered at the non-denominational spiritual center I occasionally attend, last Christmas Eve. I'd never cared for the winter, even here in the desert climate I moved to 3 years ago, not so much for the cold weather, I realized, as the shorter, darker days - and the deeper, shadow side of myself, until this helped put things into a "brighter" perspective:

"Darkness represents gestation, the time that is necessary for the growth of something new. Conscious, patient creation is vital to us.  Gestation in darkness means that we allow protection and quiet in the environment within our own soul where new seeds can develop.

Darkness as reflection.  Darkness also represents the void, the mystery, the unknown.  We turn away from the stimulation, from the repetition of what is known, from the surface activity that we see with our senses.  We reflect and ask important questions of who and what we are and who and what we are becoming as emanations of the divine.

And finally, darkness allows contrast.  Our lives are eternal evolutions.  We are one with the divine, one with God and we are naturally always emerging and revealing more of who and what we are.  The shadow times in our lives will lead us to the light not because the darkness is bad and we are going to the good, but because we are in cycles of evolution.  More and more illumination comes as we choose to allow the darkness to serve to enlighten us.

This season, as you enjoy the external wonders of the holy day world, let your spiritual practice be deepened by darkness.  Ask yourself, what is now growing within me?  Who must I be to reveal the light?  As I emerge from darkness, what new evolution do I choose?"

[oneflewover]

More and more illumination comes as we choose to allow the darkness to serve to enlighten us.

I loved all that you shared up above sashasilver.

How can I profit from this? What wisdom can I obtain here from this trial and suffering of mine?  I think we are shown darkness in order to appreciate and value what is good and what is pure.  If we have no measure of comparison, or contrast as you said, than we do not know what we need to value, cultivate and strive for.

Good stuff sasha...

[innergame]

sashasilver,

That quote is beautiful. It's always helped me to see dark and light as different from black and white or bad and good. Your sermon adds dimensions to the idea I hadn't yet evolved to.

Gestation, allowing time for darkness,
constrained by the human condition,
requires patience.

Reflection, evolving out of ignorance through
appreciation of experience,
requires objectivity.

Contrast, the light is meaningless without difference.
Darkness, to be witnessed as part of the whole, not
denied, misunderstood as wrong, and
devalued, for the significance it holds, is
essential, in Aspiration to the Light.

Darkness is part of the whole truth; a contraindication to the light, but not in all ways a strict contradiction. 

This is the kind of homily I listened for as a boy, but rarely heard. It's filled with the compassion inspired by parables and seems highly apropos after all this talk of Jung and Plato in the Lascaux caves.

Thank you, sashasilver.

Innergame