Dancing With Shadow and Light...

I’ve been reading The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes.  It has inspired me to be more aware of the world around me, to pay attention to what I am actually seeing, whether through the lens of my own eyes, or through the lens of the camera.  According to the authors, Andy Karr and Michael Wood, contemplative photography is about the immediate direct experience of pure seeing without the overlay of conceptual thinking – without labeling what we are seeing.  They say that “labeling things as beautiful or ugly masks what they really look like.”  According to them, “artistic living” – or living artistically - has more to do with HOW we see than trying to be creative.   It has to do with “resting in an innate intelligence, that some call Awareness, and allowing the basic qualities of form to be recognized by this innate, nonconceptual intelligence…..allowing things to emerge, rather than trying to interpret the nature of the perception…”    Seems this applies to our spiritual practice, and life, as well!  Are we seeing with the HEART of Awareness, or with the conceptual mind that wants to figure things out, to analyze and interpret…  So I am experimenting with “seeing” and how I see what I see – and from where am I really seeing - WHO/WHAT is really seeing…  In most non-dual spiritual practices, this is really what it all comes down to – seeing WHO is really seeing…  Abstract, I know :)

One morning I became aware of the dance of shadow and light that was going on in the den, as the morning sun managed to find its way through the slits in the closed blinds that let the light in anyway.  I snapped the photos below that show this interplay of light and dark – the interplay of life really.  The shadow does not obscure what is really there.  It’s all a matter of how we see it.

I also included some meditative writings under the photos that I wrote several years ago (2004) while meditating that have to do with the dance of shadow and light that we participate in every day in our minds – some know it as the shadow self.

 

It’s all just a dance,
a playful dance of light and dark.
Allow the dance of shadow to play itself out in your life,
and be grateful for the dance.

  

The shadow self is just a consciousness.

It is the consciousness spawned by the *belief* in separation from Infinite Consciousness…

A *belief* in separateness creates a consciousness of darkness and fear…

For the most part humanity functions from this consciousness.

A consciousness of separation dominates the mind – creating suffering.

The fear feeds on fear, creating more darkness.

It manifests a consciousness of darkness
that you *believe* to be real.

But the shadow self is just a mist, an illusion…
It is not “darkness” in the negative sense…
The consciousness of darkness is only a thin layer, a thin veil.
It creates much dysfunction, but really has no power to sustain.
It gives the illusion of power to seemingly rob you of your
True Consciousness…

You have become caught in the net of fear,
*thinking* it is real.

You can emerge through this layer of darkness by becoming aware of the
Consciousness of Infinite Beingness/Awareness.

This creates a new reality,
a new consciousness.
Whatever your consciousness is,

that is your reality.
Shift the *identity* with the consciousness of shadow self
and you create a whole new reality…

The gift of the shadow is the Light of Awareness,
the call to awareness of the Light
that we are...