One of the classes I am taking with a colleague has focused on looking at the darker characters in our dreams, or perhaps when doing a guided meditation, poke around to see if there are any dark bits. These more negative characters and insights may just have something to tell us. As an example from one of my guided meditations, I saw a flower blooming in response to asking “what do I need to know.” Of course, this gave me great pleasure and hope as focused on what new growth or learning was unfolding in me. However, when I look at the entire seen and look for the darker bits, I saw that the background in my image was blurred and although my blooming flower appeared to be in a forest near the ground, the blurriness of the background was now interesting to me. Why would the background be so blurry? What does a background of blurred dirt and trees suggest to me? How am I like a blurry background? Dirt? Trees?
Looking for the dark bits to see the whole.
I appreciated this model of moving more deeply into our images and recognizing, like ourselves, that a whole image includes what we see at first (our ego, persona) and that when we look at the context (the collective) we might see parts of ourselves that were otherwise hidden. Our perspective of the darkness can bring deeper understanding of ourselves and our connection to the mystery of life.
