Light and Shadow
Photography by Nicole Leoné Miller
A vision wandered into my mind’s eye during a meditation — the entire world was filled with bright white light. Darkness had been casted out. At first, I felt welcomed and then I realized glaring light was all I could see. I started to feel terrified. I couldn’t feel anything but the consumption of sharp light. It was even slightly sinister. The kind of light that came forth was incongruent from the warm glow that has washed over me many times in meditation. Imagine being in a space where there are no shadows and all you can see is intense light swallowing every corner. It’s like being in an empty grocery store with fluorescent lights beaming down on your forehead, or a doctor’s office with blank white walls and no exit door.
I have meditated in the realm of complete consuming darkness before which is equally terrifying. An entire world filled with darkness can be just as scary as an entire world filled with light. We need contrast and shadows — hope resides in the shadows.
Although darkness is consuming, the inner knowing that light still exists changes everything. We have the opportunity to search for the light within. Then we have the chance to see light in others. If light and shadow exist in a balanced state, we may be able to understand how we need both of them in our lives.
This led me to wonder about our need for contrast. Approaching these concepts with curiosity is key. Resist the need to be provoked by the analytical mind. I thought about the archetypes of ‘personal shadow’ and ‘personal light.’ Humans have their own shadow, which can be described in a characteristic sense or an energetic sense. We have our own insecurities, inferiority, and malignant attributes that we hide from the world. In contrast, our ‘personal light’ is described as a source of enlightenment, our true wisdom, our divine presence, or what comes forth out of complete darkness. This is the part of our ‘self’ that we often shine into the world.
We can work with this duality. We cannot exist in complete light, and we also cannot exist in complete darkness (at least in a worldly sense). We need both. We need the light of the sun on the Earth: darkness settling behind the forest blackening the leaves, light peeking out between mountains as shadows blanket valleys, the pinks and purples of flower petals illuminating in the morning, or the shadow of your lover on the street.
If we can find comfort in the duality shadow and light, we can align with opposing parts of ourselves. When we go deep in meditation, we can use the imagery of shadow and light to find what is guiding the inner ‘self.’ We can expand our threshold to be with shadow and light, joy and sorrow, terror and contentment, falsity, and truth — it can be a new practice that may feel foreign, but it’s worth it.
I teach a workshop on this topic locally and I welcome you to check it out if this is something you'd like to explore with me. Find my workshops and offerings pages to browse your interests.
