Archive for November 8th, 2009
Inside Looking Out
As I wandered the lanes of an older section of Changzhou, a part of the city that was being razed in order to make way for more modern buildings that would hold more people, I wandered inside a number of the old broken buildings and discovered remnants of lives lived, little snapshots of families that used to call these places home. And looking out from within these buildings I saw the world differently.
It’s not much different when on a journey through the dark, inner swamplands. Seemingly locked in the darkness, battling unseen powerful forces, one is able to glimpse some of the scene of the outer world. That outer world is framed in black, is somehow surrounded by shadow a collective and personal unconsciousness. A path exists that leads from the swamplands of soul back into the outer world, but that path is not a smooth road, it is a broken road, a road that is littered and crumbling with all the fears and detritus of one’s psyche.
It is only by turning to look at the shadows, the shifting presences within, that one loosen the power of those shadows and shapes. It is only by examinintg all that has been banished within, that one is freed from their power, a power magnified when denied. It isn’t much different from the outer world. The power of attraction is increased when one tries to deny the attraction, not lessened. In honouring the attraction and seeing it for what it is in reality, one is finally able to look with perspective, to feel with perspective. The shadows and shapes within become less powerful, less controlling as we honour their existence and place within us.
In doing this work, we are able to move back towards the outer world as a participant rather than as a broken victim and refugee suffering from an inner world battleground, suffering from what is really no different from the Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome experience by a soldier broken by war in an outer world battleground.
