Shadows

Abandonment. This is a stark image. If photos could be taken of our inner landscape, this would be the most common picture seen.

Earlier in the week a client requested I meet him in his place of business. There'd been strange occurrences in the old building. Some sensitive people commented on uncomfortable feelings, unexplained things seen and felt in empty rooms.

The night before I connected to my client, getting a sense of what was showing itself in his life. The following day I explored every area, sat alone in the semi dark and felt more than saw. As always, the truth is always simple.

It was visible in the decor, seen in the stock. It was heard in every noise, the creak of the old floorboards, in the people that came and went and in the tone of their interactions. One corner held a potent and heavy pocket of it, it left me faint for a moment.

It was abandonment, a kind of fear. No energy can manifest, not in circumstance, in people or in things that does not have a match - like attracts like. Here in my client's world, his inner child feeling abandoned, unheard and utterly stifled in so many obfuscations; the child had found a voice, an expression. The energy was everywhere.

It echoed through his life but unlike an echo, grew in intensity in desperation to be heard. He'd been drawn to and then fed the stories of those sensitive people, not consciously made, but energy finding resonance in them also. Most of my time was spent with my client, shining the light of awareness on what he'd created, showing him the manifestation of his inner world.

I returned to the corner, the dense pocket and did all any of us can do - I opened and held that space, literally. With acceptance, compassion and love, light illuminated the dark. In one moment, just a single moment, the story changed.

All One

Alone: From 'all ana' (old English) meaning, in essence, 'all one.' This photo was taken several years ago in the Thar Desert, conveying a sense of peace in the solitary. Images like words can reveal but also obscure.

There in the magnificent Thar I was neither absent of company nor many illusions and needs, the crowd within me that beautiful day. In a state of joy - not alone in any perceived sense as I was looking into a mirror. My mirror wasn't alone either. Just the two of us and our crowds, far from 'one,' imagining the other had something much desired, the key to release.

I've been experiencing some timeless alone these interesting days. It's come to me that aloneness is often identified as what it isn't, rather than what it is. It's been understood as a time 'without.' Very often, it's perceived as either an escape (from others, ultimately ourselves) or the default, time when others aren't available. It's been measured by what it isn't...but I'm interested in what it is, what it offers us.

In these days of shifting sands, I've heard many say in consolatory terms, 'but we are never alone.' This may be a truth but it also easily obscures and becomes another kind of 'crowd.' We're longing for faraway places we aren't, for faces that quiet the clamouring crowd.

The desert being largely glass, is full of reflections. We are all one in innumerable mirrors, in each and every-'one' we see. We are also infinitely alone, with a blink of awareness we may see beyond the crowd.