What's your inside Colour?

This morning I received the most beautiful birthday card from my 7 year old and my husband. A beyond funny cartoon they drew for me with a big '47' on it! I hastily corrected them that I'm actually one year older - but in the same breath told them - "let's leave it like this - I'll redo 47 - but this time in colour! I have a second chance!" This past year I missed out on life! A big dark black shadow overcast my vision, and I could only see life in monochrome. I could only see through a glass half empty. So many people suffer from darkness in their souls in silence, like I did, they struggle to see life in colour.

It was when I decided to reach out for art therapy whilst I was busy studying it, and when I decided that I don't want to miss out on skipping through life like my 7 year old does, that my world started to shift. Don't get me wrong, it did not happen over night, it took a lot of grace, mercy, amazing friends and family and perseverance.

"You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down." Charlie Chaplin

In one of my art therapy exercises I had to choose my favorite inside colour - did you know you had an inside colour? Mine is rainbow. I drew a big circle, and the protective layer around it had to be my favorite colour of strength - rainbow, what do you think is yours? Whatever belief you have, you can choose to have that higher power to be that protective layer, the colour to protect your hart and soul - protecting your soul from harm or negativity reaching you. When your heart is protected - the negative will only bounce back as it won't be able to penetrate you. There's more to this activity, but this description hopefully indicates a small peak into the power of art 'as' and 'in' therapy. (thank you for a wonderful journey Karin Curran). Ever since I've recognised the colour of my soul that was hidden for so long, I've been surrounded by messages of hope through seeing rainbows everywhere!

My favorite character - Annie, in the book: Mister God this is Anna, by Fynn, describes the meaning of colour in the best way I've ever seen it explained before. Hopefully this will light up your day!

Fynn showed Anna the colours of the spectrum with the aid of a prism. He explained to her that the yellow flower absorbed all the colors of the spectrum, with the exception of yellow, which was reflected back to the viewer. Anna had digested this bit of information for a while and then had come back with: “Oh! Yellow is the bit it didn’t want! So it’s real color is all the bits it do want.”

All these bits of information had been taken in by Anna, mixed with various bits of coloured glass, shaken well, and worked into her particular framework. It seemed that each and every individual was issued at birth with various bits of glass labeled, GOOD, BAD, NASTY, etc. People got into the habit of slipping these bits of glass over their inward eye and seeing things according to the colour and label of the glass in order to justify their inner convictions. Now, Mister God was a bit different from a flower. A flower that didn’t want the yellow light was called yellow by us because that is what we saw. You couldn’t say the same thing about Mister God. Mister God wanted everything, so he didn’t reflect anything back, therefore we couldn’t possibly see him, could we? So as far as we are concerned, so far as we were able to understand what Mister God was, we simply had to admit that Mister God was quite empty. Not empty because there was truly nothing there, but empty because he accepted everything, because he wanted everything and did not reflect anything back! Of course you could cheat if you wanted to; you could wear your bit of coloured glass marked MISTER GOD IS LOVING or the bit marked MISTER GOD IS KIND, but then of course, you would miss the whole nature of Mister God. Just imagine what kind of an “object” Mister God must be if He accepts everything and reflects absolutely nothing back. This, said Anna, is being a real God. This is what we were being asked to do, throw away our pieces of colored glass and see clearly.

Thank you to each of my friends and family who are adding colour to my life every day, and who continue to inspire me to live life in colour again!

Tebareki - be blessed!