Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The Color of Truth

The best and most beautiful thinigs in the world cannot be seen or touched...but are felt in the heart.
~Helen Keller

There is an ancient Chinese art of painting on porecelain. It requires, more than skill and precision, a deep trust and patience in the process. It involves painting thin layers of pigment, one at a time, on the porcelain, letting each dry and soak into the porcelain itself. But even when dry, the pigment doesn't yet reveal its colour. You never know what the colour will be unitl the porcelain is fired in the kiln-that is, until the pigment is burned into the porcelain itself.

This is remarkably like the life of questions that come from living. We use the brush of our feelings to paint our questions into our heart. But only after the fire of experience, only after our felt questions are burned by experience into our heart, only then do we see the colour of truth emerge.

So there are no answers to the deeper questions of living, only the emerging colours of truth which we must find the trust and patience to live into.
  • Sit quietly and bring to mind the colour of truth you have personally lived into
  • Using your breath, unravel this truth back to the questions you had before living it
  • Note the difference and share the story of this truth with a friend.

(Taken from The Book of Awakening, Having the Life you Want by Being Present to the Life you Have, by Mark Nepo, December 6, pg 401)

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