Shadows
And
so, as it begins with every philosophical quest, I began with the shadows;
shadows ever resident, that accompany all that is present, dependent only on
the illumination of the sun during daytime. Growing and receding as it
approaches and surpasses its zenith, at its height hiding all shadows, but only
for a moment. For momentary reprieves are all we can hope for. To be alive is
to be resident with all histories, to live with time as multiplicity.
What
fraught existence is this? To be forever arrested by shadows, that dip beneath
the waves only to disperse, collect and re-emerge again? Where what hell we
make on earth can never be outlived. The higher we construct our myths the
longer their shadows.
Oh
what torture for the would-be architects of the mind, and the soul. Oh what
purgatory is everyday existence? Where emotions lurking in the shadows become
windows on the fabric of our inheritance.
For
is it not true that it is the poverty of our souls, that emptiness within us
where our treasure should lie, that prevented us, time and time again, from
rising up? That if we eventually freed ourselves we could have done it all
along? It is that absence that becomes visible in the shadows.
Is
it not true that this is not healing that we speak of, but restoring? And that
in order to restore we must first search for what has been lost?
There
are objects that have been lost, and they lie in plain view, but can the
re-acquisition of them restore us? Or must we look to the shadows if we are to
un-yoke? If we are to become whole again, un-break ourselves, free ourselves
from the ever-resident spectre of the whip? If we are to out-stride the fear of
the noose? If we are to love again, to feel again, and seek comfort in the glow
of our fullness, that like the sun, brightens the landscape so that shadows are
made visible, reach-able, tangible.
What
is this restoration, that requires us to carry wounds and fears forward with
us?
It
is what the realm of the possible offers us, a breaking of cycles, an end to
systems that can only be actualised through full awareness; through carrying
but not monopolising that pain of being reduced, erased, rendered invisible to
our conquerors as much as ourselves.
When
there is no romance in the overt, there is often poetry in the covert. Where
there is no freedom in the explicit there can be freedom in the implicit. The
external cannot restore the internal. Making true strength is not a matter of the procedures of success, or of ownership. It is a matter of going within, and finding
relation to what lies without.
This
is not metaphysical, but psychological. It is what has been re-rooted within us
over and again by centuries of abuse. And to address the psychology we are
compelled to embrace philosophy. For it is only philosophy that can provide an
entry point to the unresolvable, the unimaginable.
For
as it is only within the fullness of the sun that shadows become visible, it is
only with philosophy that the deeper movements of the mind and soul become discernible.
Philosophy is the vessel with which we travel within so that we can understand
what we chart without. Legality cannot free anyone, neither can repossession;
freedom is the product of understanding, and understanding is the work of
philosophy.
That is, philosophy
is the light that reaches into the darkness of ourselves and into history; the
present and the future. It both illuminates and facilitates navigation of the
shadows, and affords us the opportunity to venture into them, so what we may
wrest our freedom from within the heart of the darkness that lies within. So that we may turn
its gravity outward. For the shadows are where past and present coalesce, and
the potentials for change arise.
To view the next chapter of Fragments click here.
To view the next chapter of Fragments click here.
