What color is your Rainbow?

Many mystical texts speak about "seeing" the world in a new way. Today I saw an article that made me think about this, but it isn't what the mystics have in mind.

This months Scientific American has an article about how color vision evolved. Too much to go over in a short blog, but the article talks a lot about how we see color and how other animals see color. We have cones in our eye that activate from three colors (trichromatic). There are many animals that only have cones for two colors (dichromats), and even a few that only have one. A few birds have sensitivity for four colors (tetrachromatic).

So there's lots of fun territory here, all about "seeing" the world in different ways.

What would it "look" like to see only two? What would it look like to see four? What did the first people who had three colors (and hence could now see many more colors than their two-color friends) experience? Think about all aspects of that experience? We could playfully recreate it, but let's say they could now see orange, and more reds. Would they be suppressed (burned at the stake), resisted, or just tossed off as a bit looney? We join Tribecca (who can see three pigments) and Dick (who only sees two).

Tribecca asks, "Could you hand me that orange?"
Dick replys, "orange? what's that. do you mean this grey?"
T - "well, I suppose. but it's orange."
D - "what does that even mean?"
T - "I'm talking about the color"
D - "Yeah, it's grey"
T - "no, it looks like the sunset"
D - "well, at least you got that right."
T - "so you like all the colors?"
D - "what colors?"
T - "just hand me the grey..."

This article is mostly just to get you thinking about different ways to "see" the world. Nothing too deep or mystical, except that it feels odd to try to think about new - unnamed colors. And what it means to try to see them in your mind. Can you name all the 24 million colors you can display on a Mac? I know I can't. but I can see them. If asked, I can point to 10 or 15 different shades of yellow in a painting and probably name most of them (yellow, yellow green, light yellow, kind of a orange yellow, but not as orange as that one, etc.). But the colors are relative. I might point to a different shade first next time and call that yellow and shift my answers just a little...

So, i keep talking about seeing new colors. Does it seem possible that we all see the world a little differently? Or is the difference probably pretty minimal. One of the points of the article states that some women have four types of visual pigments instead of three. What if you're one of them? Can you picture how the world might look different for other people with more or less than you? That's where all the fun begins.

ok, that's it for now. "See" you later.

The Art of Letting Go

Life has a rhythm, it cycles, it turns, it wheels, it spins, and it never stays still. Yet, too often we want to change that rhythm, we want to rush it, or slow it, or stop it altogether.

We only seek to change the rhythm out of fear

The wise learns to dance with life's rhythm, to enjoy what life brings, and to let go when the time has come to move on. Most of what we learn in society is the opposite of this. We cling to what we are afraid we will lose. We run from that which scares us. But life ebbs and flows. Joseph Campbell spoke of this dance:

The warrior's approach is to say 'yes' to life. - yes to it all
To participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world

(A Joseph Campbell Companion, pg. 17)

As I sit here working on the next phrase, I find myself thinking about rhythm and fear and the circle of life, and I wonder what to share. What do I fear? I find that the challenge of writing a blog, to me, is having these airy, heady ideas, and then bumping into real life. Discovering that I feel out of rhythm with life myself, and wondering how to get back in step. That I have all these ideas in my head, ideas I have seen change my life, bring me peace, helped me weather some tough times - but they don't always help. And if I share the darkness, can those who read still see the light?

And it is exactly in writing that last line that what I really want to express comes ringing through, for me. The importance of fully embracing life, the good with the bad; the bliss with the terrifying; the beauty with the mundane with the disfigured (yes, even reaching only for the extremes still misses the point of embracing everything).