Color Divine 

In a land mostly void of colour, I am posed with a question quite often.  

‘Where do you get that colour from?’

Everyone looks for an interesting mythological story much like that of the peacock, and how it was bestowed the hundred eyes of Argus on its feathers, by Hera.  The truth of the matter is that it was not by some mythological boon or endowment that I received this colour. There was no folklore passed on from generation to generation that would glorify my existence.  In actuality it is a story that I still have difficulty explaining. 

I, too, was once like the rest of the landscape; a bland object randomly placed amongst the trees, land, and creeks of water.  Nothing truly separated me from the other objects.  We all shared the same air, sunlight and rain as one another.  We would come together and share our daily passage of time every night.  Everyone would try to stand out more than the next.  Some would try to find something that would make them feel more empowered than the rest of us.  

It was all a massive search for some extrinsic factor that would give someone an advantage in this societal hierarchy.  I was also a part of this never ending race for the attainment of external substance. Days would pass that we would all fall into the same lulling behaviour. I was caught in the never ending cycle of illusion.  Nothing would ever give me the impression that this would change any time soon.  

But by the grace of a power that I cannot explain, there was a desire to break this existential attitude.  That desire accumulated into the proceedings of one fateful night.  It can be said, that night was the precise moment where everything began to change.  I honestly cannot say if there was anything different about that day from the outset.  The air was just the same. The sun rose and set at the same angle as it had done for that same day as it did for the past couple of years.  There was nothing to signify that this day was about to rewrite my life story.  The only palpable difference was this sense of weariness. It had been so many years that I was involved in this rat race that I began to wobble when the idea set in that the continuation of my journey down this path was inevitable.  I wanted change;  But I was oblivious to where I was going to find it.

As I deliberated on my predicament that morning, my weariness had reached an apex to which only two things were possible;  heading down the same road leading to a life devoid of any meaning, or submission to a guiding light that would transform my entire being.  I was close to my darkest hour, but I had this innate feeling that the sun was about to rise on my inner discovery.  I reached a place of emptiness.  I had never been in such a state prior to that morning.  As I sat there, there were no thoughts. There were no expressions or dreams.  It was just a stillness that overcame by being.  I was in some sort of space that could only be described as null and void.  

It was here that I found my ultimate truth: my colour was not mine. The search for this external substance that would give me this beauty that I sought was just as pointless as it was wasteful. 

 It was just an energy drain and a time consuming task. Once the realization set in that I was on an exhausting search that would only yield an impermanent colour, I submitted.  

In this surrender, I, for the first time, felt internally connected. Everything that came to me, originated from within.  It was if I had found a source of fusion to grant me my wish of exuberance and the only perquisite was my capitulation. 

I learned to be whole in this place.  I learned that everything I have is a gift to me from creation itself.  I had been given all the necessary gifts to shine once I realized that the apparatus providing the lighting was from an infinite source.  There was no need to look externally to find a source of power to generate radiance.  All the necessary energy and throughput had already been placed inside of me.  I just needed to realize that it was not me that needed to turn on the light.  It was not my colour that was going to shine. It was Your colour that was going to be the luminary of my essence.

The fact that I am asked this question about my colour is just the façade that is created to keep the world in motion.  It was my necessary exploration and eventual exhaustion that had to occur before I could  grasp this illusion.  But it was in that struggle that I came to find meaning inmy life. From that point forward, when I began to be posed the question about the origins of my colour, I had only one reply. Acquiesce to the inner source which illuminates all that there is, with its own colour; for that is the only way for  it to  be ever lasting.