Note: This post is an example of a sitting Whole Write. A sitting Whole Write proceeds from a topic and continues in a stream of consciousness recorded by the writer. At moments when the writer feels “blocked,” an inquiry is performed into the nature of that block, the nature of the topic, and a response given to get back on track and over the block.

Topic: Color

Dictionary.com: color is “the quality of an object or substance with respect to light reflected by the object, usually determined visually by measurement of hue, saturation, and brightness of the reflected light; saturation or chroma; hue.”

Everywhere we look, there is color. It surrounds us, decorates our world, allows us to find more beautiful, harmonious, or useful arrangements of the world. How we dress conveys an image. The body paint and feathers. The nun’s habits. The business person’s suit and tie.

What we eat reflects our judgment of the food’s color. Would you drink yellow milk? Would you eat a green banana? If you found a mud-colored substance in your salt shaker, would you pour it on your food? Color conveys concrete, useful meaning.

Green for go, yellow for caution, red for stop. The purple robes of a priest or monarch. The white beards of the elder men. Hunter green camoflauge uniforms of war. The blue and orange of corporate America. The green of money …

Topic: color. Color and money. What do I know about color and money?

Dollar bills are green. Silver coins. Copper coins. Nickel coins. Along with size and shape, color helps us to distinguish one thing from the other. Color helps us to be effective and efficient. Color allows us to buy things much better than we could without it, more effectively. Color is, color is …

Topic: color. What do I know about color and is, color and existence?

Color is how an object looks when clear light is reflected by it. In color, there is a triumvirate or Trinity. There is The Perceiver—my eye, your eye, this telescope, that camera. There’s The Perceived—the object in itself, not simply “just there,” but truly absent of color in itself. Then there’s Clear Light. The interplay between these three is necessary for us to see color, necessary for us to contact the Divine presence in the thick of the world.

Light is a sacrament of the Divine in our lives, the very principle that makes possible interconnectivity. Like a lover, Light allows us to see Beauty by giving us the gift of color. Like a caregiver, Light teaches us to avoid danger and attract good things … all through color.

Light seems to be immediate, yet it takes some nanoseconds to reach our eye. Time is the invisible element of the equation, the mysterious fourth person of the Trinity of Perceiver, Perceived, and Light …

Topic: color. Time and color. What do I know about color and Time?

The seasons change, the light shifts in the sky. Everything seems different from season to season. The bright, warm colors of summer. The cool, subdued colors of winter. The lively, awakening colors of spring. The darkening and decaying colors of fall. Colors shift in obvious, immediate ways that we have grown accustomed to ….

Topic: color. “Accustomed to” and color. What do I know about getting accustomed to color?

I don’t notice that which is right before my eyes. I don’t interact with green money or a clear glass or a blue sky. I just interact with money, glass, and sky. I take color for granted. But is this not a needless failure of attention?

Mindfulness calls me to notice the subtleties of tone, shade, and tine. How is this dollar’s color unique? How does this glass reflect color differently than other glasses? How is this sky different from so many thousands of skies that I’ve seen before? Attention to color is attention to the shifting presence of Spirit, manifest as Light, embodied in a spectrum of existence perceivable through our senses. Attention to color is an integral practice.

What do I know about attention to color and integral practices?

Attention: mindfulness, awakening to a broader, more expansive self beyond the ego that is the Witness.

Color: a particular reflection of light on a given object in Time. Without perceiving color, we cannot perceive the absence of color. Nor can we experience the fullness of color: immediate perception of the Divine Light as a sacrament.

Integration: becoming more fully who I am by owning that which I am not mindful of; transforming my awareness to greater sensitivity towards plurality and observing meaningful patterns that connect all things.

Practice: A meaningful activity (the aim of which is integration), done repeatedly, for the purpose of effecting a revolution of consciousness.

Attention to color is a basic mindfulness practice, a tool of the artist, the novelist, the creative self within. And it is also an integral practice, educating us to the awareness of both unity and diversity in our midst, transparency and opacity of thought and perception, beauty and its absence everywhere and for all time. Color teaches that All is Beauty and Absence.

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