Contrasts!
In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, a beautiful understanding was presented to me.
I was reading a comment by Barbara on Amy’s lovely Blog. Amy had posted her most recent amazing pictures of autumn colors and how they contrasted so beautifully with such a grey, wet day. And though it was a difficult journey to get these images on such a day…to Amy it was worth every step. Then Barbara came along and mention those contrasts as well. Even I and Dan mentioned those contrasts.
But Barbara’s words in her comment knocked me clean over for they were the words I had been trying to find in my journey…
“We thank you graciously Amy for your persistence, whether we’re right or wrong in receiving, it’s really about the presence we receive no matter what! And this time it was because of the darkness you captured the true depth of beauty which is always all around us! Thank goodness for contrast 🕺💃🎶🙏🌈❤️ much love to you x”…
I was totally gobsmacked. Here was two ladies already there…but I wasn’t listening…but now I did, perfectly, timed as only Spirit can 😀
Those many contrasts in life are indeed our guide to finding so much of that truth within us. That love that can only be seen by contrasting it with all those hard parts of our journey. Each and every moment is a contrast of what went before, even of those hopes and dreams of the future. This very beautiful world is showing us such a profound understanding as it slowly goes through night and day, winters to summers…and such emotional contrasts so that we will appreciate what we eventually find in that love through it all. We are those beautiful autumn leaves…contrasting…regardless of it all.
I thank you both for sharing life as you both individually know it, and the understanding in just following your own heart. I hear you and thank you for sharing this wonderful, profound blessing ❤️🙏🏽
Beautiful journey into contrasts. The yin-yang of life is everywhere, in everything. Sun and shadow, darkness and light, hot and cold, female and male, passive and active, expanding and contracting…. 💕🌟💕
That it is dear lady, a journey through it all so we can see what truth really is, what love really is, and appreciate it all in that understanding. Thank you for sharing yours 😀❤️🙏🏽
Beautiful, Mark. Life is full of so many wonderful surprises and the seasons pull us into each one.
Yes Michele, we have many seasons within and without, each a contrasting pathway to find that beauty of love within. I hope your seasons are going beautifully dear lady. Thank you for sharing them 😀❤️🙏🏽
Beautifully said Mark, Amy and Barbara 🥰 Its only when we face the dark that the Light truly shines. Autumn colors and contrasts, and the ending of nature’s cycle bring this Message home to us. 🍁🙏🏼🧡
It all stood out beautifully Val, and as you said, because it was such a dark day. Our journey touches those dark places but it is through them that so much beauty shines within us. We see it in others shining in their eyes after its journey. And feel it in ourselves when that peace finally settles around us. Great share Val, may your light be ever that beautiful contrast 😀❤️🙏🏽
I am so happy for you Mark…❤️I looked at the pictures on Amy’s site and the beauty in the contrast is stunning. But the place where it took you…stunning as well. ❤️ it feels like you opened some more…how wonderful!
It gave me an unusual perspective I had not seen before, plus a greater understanding of just how profound this journey is. I’ve seen and touched unconditional love…but to appreciate it truly is something magnificent…and still far beyond me. I was just privileged to see it from another light, like a beautiful color reflected from a crystal in the sunlight. And yes, opened me gladly 😀❤️🙏🏽
Those photos of Amy’s were so stunning especially the dark clouds above the beauty of the trees…
When you look back Mark at the ‘Contrast’ of the last few years, we see we sometimes have to go through the struggle and heartache in order to appreciate what we already thought we had… Freedom to BE.. and go where we please.. The contrast. has awoken many to the world, and as that old saying often is quote is spoken
” It’s always darkest before the dawn light” or something similar..
Amy’s Light and dark and the struggle she went through to take those photos were not in vain.. For the result was magnificent..
I feel our own struggles too, will eventually prove that this period of darkness was part of that Divine Plan also in bringing us forward to show us a new way, and herald in New Light in our own New Dawn..
A lovely post Mark… The Lightbulb is always ready and waiting… Many hands can turn the switch.. But the elements to shine are contained within.
Sending Love and Blessings dearest friend ❤️🧡💚💛🙏✨
Ah dear lady, you said it all. Contrasts are indeed just so interwoven in all that we are a part of. From those tiny bits of light right on up to those huge changes that this world is going through. When I saw just how much it interacts with all that we do I was amazed at its intricacy and how it touches every part of us.
And yes, it is always darkest before the dawn…so we will appreciate it all the more when the light comes.
A well spoken comment Sue, thank you for sharing 😀❤️🙏🏽
My pleasure… Good night dear Mark… ❤️ I am off to sleep before the dawn catches me up Lol 😉
Yes it gets a bit like that sometimes 🤣 Sweet dreams dear lady 😀❤️🙏🏽
🙂 🙏✨💛
How often have we talked about the opposites and that we only learn our lessons from them. The darkness is so necessary to make us see the light. In my book I made the example of holding a candle in hands at noon in summer. Who cares about that candle. But when it is winter and night, it’s beauty is incomparable. That’s why we came here. In the “other” world our lights shine undimmed by a physical body and an ego. But we all shine and we don’t recognize our own light anymore. We need the darkness down here to remember who we really are.
Thank you for this wonderful post and taking us closer to this important insight we all want to make here, Mark.
Thank you Erika, it was a flash moment of seeing something so powerful in all we do. I know we do need those opposites so that we can see our journey. But this so encompassed us moment from moment, like air…we can choose to breathe or not…but life wants us to be what we are, so it highlights us at every moment. Shows us ‘us’ so that we can take whatever step we wish and become it…but feel it in every step. Love is…well…all contrasts. To allow it in or not is us feeling each and every moment, each step we take to dare another way and ever change because of it. Tamara said it well with us learning those many strokes of a masterpiece, contrasting so much, always changing until we become it.
Thank you for sharing kind lady, may we keep adding those contrasts to a love that is us 😀❤️🙏🏽
We will find the contrasts until any shade has vanished that we need to work out through experienced insights. Contrast show our beauty and the beauty to be!
Thank you for this beautiful, inspiring, and insightful post, Mark.
And thank you for your light found and shared kind lady, a guide on this conditional world that is very beautifully designed with such contrast so we can ‘see and appreciate’ that love within us 😀❤️🙏🏽
As I thankfully noticed, we are all guiding each other with our lights. Thank you for your beautiful glow that leads very deep, Mark!
😀❤️🙏🏽
😊💖
Mark, I used to hear how we could never appreciate love if it weren’t for the hate and unkindness in our world, and I used to resent that. Those words brought up anger, even rage.
When I sat with those words and the memories so many years later, I realized that my anger came from the unhealed pain I carried in my heart from the abuse and the betrayals I had gone through. I somehow felt diminished as a person when I used to hear those words, it was as though I could not be loved without being hurt, or that I wouldn’t know how to love others unless I had felt pain. I didn’t want to give my abusers any sort of validation, so that phrase really troubled me.
After I had gone through a lot of inner work, I realized that wasn’t what was meant when the first person coined the phrase. It was simply an observation about our physical world. As an artist, the contrasts between light and dark, warm and cool, rough texture and smooth, hard and soft, were all different aspects of contrast, and without them an image is flat, shows no vibrancy or is difficult to perceive.
We are all affected by the physical world around us, and we’re all free to make our own choices how to think and behave.
I realize now that I had used my pain, even my anger, to make healthier choices for myself. The days I feel uncomfortable, I now know I need to look inward to see what’s going on and to find my solution.
Well said Tamara, and exactly to the point. In our early days we cannot see these contrasts because we don’t understand them. We only see that pain. But as you have so beautifully said, that pain is a contrast to what we want and it ever shows us who we think we are inside. Until one day we realize we have been painting with a very flat style and can do better, want to be better. And that love inside us dares us to step beyond what we thought we knew and dare to bring those other styles into play.
That contrasting being that we are has so many emotions that they all allow us to see ‘us’, one of the most beautiful things that I saw in that comment from Barbara. Each and every moment is asking us to feel those contrasts within us, anger, happiness, sadness and so many others. Each and every one guiding us as we see their interactions one against another and ‘feel’ our way forward.
So many circumstances, one moment to the next, ever guiding us. Even in such a simple thing when we ‘see’ that we do in fact change our style with different people…consciously or unconsciously…so that we will eventually see those contrasts.
A great comment dear lady, your masterpiece is flowing exactly as it should. They have looked deeply into some of those masterpieces and below the surface are many other paintings. The early works, always bettered, always becoming something else, always adding more beauty as each contrast is found. Love is the same, it becomes us in that acceptance of who we are 😀❤️🙏🏽
I love this Mark, beautifully said! Indeed, we keep adding layers to our beings until we’re that masterpiece of who we are right now!
And finally appreciated because of what it has taken to find, build, create and become. Thank you kind lady, you will be that masterpiece as only that love can build 😀❤️🙏🏽
Lovely 💙🙏
Thank you Ananda, an opening to see in another way. To see just how wondrous this world and its journey can really be 😀❤️🙏🏽
I’ve got tears in my eyes, Mark, which turn out to be a real crying session. For your blinders have come off even more and now you see, really see, that regardless the storm, and how bad it can get at times, there is always always always beauty to focus on. Huge lump in my throat and still tears. It brings me such great JOY to see how you majorly jumped forward in your journey. Without the shadow, beauty would not be seen, especially in its potential to glow glow glow.
I have a new post up with comments closed that continues this vein of thought of contrasts plus I bring up a question that probably most do not ask. I do love you, dear friend. xoxoxo
Ah Amy, I thank you will all my heart. Tears from such a beautiful picture of understanding are what love is. And to ‘see’ something so profound leaves me the same. It is another view in life, like always attracting whatever is needed so that we can understand who and what we are becoming, those contrasts in ‘everything’, moment to moment are a powerful guide. Yet the same thing will never stay static, each day something different, each person we meet changing from the last, but always giving of those changes. Always showing us…us. A more powerful guide to love we will not find. And I do love you also beautiful lady, may your pictures ever contrast that beauty that is you xoxo 😀❤️🙏🏽
This journey is one I never saw coming. With your words again the tears are smarting my eyes for to receive confirmation that my mission is succeeding and how you are growing, is more than I can ever be grateful for. So many people along the way resist, desist, fight, bully, mock ….. and so much more as we who are awake continue in our walk. I’ve had so much encouragement lately I sit here stunned to tell you the truth. I am so happy for you, Mark. So happy! And from here it only broadens, widens, deepens as you discover who you really are. What an amazing GIFT all of us have been given for without the horrors and the stress (the contrast) we would not have faced our fears to free ourselves in order to find our truth and to obtain the glorious ability to SEE beauty. OH for the JOY! I am beyond words right now ….. just filled with emotion! God bless you for the courage you have chosen to embrace in order to come back HOME …. yours. xo
You are always being ‘you’ dear lady, and giving those contrasts as only you can. That beauty in nature is something that moves us all, and as you have said, when we are ready will speak to us. It isn’t others time yet so cannot appreciate what is there…but…like us all, something will click (excuse the photographic pun 🤣), and bring it into focus as you so magically did for me kind lady. Thank you very much Amy, the views can now go on forever 😀❤️🙏🏽
Mark …. my goodness my chest is so puffed out I fear my buttons will pop. LOL In all seriousness however, to walk a path for years and not see results, to keep going even when I don’t know how to put another foot in front of the other, to keep the faith in all I do, and now to see beauty bloom around me due to my efforts and God’s of course, gives me so much va-voom that I think I can fly right now. This part of your journey has just opened up. Wait, dear friend, for what is to come you never will see coming. There are days I feel so much love and bliss, I honestly couldn’t tell you where I was except for NOW. Others’ journeys are not our responsibility. What is our responsibility is we are true to ourselves every moment of every day. More views are coming from this same park than one more park to go after this one. I am having so much fun and my heart is so lit up right now. Our New Earth truly is birthing within and then, New Earth will birth (is right now!) without. Welcome to New Earth, Mark. SMILE!! xo
I am indeed smiling dear lady, when we touch something so beautiful that inner glow just opens us truly. And I have no doubt that is the feeling as you wander in the bliss of all those contrasts in the fields and forests around you dear lady. Enjoy that view 😀❤️🙏🏽
Your words are so powerful, Mark. When we yield, and bend, and allow the changes to come, we begin to understand what Flow is and when we do, that Flow takes us to places never before imagined. Thank you for sharing of yourself …. keep on shining go brightly!! xoxo
And thank you too Amy, enjoy that flow that love is. Wherever we go, love is there too. Especially in the lens of love xox 😀❤️🙏🏽
Beautifully said my friend. Autumn has a way of showing us the contrasts within ourselves. Mother Nature reminds us that all things, dark or light are a part of this wondrous universe 💕🕊️💕
Thank you Linda, and she sure did. I was so stunned by seeing something so powerful by something so natural. I see it in so many other ways but to see such contrasts in who we are, highlighted so differently by all around us, regardless whether accepted or not. Life just is, as are we, and its love will always hold us in its light so that we can see. Great share dear lady, thank you 😀❤️🙏🏽
The contrast of the world shows us every day highlights the fact that we don’t all have to be the same. Being different is a gift and we are all different.
Indeed we are kind lady, and each one an original masterpiece because of those very contrasts 😀❤️🙏🏽
Nature has many lessons to teach us. 🍁🌷🏞 If we are open to see and hear, there are many gifts to receive. Thanks for sharing, Mark.
That she most certainly does Lisa. I think maybe we wear our sunglasses a bit too much sometimes and it shadows so much. Thank you also for your comment, gratefully received…with no sunglasses on 😀❤️🙏🏽