Enlightenment Pt 4: Yellow

As the flaming dawn softens through the morning into cheerful sunlight and the brilliance of noon mellows into afternoon gold, the sun blazes through the yellow hues of the spectrum.  Yellow is the color of the third chakra, located at the solar plexus, ruled by the element of fire and the sense of sight.  Where the orange saffron robes of yogis signified renunciation, the yellow saffron robes of Buddhists signify wisdom.  They symbolize a distillation of clarity, a transformation of appetite into intelligence in the crucible of the will.

It is the element of fire that acts on the eyes to provide sight.   Sunlight, firelight, incandescent light, the distant twinkle of stars, the flickering glow of florescent gases, all trigger our eyes to map an image of an external world.  Once able to determine what is surrounding us, combined with perception of distance and depth, we can move the sensation of desire into the realm of action.  A growing infant doesn't begin to reach for objects until he is able to focus his eyes, and, given a number of objects within range, will select those objects that have the greatest visual appeal in terms of line and contrast.  It is by a process of object recognition, selection, and acquisition that infants extend themselves into locomotion.  Desire motivates the creation of strategies to attain its objects, and the more complicated the desire, the more clever one has to be to achieve it.

At the solar plexus is the neural nexus for the body's digestive system.  This is the furnace of the body, where the metabolism of food generates heat and provides the energy to power action.  The digestive organs, through the autonomic nervous system, are wired to react to the stress level of the environment.  In the presence of high stress, the motility of the large intestine decreases, the stomach contracts, and peristalsis in the esophagus increases, which creates that sick stomach sensation.  In the absence of stress, the heart relaxes and the digestive organs rev up.  Through the course of life, we lay down memories of a variety of events with the visceral states they engender.  This mental activity creates what we understand as emotions and gut reactions to situations.  Our thinking patterns can also create stress, because any thought or memory associated with the sensations of stress work on the sympathetic nervous system in the same way that external stimuli do.  When our digestive organs are stressed severely enough, they contract violently and we vomit.  Even after the stomach is fully emptied, we can continue to vomit bile and digestive juices.  As anyone knows who has ever been through that discomfort, those juices are unquestionably yellow.

It is no coincidence that the iconic happy face is also yellow.  The sensation of happiness is relaxed, warm, full, viscerally active, and as comfortable as a cat sleeping in a pool of sunlight.  The morning sun streaming in the window is enough to bring on a smile with its promise of a good day.  Yellow is a bright, cheerful color, full of the benevolence of a life-supporting sun.  Even in its darker hues, its golden gleams ignite a special greed, and a shiny yellow metal wields extraordinary power in human culture.

When emotion and desire combine with memory of successful achievements, intelligence begins to take form.  Humans have a highly developed ability to learn, hypothesize, experiment, associate, strategize, imagine, think and create.  While all that takes place in the brain, not even the most abstract conceptualization occurs without a visceral component.  There is no I to think or be without a body map to sustain it.  

As the colors shift through the spectrum with the increased frequency of lightwaves,  the kundalini moves through the chakras and increasingly rarified elements.  The compact solidity of earth gives way to the fluidity of water which in turn thins to the insubstantial dance of flame.  The experience of each chakra rises too from the base needs of survival to the light of intelligence and the acquisition of knowledge.  While history may consider reason and enlightenment as interchangeable names for the same era, human enlightenment does not culminate with the tricks of the mind, the glitter of matter, or even the comfortable happiness of cheerful warmth.  Never the less, as the afternoon sun gilds the day, and full stomachs rest to digest, it is pleasant to let the mind wander along a yellow brick road through the Oz of its fascinations.

Snow

It starts out of a grey sky as a half seen notion, just winking on the periphery.  A flake, and then another, tiny crystals dusting the dark wool of my coat.  Softly floating, gentle pricks on my exposed cheeks kiss me with cold excitement.  The piling darkness of the sky gives breath to beauty in little bursts, now swirling in white array around me.  I look up as it falls to catch a point of origin in view, but there is only motion, a rush from everywhere and nowhere in particular.   The stars shed their distant coldness which this way falls in miniature perfection on the earth, a blanket of cold light solidified on the ground.  

To me the snow is romance, grace, an ethereal delight given to transform the landscape into brilliant purity.  Its sparkling silence whispers to me in memory, an image of another time, another life.  The inconveniences of iced over windshields, sodden boots, grimy slush, coarse salt rime, unplowed streets and poorly shoveled sidewalks have long since faded into forgotten distance.  What's left are flurries, the small white clumps softly dancing in the air, the light and lightness, the melting wet on face and tongue, the embracing whiteness, a slip and glide under my skis, a frigid blessedness drifting across the moon.  Living in a snowless land is a choice that leaves me no regrets, just reminiscence, and a mysterious thrill at the chill frill distilled in the clarity of a snowy night.