I see my dad in the distance; in the shadows.  He’s a shadow amongst a darker background, a darker backdrop of a dark shadow of all existence.  He’s only a silhouette with no real depth or character.

I believe that when it comes to questions we might have about our existence, could it be that we do have access to everything; everything we want to know?  

I feel that what we’d like to know is there but it’s just not available to us because we, our thoughts, ourselves are locked away, inside.  Inside the dark.  Anything we want to know… that WE – I – want to know… that I WANT to know, is accessible to me but until I clear the darkness, until I allow THE to become the awareness and then for it to become the IS, it will be, if not a shadow, then a STILL NOT… a still not there.  But what is still not there is almost NOT IN EXISTENCE because we are UNAWARE.

It seems that there are parts of my me, parts of my emotions, parts of my ME, integral parts of who I am, at least who I think I am to me and who I think I am to others, that are locked away.  They’re parts of me that I would like to be better, that I would like to be more real, more present, more ALIVE, parts that make me who I am.  But also, they are parts that make me who I AM NOT.

I started thinking about Justin, wondering where he is… where his heart is… where his thoughts are… where his SOUL is.  SOUL is the part of us that is the glue, the fibre, the sinew that suspends our being within the web if existence.  It is part of what is in our “mind”, as some might choose to describe it.  But as I see it, our “mind” is a microcosm of not only our own awareness of our own existence but is also a gathering of consciousness along and amidst the EVERYTHING of ALL consciousnesses.  Can it be that the EVERYTING of ALL is accessible but not available?

There is sunshine.  But the sunshine is the ME, the me here now.  And the sunshine is too bright—or it can be.  It hides the shadows and what is in the shadows is what we, some of us… ALL of us? want access to.

Some of us—both some one’s of all of us and some parts of each one of us as individuals—seem to have taken up residency in or near the edges of the shadows of both the now and of the past, occupying our existence without sunshine.

For those of us who are without sunshine, it is incumbent upon us to FIND.  Unlike what I believe is commonly understood to be shadows of material objects, the shadows of our inner existence can only be pushed back by way of inner sunshine.

It seems to me now that the inner shadows must—MUST--coexist with the inner sunshine.  That inner shadows hold a vast, vast wealth of knowledge.  When sunshine arrives, it seems that we can now see what was hidden in the shadows but I offer that the shadows also hold very important knowledge that must be held equal to and concurrent with what is our awareness of the inner sunshine.

It is not GOOD versus EVIL or even “good AND evil” that makes up “life”.  It is “the this and the that”.  It is not that all things are equal.  Each one of us has our very own, unique assessment of what can be labeled “good” and what might be labeled “evil”.  An evil thought or act to one might literally be salvation for the good of another.  Does any living thing that what we, as humans, consume feel that we have done it a misdeed?  The term “sentient beings” seems to me to possibly be presumptuous and not at all accurate.  Is it that only animals are “sentient beings” or might all cellular life be sentient, at least to some degree?

Given this idea of sentience and getting back to the inner shadows, how is it that we seem to be unable to easily navigate the “all” of the knowledge that is available to us in both the shadows and the sunshine?  I suppose that with time, determination and constant, or at least frequent, introspection, we will understand.  I suppose that it’s all part of traveling along the path of life.