Image Encounter

He traveled far to attend a meeting, a meeting of people who were highly skilled in areas of which he was becoming both aware and extremely passionate. Two days in relatively intimate collaboration with people he did not know – this was new, and a break from well-entrenched past patterns.

The group used various processes for establishing inner connections as part of the creation of a “safe space for dialogue” where one could “open the heart.” In one instance, the group was asked to go into deep concentration and, with the eyes closed, draw an image of how they saw their highest dreams. This was followed by a second image, again made with the eyes closed, that would describe what it would be like to overcome the obstructions to those dreams.

In the first image the man immediately saw himself as the Gandalf or Obi-Wan Kenobi of this group’s skills, mastering the vast energy and potential of the human condition and using it to do good things in the world. In the second image, the man sought to describe what it would be like to throw off the constraints, self-imposed and otherwise, that held him back. There was an immediate nagging doubt that this image was already jaded.

Just a short time later, the man wondered “Did I draw what I thought I was drawing?” Was he really visualizing throwing off bonds so that he could extend himself? Was it possible that the image was telling him that breaking through containment to extend oneself was not the issue, but that the path lay might lie in removing his own barriers to accepting and embracing the world, its people and its conditions? In other words, is his task not one of breaking out, but of letting in? A task of opening his heart?