“The loveliest things in life are but shadows. They come and go and change and fade away.”
Charles Dickens
To anyone who has ever been there, Paris evokes images of golden pools of light in the evening framing magnificent monuments like Sacré Coeur, the Eiffel Tower and the Panthéon or photographic snapshots of lovers bathed in the glow of old fashioned street lamps along the Seine. At night Paris has a uniquely welcoming atmosphere of nostalgia, by lighting the present to illuminate the past.
During the day dappled sunlight dances through millions of Plane tree leaves drawing one through the myriad of endlessly secretive corners tucked along cobblestone streets. Paris is, after all, the city of light. The Age of Enlightenment, the Sun King, metaphors abound. As Goethe said, ” There is much light where shadows are deep.”
Paris is also a city of incredible shadows and since the shadow is an integral part of all belief systems, from ancient texts and mythology to Jungian psychology, I decided to walk through the city looking at the shadow side of life. Was there a shadow side to my personality that I was choosing not to see? Was I bold enough to look at what was hidden? Can the light side and the dark side be brought into balance?
I walked for 9 hours, a day long walking meditation. I recalled an old Sufi parable about the person who looks for the key under the lamppost because that’s where the light is, but that’s not where the key was dropped which was in the darkness.
I met my shadow in the light of day. I saw myself with greater clarity and compassion and could see others in this light as well. We were born from darkness into light, from emptiness to form. This duality is part of the natural world.
