Essay on "Beyond the Darkness of the Clouds Lies"

Essay 7 pages (1775 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Beyond the darkness of the clouds lies the brightness of the sunlight.

I can't even remember the first time he said it, but I can remember about two hundred times that he did. It was one of those expressions you hear, but you don't think about, like pennywisepoundfoolish, as if it were one word.

My dad is an idealist, a romanticist, and a platitude purveyor. He is a less-nerdy Ned Flanders on the Simpsons, always smiling and only seeing the best in people. He is a yin yang theorist who cannot look at anger without seeing joy. He cannot see destitution without seeing redemption.

I either inherited my dad's confident nature, sunny disposition, and jocular wit, or he programmed it into me. As far back as I can remember, I was a half-full thinking person. The glass was never half-empty for me. Make lemons into lemonade. Every cloud has a silver lining. That was me - a very happy, tenacious kid. I persevered because I did not know any better. It just never occurred to me that the outcome could be unfavorable or unproductive. In retrospect, I have come to realize that my easy and self-assured nature is a fortuitous gift.

Beyond the darkness of the clouds lies the brightness of the sunlight. is a precise narrative of my dad's attitude. He believed that everything in our environment was for our benefit. He believed that if you intend to accomplish great things, you will encounter great obstacles.

However, I believe that this maxim is significant in that it articulates the essence of the subconscious. The images of shadow and light, sun and clouds, dark and bright abound in literature. Generally, they are used to compare good and evil.

For example, in Holland, Sinterklaas, the predecessor of Santa Claus, was an austere bishop who wore a red bishop's costume and rode on a white horse. Many white images appear with this icon of goodness and rewards. On December 6, Sinterklaas arrives on a ship. He keeps the names of the children and how they have behaved during the year in a big book. Children who have been well behaved in the past year get presents.

However, the children who were bad are taken away by Sinterklaas's assistant, Zwarte Pieten or Black Pete. The worst children are put in Zwarte Piet's bag, the bag that carried sweets to the good children, and they are carried off to Spain. This bad icon, Black Pete takes the children to a place where more black people live. This was a dreadful consequence in the minds of the Dutch.

For centuries, this theme has been programmed into the immature psyches of Dutch children. The good of white and the evil of black are a universal symbols for children in their games and stories. The most obvious example is that good guys wear white and bad guys wear black. Angels are always dressed in white. Witches wear black. Brides wear white. Mourners wear black. Black magic is destructive and white magic is productive. That which appears in light conveys joy and happiness while that which appears in darkness promotes fear. Most human beings are programmed from earliest childhood with unconscious processes that produce and interpret a myriad of metaphors, symbols, and impressions.

Diving more deeply into the psyche, the concepts of black and white, bright and dark, have more complex meanings. Black is often a psychological image to express the unconscious, unknown, hidden, or avoided parts of self or depression, fear and despair.

Antithetically, white indicates awareness and clarity of mind. The psychological implication of black and white together is the merging of conscious and unconscious material to form a greater self.

We can also look at these colors in the context of cultural reality. White is the brightest color, while black hold the most contrast to it. White is the absence of color and black is the absence of light.. Black and white are opposite colors that share the attribute of neutrality. Black and white, light and dark, are each distinct concepts and summon distinct images and emotions. When appearing together, black and white might be a symbol of duality. They are complementing contrasts.

Contrast has no good or bad judgement attached to it. It just is. However, complement does have a positive connotation.

Things and concepts that complement each other complete each other. Complement is best defined by the yin-yang symbol. Black and white halves that create a whole by the embracing contrast or opposite concepts. Yin-yang is a complete circle inclusive of everything black and white, good and bad, hot and cold, wet and dry.

Darkness of the clouds has more complex imagery. Dark clouds are either hiding something or predicting something. It may be something bright and joyful or fearful and deadly. For example, in my dad's favorite saying, dark clouds are obscuring the sun, the brightest light in our environment.

However, the darkness of the clouds usually symbolizes forewarning. Dark clouds may foretell the destruction and havoc of an upcoming storm. They are omens of impeded progress or business and personal failure. Earlier this year, Pope John Paul II called a pilgrimage of peace "to fend off the dark clouds of terrorism. Often, news headlines use the image of dark clouds to communicate misfortune.

Dark clouds over Asia - Indian stock brokers had a rough week as the market reeled from insider trading allegations

Dark Clouds on the Euro Horizon

Dark Clouds of Nuclear War Threat Fading, but Not Gone.

Dark clouds usually slow you down, trip you up, or foretell bad news.

Inversely, brightness of the sun denotes great joy and success. The sun is a symbol of the earth's survival. Bright sunlight is necessary for photosynthesis, which puts oxygen in our atmosphere. Bright sunlight is a source of vitamin D, which is necessary for human survival. Bright sunlight illuminates everything that is hiding in the darkness.

The Brothers Grimm wrote a fairy tale entitled Bright Sun Brings it to Light, a story of an apprentice who killed a traveler in order to rob him. The final words of the victim were "The bright sun will bring it to light' and thereupon he died."

Many years later, the apprentice confessed the murder to his wife because the bright sun shined in on a plate and created circles of light on the wall. He believed this to be a sign and with uncertainty, told his wife about that day. Although she promised to keep his secret, she told one person, who told another person. Ultimately, the entire village knew and the apprentice was arrested for his crime. Just as the victim predicted, the story ends with the apprentice paying for the murder with his life. The bright sun, indeed, brought justice and truth.

Beyond the darkness of the clouds lies the brightness of the sunlight.is also a statement about confidence and optimism. Taking the quotation literally, even if the dark clouds are hiding the bright sunlight, it is still there. Some may look up at the sky and see only darkness. but, others see the clouds with the knowledge that the sun is shining and constantly giving the earth and its inhabitants sunlight, whether the inhabitants are able to see it or not.

I remember a Buddhist parable about a man who was traveling and offered shelter for the night by a stranger. The man slept the night and the following morning, the stranger told his guest that during the night, the guest was the beneficiary of a gift that was to protect him from poverty for the remainder of his life. The traveler thought little about what the stranger had said, and forgot about the secret gift. He went on his way thinking that the stranger was crazy.

Ultimately, the traveler fell into poverty and became a beggar. He remembered the night at the stranger's house and their conversation. That night, he dreamed that there was a jewel sewn in his coat. When he awakened the next morning, he examined his coat and discovered a priceless jewel that had been sewn into the lining of his coat. He realized that no one but the stranger could have given him the jewel. For all of these years, the traveler had everything he needed to avert poverty, but it was hidden, as the dark clouds might hide the bright sunlight.

The way that we perceive everything around us is our reality. If we are aware that the sun is behind the clouds, the clouds cannot harm us. if, however, we are convinced that there is no sun, the clouds can destroy us.

This concept has implications in all areas of life. Physicians are starting to accept the capacity of human beings to eliminate disease by determination and visualization. Human beings react to the stimulus that we program in our individual brains. When a person gives in to a disease, the autoimmune system does not respond and sometimes completely shuts down. Similarly, we have… READ MORE

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