As we head into the final two months of indigo’s divine chaos, I thought I would share my own personal experiences of the past months with you. Trust me even if you know about the “indigo-effect” it certainly doesn’t make you immune to its influences. As many of you have been telling me, this year has been one bumpy ride after another.
Indigo arrives at your door, usually unexpected and uninvited and then proceeds to rattle the bones of your perceived life to its core. The soothing balm in some of this has been to remind myself of Rumi’s “The Guest House” to try to make sense of it all.
“Not a chance” whispers indigo.
"This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness.
Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all.
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honourably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond"
The best way to guide you through and hopefully give you a deeper understanding of this past year is to tell you a story. Afterall one of the gifts of indigo is its ability to be a keen and wise storyteller. However, before you settle in to hear a nice story, indigo’s keenness is about reminding you of your own one big story, the one story you alone can tell because it is the one story that only you can live. Imagine it as a fated history, with destiny as a travelling companion.
Let’s begin…
During my time at senior school (high school) a lot of my teachers would comment on my active imagination, a minority encouraging but a majority suggesting otherwise. On reflection my overactive imagination helped alleviate the boredom I sometimes felt. I knew but didn’t know how I knew that I really wouldn’t be needing sines, cosines or square roots for my future life. I could also never quite fathom out why you would do cross country running in the middle of December in shorts when you could be stepping into other times in history in the warmth of the school library.
Imagination itself is a kind of storytelling, we either have an inner auditory narrative which in turn creates images or we see images which then creates the narrative. We are by nature storytelling beings. Nothing captures us more than a good tale.
I often wonder what story is running in the drivers’ imagination as they run the traffic lights or cut you up at a junction. What about the person, which may also be us at times, who walks through the crowds in a world of their own, what story is being told there?
I’ve come to realise over the years that the reason I love doing what I do is because I’m listening to stories and supporting people to find and tell a new story using the language of colour. As someone is telling me their story I’m entering into that imaginary space and viewing their story as an active observer. When helping someone find and reconnect with their one story I’m also engaging and encouraging the person to imagine how things might be and could be with new possibilities.
However, it is often said that your inherent gifts sit very close to the inherent wounds we bring with us, the samskaras or wounds to the Soul. Likewise, it is often said that the overall aim of having a unique story is that the gift helps the wound and the wound activates the gift. It is here that indigo appears to come into its own. Having an ever-present active imagination is wonderful but not so much when you have, what I like to call, “A yellow storm” which is where the same story or a specific part of the same story gets stuck and plays and replays again and again without pause. It’s exhausting and just not good for your mental health, certainly not for mine anyway.
Again, Rumi expresses it so well;
“I said: What about my eyes?
He said: Keep them on the road
I said: What about my passion?
He said: Keep it burning
I said: What about my heart?
He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?
I said: Pain and sorrow
He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you”
A good therapist friend of mine recommends that we all ought to have a self-care box or self-care shelf. This is filled with all the things that after doing, listening to, reading or watching, help you feel good about yourself and makes life seem not so bad after all. I believe we all need a lot more of that at the moment.
At the beginning of the year or even a few months ago I never would have imagined that along with my favourite DVDs, books and old diaries, mine would include antivirals for shingles and medication to help me sleep. Even these are about self-care.
However, from the place of the “Wise Observer” I look on knowingly and say to myself “How perfectly indigo these symptoms are.” You might be surprised, or possibly not by now, to hear that when our sleep is disrupted, and our nerves are a little bit frazzled, indigo is both the cause and the healing.
On all levels of being indigo is the awakener of all that is dormant. On a deeper more Soulful level indigo is aligned to a most perfect universal timing. This right timing can be somewhat annoying and frustrating to the ego-self, which likes its comfort zones and known territories. This universal timing is connected to the story you are here to live and become. Think of indigo as ‘The Page Turner’ in the book of your life.
I like to think that in the midst of the chaos, this deeper story, my reason for being if you like, is stirring and preparing and shaping me for my next life chapter. What it is I am not sure, what I do realise is that in this time of pause and self-care there comes a surrender, and only in the surrendering can I feel and hear the movements of my Soul.
In today’s fast paced world where winning at all odds seems to be the name of the game, the idea of surrendering is perceived more a sign of weakness and not being up to the challenge. I believe when we surrender, we surrender to a deeper sense of self, we let go of the ego’s need to be in control and the need to be proved right or wrong. If we dare to allow space for the not knowing and embrace this indigo void in its entirety you can almost reach out into the darkness and touch the most profound sense of connectivity.
It is here in this place of surrender and connectivity where worlds collide and normal no longer makes sense that it slowly dawns upon you that this divine indigo chaos is pulling you into something much bigger, the Endgame.
Think of the Endgame much like the plotline of a unique and personal narrative, there are often lots of little stories happening along the way which weave in and out to let the overall story play out. The bigger picture if you like. We each have our own storyline which in turn plays out into a much bigger plotline. All necessary and perfectly timed, the art is knowing when you are either stuck on a page and need to turn to the next or simply realise you are coming to the end of a chapter. And this, like I mentioned earlier, is where indigo comes into its own.
Sometimes we get caught up in other people’s stories which can pull us off course or bring us back to, and remind us of our own. If it sounds confusing, it is and it isn’t, but that’s both the gift and the challenge of the indigo endgame.
Plots, intrigues and dramas are needed in order to reveal, become and live that inherent unique blueprint. When we see a film for example, it is only through the experience of the protagonist does he or she fulfil the overall plotline, the Endgame. Imagine how frustrated or short-changed you would feel if the lead character achieved or fulfilled all they set out to do or be within the first few pages of a novel. That’s why I believe, love them or despise them, soap-operas are so popular, they allow us to give air to the unknown and hidden parts of self.
The other day whilst out driving I watched the most vibrant and vivid rainbow form and arch across the sky after a heavy downpour. It takes a special set of circumstances in nature to create a rainbow, maybe in the same way too, a deeper nature is at work in creating a unique set of events in order to bring to life that which is already written within us.
In the film ‘Evan Almighty’ with Morgan Freeman playing God. There’s a particular scene where Evan’s wife has left with the children, they’ve arrived at a service station, God is the waiter trying to give counsel to Evan’s wife. She doesn’t know he’s God by the way. He asks her; “If a man prays for courage, does God just give him courage or does he give him opportunities to be courageous?”
Maybe we’ve forgotten or got stuck in a rut and need these special set of circumstances in order to wake us up to where we’ve fallen asleep in the hope of helping us remember who we were born to be. We are often told “you can be anything you want to be” but maybe a more poignant question to ask is;
“Am I becoming the person I was born to be, or have I got caught up in someone else’s story?”
That’s the Endgame.
I’ve come to realise that the past thirty-five years of diving deep into the colour mysteries and discovering threads of invisible light that connect and unite us all has actually been about the Endgame all along. Indigo has always been there by my side, it's been one of my best and also one of my toughest of teachers.
As I have learnt, so Colour PsychoDynamics® has evolved and gone through its own alchemical process to become what it was always intended to be, a method of revealing the deeper myth you were born with; it’s that precious blueprint and pattern seeded within your Soul that tells of your place and role in the evolution of consciousness.
It’s precious because as Educator and Historian, Vartan Gregorian said,
“The Universe is not going to see someone like you ever again in the entire history of creation.”
As we collectively come to the last pages of this indigo year, you might take a pause, step back, and ask yourself “What in the midst of this year of chaos and deep transformation has been wanting to break through?”
If your mind takes over, give this same question over to your dream state and imagine it floating off into the dream worlds, taken there by a beautiful indigo balloon. Know that whatever you dream, that is the reply.
And now as indigo prepares to leave having worked its magic having rattled my perceived life to its core. It has in its chaotic form re-awoken me to the parts of my story that have patiently been waiting in the wings for this time to come.
What next?
Well, that as they say, is another story for another time, waiting to be told when we enter 2023, a Violet year, a year of emergence.
"From the point of view of fated history with destiny as a travelling companion, I do have to wonder whether it was just a coincidence, or was there something deeper at play in the fact that the boy with the overactive imagination was born in Norwich, also known as Norwich, the City of Stories”?
Until next time,
Colourfully yours,
Mark