Candle or Mirror?

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."
~ Edith Wharton

This amazing photo and quotation by Edith Wharton was in today's weekly "Heart Quote" that I received from Byron Stock, a friend and colleague of mine. Reading about her on Wikipedia, I was amazed at all Edith Wharton accomplished in her life. She was born in 1862, and began writing as an adolescent, but apparently stopped writing in her late teens. After she was married, she began writing poetry and short stories. Her "nervous ailments" kept her from doing serious writing. After her health improved she began writing novels. I am curious what she had in mind when she wrote about being a candle or a mirror.

Although I resonate more with our capacities as multifaceted rather than either or, asking yourself this question about whether you are more likely to spread the light by "being" the light or by "reflecting" the light provides good self awareness of your usual emotional parking place. I guess we could also ask ourselves if we ever turn the light out or cover up the light, but that might be a future blog post.

Our emotional moods can be contagious, that is for sure. This is due to our mirror neurons—neurons that fire both when you do something and also when you see that same action being down by another. So that is why we can spread the light both by being the candle or by being the mirror that reflects it...

In Traditional Chinese Medicine, our emotions are recognized as being connected to specific meridians. Each is also observed to have ties to a specific element, organ (and sense organ), developmental stage, direction, fluid, tissue, climate, taste, color, season, and sound. If you are interested, you can find some pretty comprehensive information about all this by doing an internet search. I found a nifty chart on one website.

The reason I brought it up is because the sounds that are associated with emotions and meridians have been on my mind. I recall an exercise where you begin with the sound of "shouting" and you continue doing each sound for a couple of minutes before moving through all five, thus balancing your energy system.

The sequence of sounds is: shouting, laughing, singing, crying, and groaning.

I encourage you to give it a try and just see how much better you feel. After all, you have nothing to lose and you just might find this is good medicine! Now I am reminded of the words to a song: It is better to light just one little candle than to stumble in the dark.... If everyone said a prayer that the world would be free, what a beautiful dawn we would see... If everyone lit just one little candle, what a bight world this would be! 

You can hear the song at this link: Light One Candle and you may want to sing along for your "singing" step to balance your energy.