Years ago, I lived in a house where I could see a woman wearing a 1940’s style brimmed hat and coat, in the roughly textured tiles of the toilet floor.
Over the six-years that I lived in this house, every time I went to the toilet there she was, unchanged. I would watch her and wonder about her. To me, she seemed sad and burdened by whatever was going on inside her that the rest of the world couldn’t see.
In the image, it appeared to me the woman was waiting for a train, sitting on a tawny coloured, slatted, wooden bench butted up against the dark brown, brick wall of a railway station building.
Over the six years, whenever I saw her, I felt sorry for her. She wasn’t going anywhere. She was in a frozen state of perpetual waiting.
I see and discern things in all sorts of places. They emerge from trees, tiles, shadows on the walls, and in everyday house bricks. Anywhere there are irregular patterns or rough, mottle-colored surfaces that to most people, don’t make any sense. Just random shapes or swirls. But I often see faces, animals, and full-bodied people too.
There is a name for this seemingly strange phenomenon. It’s called Face Pareidolia, and apparently occurs in some people because of the way their brains are wired. But I don’t quite see it that way. It’s a little too mechanical an explanation for me.
Everything we see outside of us, whether it be faces in a tree or simply what we are observing within the interplay of life happening, we project our interior upon it. It is an aspect of one of the Hermetic Laws, The Principle of Correspondence. Namely, As above, so below. As within, so without.
I knew nothing of Hermetic Principles at the time. That didn’t come until years after I’d moved out of the house, and a while later still, the comprehension of what was reflected to me for the longest time in the image on the toilet floor. The woman was a representation of an aspect of me, caught in a state of arrested and fixed patterning, held prisoner to the long distant past.
My unconscious mind was trying to show me something I couldn’t readily see or realise about myself in the sphere of my everyday world. That’s how it works. When the unconscious mind speaks to us, it does so in symbols, metaphor, analogy and reenactment.
There are other ways the unconscious mind attempts to communicate with us, but I won’t expand here. It would be too long an article. Suffice it to say though, that the unconscious mind is resourceful, and very, very clever. Far smarter than the Ego, and much wiser that we give it credit for.
In my view, what makes the unconscious mind so incredible, is that it does not stand alone. It has direct and unbreakable connection with the overarching source, and power, that is ‘Life.’ You may call it God, The Universe, Jesus, Budda Nature, or any other title that fits the magnitude of the bill.
It is a prudent person who asks him/herself whenever they are quizzically appraising whatever it is they are viewing,
“What is it I am being shown here?”
“What is being reflected for me to understand?’
“How does this relate to me?”
The saying, ‘The eyes are the window to Soul,’ is very fitting in this context. It’s not just talking about other people having the opportunity to see something deep inside of us, it’s also, and most magically, that the Soul gets to look through us out into the world.
The nature of what is at the deepest level of who we are, that which resides at the bottom our indwelling well, is itself a portal that will use any and everything to speak with us, lead us, show, remind and prompt us forward and into our growth and healing.
How do you intentionally work with it?
Become a ready student of observation. Slow the pace of life, be playful, and attend to whatever is in front of you in every moment. Remain curious and take nothing for granted.
Everything means something.
Photo by Jill Battaglia. Fine Art America
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