The Allegory Of The Cave

 

To awaken is to realize Who You Are. But to say Who You Are is to be in the dark again. Why is this? Using words to declare your Whoness is to objectify the formless. Who You really Are is not a thing to be seen, a body to be touched, a shape to see or a place where it can be sensed. You cannot find it that way.

 

"On your journey, you will come to a cave. You’ll wonder why you’ve entered. 'I Am the only one; or Am I?'

To answer this burning question, you will find yourself imagining that you are standing on a mountain. You will experience a wind so strong that it will break the mountain into pieces, but God won’t be in the wind.

After the wind, you will experience an earthquake; but God won’t be in the earthquake.

After the earthquake, there will be a fire; but God won’t be in the fire.

After the fire, there will be a whisper, so faint that it could only be from within you.

This is when you awaken and stand at the entrance of the cave.” ~ I Kings 19: 11-14

 

In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, he imagines a cave where people have been imprisoned since childhood (but not their entire life). The people are chained in a way which only allows them to look at the wall of the cave and the shadows thereon. Behind the prisoners, there is a fire. Between the fire and the prisoners, puppets are used to create all the shadows the prisoners perceive to be real. But the marionettist is always hidden, so His shadow is never seen on the wall. He makes sounds and the sounds echo off the wall and seem to come from the shadows.

In this allegory, the shadows are reality for the prisoners because they’ve never witnessed anything else. The prisoners never realize that the shadows are inspired by what they cannot see. Furthermore, if a prisoner were to turn around to see the light, then the light would be all he or she could see. When this happens, Plato says that most people turn back to see the shadows because they are easier to perceive than the bright light. But occasionally, someone steps out of the cave, just as Elijah did in his vision. And if one’s eyes become accustomed to the bright light of the fire, and then the brighter light of the sun, he or she will be awakened to a truer reality.

When the hero finds that life outside the cave is better than life inside the cave, he or she will always want to go back into the cave to free the other prisoners. But upon reentering the cave, one finds oneself blind again. The great light of awakening blinds us when we go back to consider the shadows. The prisoners see this blindness and refuse to venture out of the cave; even more resolutely. Whenever a great, loving, wise prophet comes into the dark cave an attempts to rescue the prisoners, the prisoners will always kill that prophet.

Therefore, concludes Plato, anyone who has departed from the cave and witnessed the bright light, must return to the cave and participate with the captives as if he or she had never witnessed the wonderful escape.

So the truth must always be told in parables and allegories and the meanings must always be hidden.

When any part of our journey doesn’t seem to be working, we sometimes say that we need to go back to the drawing board. This is our storyboard. This is where we create the next scene and we plan the next series of shadow-challenges. When we turn to face the light, it always takes a moment to readjust to the dimmer reality we cast upon our cave wall; but when we realize how much authority we have over our story, we will always create a better story.

Go ahead. Make the shapes, project the sounds, hide yourself as creator and pretend you are an observer only. But do this in a way that will bring pleasure to The Observer, whose cave this is.