“The Laughing Sage” W. Zeitler [PIANO]
“Oh, My Soul, Bless Your Redeemer”
Improvisation [ORGAN]
In electronics there is the concept of ‘sources’ and ‘sinks’. An electronics ‘source’ provides current to a circuit (for example, a battery), while a ‘sink’ consumes electricity (for example, a light bulb). I think this concept can also be applied to human relationships — some people are ‘sources’ for us — they enrich us and increase our energy/happiness while others are ‘sinks’ — they suck our energy and are a pain to be around.
Our perception of color also has two modes — one involving light sources, and the other light sinks. Each has its own set of three primary colors. For light sources that produce light (like your television screen) the primary colors are red, green and blue. Amazingly, human eyes only have receptors for red, green and blue — our minds fabricate (hallucinate?) all the other colors of the rainbow. Indeed, the red, green and blue phosphors in TVs are tuned to match the receptors in our eyes — over time manufacturers have gotten better at that and consequently the colors on TV screens look better and better. The primary colors for light sources are the ‘additive’ primary colors. A rainbow is a marvelous example of an additive color object in the natural world.
When you look at something that doesn’t produce light — for example, a pink flower, or a picture of a pink flower — what happens is that white light (which contains ALL the colors) bounces off the flower, and the flower absorbs/subtracts all the colors except pink. So you can produce all the colors of the rainbow with the three subtractive primary colors: cyan, yellow and magenta. Thus, color printers produce color with cyan, yellow and magenta, but computer and TV screens produce color with red, green and blue. We need both the subtractive and additive color modes.
It seems to me there are also additive and subtractive aspects of the Spiritual Path. Additive might be reading Scripture more, or praying more. But there is also a subtractive aspect. Maybe getting rid of stuff that doesn’t have any meaning or usefulness for us anymore. (Which would leave you with nothing but things that are useful and meaningful. That sounds nice!) It can also mean unlearning habits that don’t serve us, or unlearning behaviors like anger (especially at things we can do nothing about), or hubris, or sloth.
One could say that virtues are spiritual/emotional sources for you and those around you, and that sin/vices are sinks.
Michelangelo (1498-1564) described his process for producing a sculpture: “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” Subtracting stone to free the beauty within. Plotinus (204-270), a 3rd century Neoplatonic philosopher (and a favorite of St. Augustine), described the process of sculpting oneself similarly:
Go back inside yourself and look: if you do not yet see yourself as beautiful [i.e., as participating in the Idea of Beauty], then do as the sculptor does with a statue he wants to make beautiful; he chisels away one part, and levels off another, makes one spot smooth and another clear, until he shows forth a beautiful face on the statue. Like him, remove what is superfluous, straighten what is crooked, clean up what is dark and make it bright, and never stop sculpting your own statue, until the godlike splendor of virtue shines forth to you….
Obviously Plotinus borrowed the idea for his metaphor from Michelangelo! <wink!>