Shadow Secret Truth

Big Frank Dickinson was struck this morning by three words: secret, truth and shadow. He threw them into the air like juggling balls and as they rose they took different configurations – almost like poetry in their different alignments:

The shadow secret of truth;
Truth’s secret shadow;
The secret shadow of truth;
The secret truth of the shadow.

Much as a painter working his palette with a limited set of colors – working the mind with a limited set of words provokes thoughts:

The shadow secret of truth: every truth has its shadow and in that darkness there lies an opposite truth. As Niels Bohr wrote: “The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” You see this most glaringly in the clichés that we trot out from time to time; e.g. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” – but “Out of sight, out of mind”. So which is it: no need to decide they are both truth. Consistency is indeed the hobgoblin of small minds.

How about the truth of secret shadows? Well some hide things and others reveal. You might not see what stands in the shadow, however at other times a person’s shadow reveals his presence – literally. Similarly psychologically the shadow, the instinctive and irrational side – only a shadow in relation to the rational “light” of the mind – can reveal the truth about oneself – or of other’s.

Well, let’s turn it around another way: the shadow truth of secrets –
We are surrounded by secrets. What we truly know of ourselves, or others and of the world in which we sit is very very little. The secrets – like the unknowable dark matter of the universe comprises the greatest mass – and the shadow of these secrets? Well these are the truly unrecognized powers that be. Robert Frost wrote “We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.” Very profound, but the shadow of that secret is the true knower!

Shadow that secret to the truth of the secret shadow in truth . . . Big Frank has dropped the balls for today. Anyone care to pick them up?