Core Pictures
One of the reasons we meditate is to heal ourselves. Sometimes the process is light and easy, but often we are working on something more weighty or difficult. The goal during these times is to clear away enough surface accumulation to get down to the central part of the problem. In the business world, this is called establishing the root cause. In the spiritual world, it is often termed a core picture – the central idea/belief keeping all the other things you are working to clear away anchored in place. Until you clear the core picture, it is hard to completely clear out the symptoms that are causing problems in daily life.
For example the core belief that a person must be in a relationship to survive and/or be happy can lead someone to continually create abusive relationships by glomming on to the first person they encounter. This is because their belief system dictates that a “bad” relationship is better than “no” relationship. Until they clear the core picture, it is hard to “wait for the right person” because they are too afraid to be alone.
Since core pictures are things I am always trying to uncover and remove – both for myself and with people who come to me for readings – I kind of developed the idea that core pictures were always something you wanted to clear.
A few weeks ago, I was doing a reading for someone and came across what was clearly a core picture. It was represented by a symbol and repeated in each chakra. It also showed up in other parts of his energy system. The picture was to “harm none” – to respond with kindness. This was clearly something that he wanted to keep.
This was not the same as those pesky guilt inducing “nice” pictures. The ones that go “A nice boy/girl/person would (or wouldn’t) ______.” It didn’t have anything to do with “nice” or “mean.” There was no judgment attached to it at all. Instead, it was a belief system that guided his actions toward kindness – a large part of which was about keeping his energy within his own space. It was also clear that HE was included in the “harm none” dictate. He would not harm anyone, including himself, and he would not allow another person to harm him. It was very definitely a position of strength and power.
I was somewhat shocked. After the reading, I started to look for and validate the core pictures that I had that I actually want to keep – beyond the simple survival ones like looking both ways before crossing the street. I was delighted to discover several – including that same core impulse toward kindness – within myself.
There is a line in a song by Christine Lavin called Please Don’t Make Me Too Happy that I think of each time my rote expectations are challenged like this:
We’ll love everyone completely
Right wing atheists
Left wing bowlers
She’s just singing along – it’s a very bouncy kind of song. I’d listened to it several times before I realized that it sounded “wrong.” I always assumed that atheists were left wing and bowlers were right wing. I never considered anything different…
Just like I never considered that a core picture might be something I wanted to keep.
