Framed: Life Lessons from a Painting

This painting hangs on the wall opposite my bed, upon which my eyes gaze in the early morning during my prayer and meditation.  It is a black and white painting; an ocean scene, at night with the moon seemingly fighting to be seen, avoiding dark clouds that threaten to break forth in a song of rain.  I bought this painting and another similar one, only it contains a Lighthouse, another symbol with much meaning.

As I gazed upon the painting my inner voice asked, “What do you see?”  My initial response was to say I saw an angry ocean, a pale and woeful moon and the white caps of waves breaking upon an unseen shore.  “Look again, what you see?” said the voice.  Looking, I thought, “It’s a painted scene of an ocean with a moon overhead.  Nothing complicated about that.”  As though being told, “That’s not it,” I continued looking.

The answer that my inner self was looking for was simple and I said, “Okay.  So, I see a painting of an ocean and the moon in a picture frame.”  That, as you will see was the answer my “self” was looking for me to see, and then the lessons unfolded.  Before going on with the revelations I received, let me give you a Scripture to contemplate throughout your read of this message:

Matthew 10:28 (KJV) And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

There were a couple of things that came to mind, and my focus will be on the latter.  However I wanted to share with you these words of food for thought, in case they trigger something in you for your own personal revelation, as the framed picture of the ocean did me.

• beside the large picture of the ocean there is a small framed photograph on each side of the picture.  I saw worlds outside of the big picture upon which my eyes and thoughts had been focused.  Food for Thought: Are there worlds, is their life outside of the big picture we call our earth or even our universe?
• when I closed my eyes after gazing at the picture – which you can see is framed in black and white and the content is also black and white – what I saw with my eyes closed was the exact opposite of what I saw with them open.  Where you see black in this photograph of the picture, is white when I close my eyes and where white is black – mirror opposites of what I call reality.  Food for Thought: Is what we see with our physical eyes the reality, or is it what we see with our physical eyes closed and thus our inner vision the reality?
• it appears that the ocean is trapped inside the frame.  Is the frame an illusion?  Certainly it can be removed, and much like water trapped in a sandbox – remove the frame of the sandbox and the contents will flow freely in every direction.

I believe that the enemy of our souls has lied to us and continues to lie to us; that we have been framed to believe that all that is exists within our peripheral vision and that there is no other life.  The worst part of that framing is that we have come to believe that the body frame which we walk around in encompasses all there is about us – actually, worse than that, we have been fed the lie, and swallowed it hook, line and sinker, that our body is it, and that if we remove the body we will no longer exist.

But look at the lesson of the frame on the picture or the frame enclosing a sandbox.  Remove the frame and you get to see only that which is inside, that which has drawn our attention in the first place.  We weren’t drawn to the frame, or at least I wasn’t, but until I thought about it, heck I didn’t even see that I was looking at a frame.

I will leave these things with you for further introspection about you, the spirit framed by the physical body.  If I no longer identify with my frame, but go inward and find what is there, being held in, will:

• I be free flowing like the ocean waters or sandbox content with their frames removed
• I see and know who I am, inside; the contents that truly matter, not the exterior, and
• I permit my inner me to flow freely, no questions asked?

The enemy of my soul would keep me framed and trapped, thinking that I am the frame and thus not even realizing that I needed to be set free from that which keeps me a prisoner.  The enemy of my soul has me focused solely on my frame – think about it:

• physical fitness industry
• cosmetics and plastic surgery
• clothing
• health food supplements
• things to entertain the physical senses: food, houses, cars…

So much time and effort is spent on the physical and so little on the true essence, the reality of who we all are; we’ve been framed!

My prayer is that I always have “eyes to see” and “ears that hear”; that I no longer remain blind and blindsided by the enemy of my soul.

Ezekiel 12:2 Son of man, thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house, which have eyes to see, and see not; they have ears to hear, and hear not: for they are a rebellious house.