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Friday, September 19, 2008

color

What color are you?
Red? Blue?
What color do you feel?
Orange? Teal?
What are the purposes of color?
What do they mean?
Let the experts tell us.
Gray is the color of neutrality, neither subject nor object, neither inner nor outer, neither tension or relaxation. Gray feels as though it is not colored, not dark, not light a separation between two distinct entities, a demilitarized zone free from stimulus. Gray communicates an element of non-involvement or concealment. Its a color that remains uncommitted and uninvolved.



Blue is the color of calmness, repose and unity, symbolically the color of sky and ocean. Looking at blue relaxes the central nervous system blood pressure, pulse and respiration rate all go down, which allows regenerative systems in the body to work on healing. When folks are ill, the physiologic need for blue actually increases! The physiologic associations with blue are those of tranquility. The psychological associations are of contentment, gratification and being at peace.

Beyond its symbolic associations with nature and growth, green is the color of elastic tension, often associated with the desire for improved conditions: the search for better health, a useful life, social reform. It expresses the will in operation, firmness, constancy and persistence. It is a color that a person who possesses or wishes to possess high levels of self-esteem responds to strongly. Green is associated with many forms and degrees of control, not only in the sense of directed drives, but also as detailed accuracy in checking and verifying facts, as precise and accurate memory, as clarity of presentation, critical analysis and logical consistency all the way up to abstract formalism.


Physiologically, red makes blood pressure, pulse and respirations rates go up its an energy-expending color. Red's associations are with vitality, activity, desire, appetite and craving. Symbolically, red is blood, conquest, masculinity, the flame of the human spirit.
It is the impulse towards active doing, towards sport, struggle, competition, eroticism and enterprising productivity. Red it impact of the will or force of will as distinct from the green elasticity of the will. The person who favors red wants his own activities to bring him intensity of experience and fullness of living.

Where red stimulates, yellow suggests. It can elevate body rates as red does, but its effect is less stable. Yellow is primarily the color of happiness, cheerfulness, expansiveness, lack of inhibition. It is the welcome warmth of the sun and the glow of a spiritual halo. While calming and relaxing, the color does suggest a desire for change, that things are never quite at rest people who favor yellow may be very productive, but that productivity often occurs in fits and starts.


A combination of red and blue, violet attempts to unify the impulsive conquest of red and the gentler surrender of blue, becoming representative of identification. Purples are mystical, suggesting sensitive intimacy, union, enchantment, the blurring of thought, desire and reality. Violet represents a longing for wishes to be fulfilled and a desire to charm others. "Violet can mean identification as an intimate, erotic blending, or it can lead to an intuitive and sensitive understanding." Because it is so strongly associated with the idea of the world as a magical place and the need for wish-fulfillment, a preference for violet can communicate some degree of vulnerability or insecurity, perhaps a need for approval.

Symbolic of roots, hearth, home and family security, brown is a darkened mixture of red and yellow, with reduced qualities of these colors. The impulses of brown are not as volatile as red, not as restless as yellow yet the color has subtler warm, welcoming and sensuous qualities. When brown is favored, it suggests an increased need for physical ease and sensuous contentment, for release from discomfort.


Black represents the absolute boundary beyond which life ceases, and so expresses the idea of nothingness, of extinction. Black is the No as opposed to the Yes of white. White and black are the two extremes, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

We can choose to be black, but the Lord can help us become white. :)

What color are you? Let me know! I am brown. :)

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