The cloudless horizon was distinctly marked. The oppressive heat was almost tangibly realized. The master Designer of this arid landscape had left no discernible route for escape from the lordly African sun’s face in this bleak desert without a trace.

In a timeless realm we traveled on, with primordial reminders of an age bygone where ancient elephants roamed the flat earth, and desolate distances lost heart, surrendering to the despair of barrenness in a crucible of fiery sand and thorny bushes. In this wilderness which had called us to witness its sorrowful beauty, all living beings long to quench their thirst in burning fury.

At long last, our lean and gentle Kenyan guide stopped the land-rover at a modest roadside shop where we could seek some shade and sip on cool Canada Dry. Inside, I looked for souvenirs while my travel companion paced up and down sandy patches of hot earth scorched yellow by the blazing sun. Upon emerging from the store with wooden statutes of the dark goddess to share with my sisters at home, he surprised me with a black stone! In the palm of his extended large hand, lay a common pebble he had found on the dusty road. "Happy Birthday!" he said from a place of heart, his blue eyes reflecting the glittering African light! Touched by his kind and thoughtful gesture, I accepted my earthy gift with delight.

For me, the black stone was not merely an opaque material object found in dirt, but a transparent stepping stone to the sublime, a key to all-encompassing revelations leading to a gradual uncovering of the Reality hidden behind the veil of the mundane and commonplace. From that day onward, I projected my inner soul image onto my travel partner. Appreciating the symbolic meaning of the black stone, I offered him my heart and soul on that Valentine's day dedicated to lovers.

At another time, another place near the sea, we were strolling along an artist’s colony when my eyes spied a stunning black pearl set as the centerpiece of a golden necklace behind a shop window. Drawn inside to closely admire its unique beauty, I felt mesmerized by the mysterious glow emanating from within the flawless black stone.

When I mustered up enough courage to inquire about its value, the shopkeeper asked me to wait while serving other customers before checking its price. "Two thousand five hundred dollars" she finally said! With a longing last look at the treasure hard to attain, I took my companion’s hand to walk away.

From little known statues of the heavenly black Madonna in Europe to the revered black cornerstone of Kaa’ba, from the common black pebble dug out from dirt in the African Sahara, to the unusual mysterious black pearl from the South seas, the black stone has long captured the human imagination as a precious symbol of the tao, of wholeness. It has served both as the alchemical prima materia (the original element which is later transmuted into gold) and the alchemists’ philosopher stone (a metaphor for the ultimate goal). The stone thus represents the mystic’s goal of Self-realization, and the depth psychologist’s strife for individuation, to achieve the greater personality by holding in balance, the tension of the opposites. Though some may mistake it for "just a stone", it is not to be taken lightly or discarded with contempt. It demands to become known, embraced and integrated into the conscious personality, be it voluntary or involuntary! As Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist once said: "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making darkness conscious."

And so, for me, life without the energic archetypal power contained within the black stone, is meaningless, regardless of its origins. It is not surprising then, that I felt deeply wounded by my partner’s insensitive degradation and devaluation of the black pearl. Naturally, I didn’t dignify his rhetorical question with a response. Indeed, the shocking irony left me speechless! How could the same travel companion from whom I had graciously accepted a common black pebble as a gift of mother earth in Africa, now make such a stinging venomous judgment about a perfectly round glowing flawless Tahitian black pearl? Had it been a virginal white pearl, would his reaction have been any different? A couple of days later he walked away from marital vows in which he had promised "to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health," the "complete being" of his "beloved," "from the darknesses of [her] roots to the happy playfulness of [her] leaves."

I realize it’s not easy, though necessary, to recognize and embrace both the light and the darkness in oneself and the 'Other.' It's much easier to disown one's shadow, split it off, project it onto another, and then condemn it. But I sometimes wonder what he had seen in that very first offering of the little black stone only three birthdays before. Did its symbolic value somehow exceed that of the black pearl? Or was it only special because it came from the earth and not the sea?

 © Ramona Shashaani