Abhaya

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audreywhybrow:

When we find ourselves becoming detached from the world, we find it hard to cope and thus we try to understand what has caused the change. Many of us find the emotional manifestations of detachment difficult to interpret, and as a result become worn down and disconcerted. It is in these times that we tend to seek an unfettered place, a comforting area of seclusion where we can be safe: a sanctuary. A sanctuary is a landscape of the mind; it provides refuge from external reality when we are trying to mitigate the chaos in our lives. Australian singer/songwriter Delta Goodrem defines her sanctuary as “a secret place where no-one else could go” that gives her “somewhere to love [and] somewhere to breathe”. She “never thought [she’d] ever find a place so beautiful”.
The power of our imagination takes us to places that are physically impossible to reach; it allows us to expand our mind and forget the workaday world for a time. When we go to our personal sanctuary, we can discover strength to endure the pain, hope to transcend the fear that maybe life will not turn out to be as we desired it, and knowledge that things will come to pass that are not within our means to control. Sometimes when we come to these sorts of realisations, it is even harder to cope with reality, and we feel overwhelmed! Newton Faulkner, a British songwriter, escapes to his sanctuary “when [he’s] alone”. It is a place where his imagination gives him the power to “do anything I want, be anyone I wanna be”. And if such internal expeditions can no longer soothe the pitfalls of life, he sings, he “won’t come back at all”. So a sanctuary is vital; it helps us survive the unpredictable course of life and gives us an internal anchor. For some people, a sanctuary is external. We may have particular physical places that give us comfort and invoke memories of the better times in our life. Sometimes we go back to these places to ponder how our life has come to its present stage, or why certain relationships with those around us ‘fell through the cracks’. Juxtaposing happier memories with our current emotions can make us feel bittersweet, but may also be a reminder that happiness will come again, and although we are presently aggrieved, it will not endure. Many people use a church as a sanctuary. The quiet prayers that fill the room calm us, the belief that all those around are in the same boat, putting their faith in God’s hands to turn their lives around. Some of us do not believe in God as such, yet still seek refuge in this sanctuary because there is a sense of comfort and acceptance. The people who are caught up in their religion and love for God can shift our thinking patterns, changing energy through curiosity. The narrator of director Tim Burton’s film, “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, defines a sanctuary as “a safe place in a troubling world -like an oasis in a vast desert or an island in a stormy sea”. The three Beaudelaire orphans of the film created an imaginary sanctuary to escape from the evil Count Olaf, and they did achieve moments of security while “they knew in their hearts that the real world lay just outside”. We go to these places when we feel too confronted by the reality of people who elicit negative emotions, but we must remember to learn from life and know there are many things we do have the power to control. We habitually invest time ruminating on the way we want our lives to be and how we would prefer things to turn out. It is when we realise that these ruminations are often no more than a figment of our imagination that we can need refuge more than ever. However, we must not detach ourselves from reality to the point where we no longer know what it is, and the line between our internal and physical landscape has become irrevocably blurred.

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justlikeastare:

Meryl Streep by Annie Leibovitz for Rolling Stone

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