Then There Is Indigo

There are six colors to the rainbow. Then there is indigo.

As light hits an object, these rainbow colors hit surfaces all at once, being absorbed and reflected back so our eyes can tell our brains what color we are seeing. Although we are able to see thousands of variations of red, yellow, green, purple, orange, and blue, every color reflection has a primary root in these six. Reflection is what reveals the true nature of color.

Especially with indigo, associated with intuitive energy, because what makes it so is that it is not always what it seems to be. In nature, indigo is often hidden before it is seen. When fully seen, it takes up the entire night sky.

In a plant, indigo blue is not sitting there on the surface of the leaf. It has to be crushed, changed, exposed to air, and revealed. In feathers, scales, and wings, the color does not always come from pigment. It comes from a reflection embedded in a structure that only appears when light hits it just right and reflects back to the eye.

Indigo is associated with the third eye chakra, an energy center between our brows that represents intuition, inner vision, and the ability to see beyond the obvious. Truth is already there, but it can only reveal itself when attention and focus align. That is when meditation comes in.

My meditation experience shifted from a source of relaxation to a transformative knowing practice when I used sight and sound to find truth and meaning in my life. Isaac Newton must have gotten the same memo because he chose to divide the visible spectrum of light into seven colors. He added indigo so the ROYGBIV scale would line up with the seven notes of the musical scale, making the relationships feel more harmonious. Makes sense.

When I guided people to transform their homes through sight and color, they could feel the harmony and hear color sing. Think of meditation as a knowing practice, a reflection that can reveal truth.

If truth is like a river, always moving, bringing in facts and ideas to sustain life, meditation is like Crater Lake, known for extraterrestrial shades of blues, including indigo, with no streams flowing in or out. A self‑contained reservoir within each of us, collecting the water of our own experiences. A place where we can dive inward and discover truths that are ours alone.

My meditation practice also went from sight to sound as I naturally gravitated from visual imagery to chanting, using air and throat to create sounds of words that produced vibrations throughout the body, not unlike humming.

Having grown up as a Catholic, doing rosaries, I decided to buy a mala. Much like a rosary, malas are used in Buddhism to repeat mantras, affirmations, or prayers. They can be crafted from seeds, gemstones, and wood, finished with a guru bead instead of a cross, to end each round and turn your intentions, wisdom, and knowing over to God. Something I became fully committed to do in 2021 when I decided to work with color again. I needed all the help I could get.

I was looking forward to holding worry beads in my hand again when I saw a mala wrapped around a statue of Ganesha during a meditation class. I told the teacher I had just bought one, and she told me hers was from Kauai’s Hindu Monastery. Of course, her mala came from a place on a Mother Island that instantly made me feel like one of her own children.

Kauai’s Hindu Monastery has the only Rudraksha grove in the Western world. While the bead itself is brown, fresh fruits of the Rudraksha, blue marble tree, really are a striking deep blue, often described as cobalt or indigo. Of course they are. Indigo hides in the darndest places until it doesn’t.

When we rely on our senses and inner wisdom, we can see beyond the surfaces of walls and everything in between because we know we are part of a greater plan in a world that nurtures us with beauty and harmony. Everything we experience has meaning, but not everything is meant to be unless we make it so.

Your Color Baggage matters. You are light, matter, and energy reflected in the palette of your experiences. All you have to do is unpack, align, and paint your way to beauty and harmony with colors that meet your fundamental needs for belonging and connection.

When I guided people to transform their homes through sight, they heard color sing. What happened next was extraordinary. People put perfection aside and made color choices from a place of belonging and connection. They made new possibilities out of old circumstances. They experienced a satiated sense of abundance, baggage and all. They felt a sense of beauty and self‑worth that money cannot buy and trends cannot offer.

Nothing in their home had to be excused or explained ever again. Their Color Baggage transformation became a light intervention that inspired others to create theirs. You become a refraction.

Your body speaks fluent color. Your baggage, color or otherwise, lives in your senses. We are our senses, and our bodies are wired to respond in all the same ways as part of a bigger plan. When you test colors in your own space, something happens. Your body responds. You feel it. These are your senses at work. Then your intuition kicks in, causing you to make and follow plans by trusting the path ahead.

What are your meaningful color experiences telling you?

I believe we are not on a journey, or a road, but a climb up a pyramid of self‑actualization, the embodiment of knowing. This is the reason we look up at the stars and try to reach them. I believe indigo breaks out of the rainbow to rule the sky at night so we can reach the stars.

Once upon a time, both astrologers and astronomers worked together because they saw the Earth as being an integral part of the universe, and therefore man, Earth, and the universe interconnected as one cosmos. They believed the answers to life on Earth and our destiny were written in the stars. Hundreds of years later, this turned out to be true.

Everything in the universe came from the heart of a star. Stars have cores inside of them that have the power to convert energy into matter. When the energy runs out, stars die, sending off the matter they created into the universe.

This is why everything is made out of stardust, including us, except for one thing: the reason why man from the beginning understood that the answers to life and destiny were written in the stars is not because we are made out of stardust, but because we are a lot like stars. The power of a star lies in its energy to turn matter into meaning.

Our climb for belonging, becoming, birthing, and knowing the world, who we are, and what we want to build, is a treasure trove full of stories, insights, and means to help others on the climb. Coloring is an act of belonging. You are the palette.