Max Josephson, an advocate for leveraging technology for mindfulness and Chief Technology Officer of Double Blind, talks about his experiences with color and ensconcing himself in color as a means to access a meditative state.  By relying on the phenomena of colors triggering our emotions, we can begin to engage in emotional regulation, a key side effect of meditation.  He has been dubbed the Mark Rothko of meditation.

Max shared that his mother is an artist.  While he was growing up, she would teach art in his classes.  Max commented how his mother always had an association of color in a relationship to more abstract awareness and even meditation.  He has talked about how this has had a profound impact on him and how he thinks of color.  

Max also has described a very specific, vivid and saturated dream he had which was his first spiritual experience of color.  It was at that moment that he really began to associate and correlate colors with his different emotional states.  He describes how,  “I just saw them all at once and I think when you’re in a dream state, a lot of your body is shut down. So you’re able to really go into your mind…and your mind is activated a little bit, kind of an increased level.”

Max goes on to discuss how the fact that colors trigger emotions in us can be used as a lens on a subtle level for understanding our own emotions in a way that’s not tied to a symbolic or thought based reasoning but…is more experiential.  He expands, “I’m experiencing these emotions that are coming up. They don’t necessarily relate to the situation that I’m in or that I don’t need to make any choice or make any action. But it is kind of  a reflection of our inner emotions and kind of who we are as a being is an emotional animal and an animal that has feeling.“

Max went on to describe how this experience is probably the peak experience of his whole life.  It was so impactful for him to “see all of these colors related to my emotions, and I was able to feel all of my emotions, from good emotions to kind of bad or difficult emotions all at once.”  He goes on to relate how he felt like he was activating himself in a much more interconnected way, because “I’m experiencing all of these emotions that normally are related at one moment in my life or another moment or life by experiencing them all.”  

It is so fascinating to think of Max’s experience in light of the color theory work of Mark Rothko and his paintings.  Certainly experiencing his works greats an emotional impact on us.

For a full transcript visit https://achievepodcast.com.