A little child who is painting often likes to combine the colors together to make new colors. Sometimes this conglomeration of colors ends up a messy brown because so many colors were mixed together. This is a particular type of color mixing seemingly paradoxically called subtractive mixing. With these types of colors (e.g., paints or dyes) the more colors you add together, the darker the result (technically you only need cyan, yellow, and magenta to make black). In this case black is all the colors whereas white is none of the colors.
However, that is not how our eyes perceive visible light. The perception of visible light is based on the principle of additive mixing. With additive mixing, white is a combination of all the colors (the primary additive colors are red, green, and blue) and black is the absence of all colors. Or, in other words, black is the absence of light.
When studying the visual system, one is likely to come across optical illusions. One such such illusion is based on the principle of lateral inhibition, which is when surrounding ganglion retinal cells interfere with the actions of the most active cells (i.e., the cells that are in the fovea of the eye). Look at the image below (it’s called a Hermann grid) to get an idea of what I’m writing about. What do you notice?
Do you see the phantom black dots that appear in the white intersections in your visual periphery? They disappear when you try to look directly at them but return when you focus on a different intersection. The block dots do not exist; they are created by your visual system (one idea is that the surrounding black encroaches on {inhibits} the receptive fields that are responding to the white bars).
Now for the gospel application. When we focus intently on any one thing, it becomes hard to see things around us. This is good when our focus is God but not so good when our focus is not on Heavenly Father. Even more, sometimes if we are focusing on something too intently we start to see things in our spiritual periphery that are not there. These might be the proverbial motes in our neighbors’ eyes that appear when we focus only on ourselves. If we took the time to really look at our neighbors we might see that the motes we thought were there really are not present. Focusing on any one thing too much limits our ability to see “things as they really are.”
The prophet Jacob used those words in one of his sermons:
“Behold, my brethren, he that prophesieth, let him prophesy to the understanding of men; for the Spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not. Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls. But behold, we are not witnesses alone in these things; for God also spake them unto prophets of old. But behold, the Jews were a stiffnecked people; and they despised the words of plainness, and killed the prophets, and sought for things that they could not understand. Wherefore, because of their blindness, which blindness came by looking beyond the mark, they must needs fall; for God hath taken away his plainness from them, and delivered unto them many things which they cannot understand, because they desired it. And because they desired it God hath done it, that they may stumble.” (Jacob 4:13-14; emphasis added).
Looking beyond the mark, looking in the wrong place and with too much focus, results in spiritual blindness. This spiritual blindness leads to spiritual stumbles. What sort of things are we allowing to cloud our vision? Do you stand in the light or sit in the darkness?
As we draw nearer to God, we are filled with His light. This light adds color upon color of blessings and purification. The color of God’s Spirit is intensified through His grace and through our righteousness until we are filled with a perfect brightness. This perfect brightness does not come until we have received the Trinity of Colors – the Holy Ghost, Jesus our Savior, and our Eternal Father in Heaven. Through these Three Colors we can receive a fulness of glory and the white light of exaltation.