(This is Part 10 of a continuing series. Go back to Part 9.)
4. The Principle of Light
The divine essence that is within us is eternally shining. It does not need to be constructed because it is already there. It does not need to be turned on because it is an eternal light.
Just as the external sun in the sky is always shining, so too is this inner presence. Clouds may obscure the sun, but nevertheless the sun never ceases to shine. So it is with the divine presence within us.
Just as the sun shines on all things—the "just" and the "unjust," "saints" and "sinners"—so our inner light shines on all aspects of ourselves. It doesn't ask what we've done first or who we are or what we've accomplished. Its presence is there regardless.
Just as heavy drapes can block the light from the sun, so inattention can block the light from the divine presence within. But if those drapes are opened, the light streams in immediately, because it was always there, shining.
Just so, when our consciousness opens we perceive the inner light immedediately because it was always there. We have only to become aware of it.
How to do this? The classic way—under such names as
the prayer of silence (Christian mysticism) or shikan-taza (Zen, literally "just sitting")—is to sit down and simply perceive in silence.
This sitting in silence is usually begun with some goal in mind, such as contacting our inner essence or attaining liberation or whatever.
But ultimately we realise that the drapes cannot part that way, because the attempt to attain something is still the ego trying to manipulate things, now on the inner plane.
Then it is that our sitting becomes something else altogether—simply a waiting, with no goal in mind, no attempting to get somewhere, nothing to achieve. Then the veil lifts and the light becomes apparent at a level so deep that our being transforms.
As far as I can tell, only a small proportion of humanity is going to do this. It takes time: It's a gradual process of letting our thoughts settle down, like sitting on the edge of a muddy pond and watching the mud gradually settle. Though it takes time, this is the deepest way.
But what about the rest of us? What if we can't afford that kind of time? What if we're already in a crisis of some kind? What if deep meditation doesn't appeal to us?
Then we might ask the question: Is there a good way to rapidly perceive our inner divinity and lift our consciousness? The remaining articles in this series will address this question.
When we do contact this inner presence, by whatever means, everything lights up. When we look at a tree in the breeze, it seems to shimmer. Not that the tree has become any different, but that we perceive it differently. It seems to glow with divine presence.
Everything then seems to glow with divine presence. The blue sky, the moon, each other's eyes, the ordinary objects of everyday life.
That's when we begin to realise that there is no difference between the inner and the outer—that the divine presence inhabits everything equally and that internal and external are themselves only two faces of one phenomenon.
In the eastern spiritual traditions they tend to describe the ground of being as impersonal energy, impersonal principle. While in the western spiritual traditions God is described as personal presence, Christ-consciousness or the kingdom of heaven within us.
But these two views are actually not separate. When a Zen monk, for instance, realizes the inherent Buddha-nature of all existence he is simultaneously aware of the immanence of that reality in his or her consciousness.
Similarly, for instance, when a Sufi realizes the divine presence within herself, she is also aware that this presence is everywhere, in and through everything, the ground of all being.
Then we see—that the light that goes beyond both light and darkness, beyond both inner and outer, beyond all differences of spiritual path, is all there is.
(This is the end of Part 10. Go to Part 11.)
—jim sloman, 12.24.03 for May 23
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