by Janice Dolley
When I was a child in our local children’s church we used to sing
“Jesus makes me shine like a pure clear light
Like a little candle shining in the night
In this World of Darkness Jesus makes us shine
You in your small corner and I in mine.”
It never occurred to me then what was meant by shining my light even though growing up in the blitz of World War Two, as I did, it was pretty obvious that there was plenty in the world which was not loving and light filled.
Today, when the darkness is possibly less obvious, we are encouraged to let our light shine more brightly so that all may come together to restore and rejuvenate the damage that we, as humanity, have inflicted on the natural world and on each other. The more our collective light shines then the more the darkness shows itself so it is no wonder that the world appears to be in such a critical time. Hence an inner prompting to deepen our understanding of light just a bit more.
Kate Porteus and I regularly share a meditation at a telephone distance and in a recent time together we focussed on the subject of light. Her meditation started at the beginning with Genesis when God said “Let there be light” which tells us that light was the very beginning of form, of creation and a first principle of individuation. Kate began to see this as a downward flow of light infusing matter with a corresponding upward flow of matter infused spirit. She saw that in this way light enabled creation and individuation which then had the task of spanning both our individuality as well as being part of the One.
As we tried to find a definition of light Kate suggested it may be “conscious awareness” so that in our individuality we increasingly carried a universal consciousness . She saw that fear equates with darkness just as light equates with love so that it is fear, as well as our small ego-filled selves, that prevents us from being more light filled or being the light. Maybe this is why Jesus so often said “fear not” and that “perfect love casts out fear”.
My own meditation started from the New Testament when Jesus says “I am the light of the world“ (Jn 8.12) and was told that “every time you are in your ‘I am’ state, connected and open to the new, you too are being the light of the world. As you breathe into your heart and open from there to your higher or soul self then the light automatically floods in and pours its radiation not only onto others but will also seep into all beings within your sphere of interconnection. So practise observing that whenever you can and it will expand and intensify into evermore light so that you too will be a light in the world. This light is already dormant within every cell of your being awaiting your recognition and calling forth. These are the next steps ahead for all of you.” This of course connects with Jesus saying “You are the light of the world” (Mt 5.14)
This seemed quite profound in two ways: one is the challenge to continually watch for remnants of our not yet fully transformed egos or those aspects of our personality selves that are not yet infused by our soul self. The other might be an increased recognition of what is being called forth within us. So then this prayer came to me:
“I recognise and awaken the light within each cell in my physical body and ask the elementals caring for my physical well being to assist me with this.
The light is already awakening in my mental body so I thank the beings who have assisted with this and ask that I may use my perceptions and deepening knowing in the wisest possible way.
I recognise and awaken the light in my emotional being and ask for assistance in finding ways of keeping this calm, connected, centred and serene.
I embrace and expand the light in my spiritual and subtle bodies and begin to see the interconnectedness of all aspects, and I open to the path ahead that this may expand in the highest way possible for the highest good of the greater whole.”
So how might we know how we are doing? As humanity are we strengthening and radiating more vibrantly the light that we are?
In a channelled message purporting to come from beings from the star system Sirius it has been said “You are the strong ones holding the light for others to follow you. It is time now for you all to bathe in that light, being the loving, kind, supportive being that you are… We see how much you have helped spread the light on a planet that has been very dark over the last millennia. Once the light has spread throughout the world there is no going back to darkness.”
Reading this you might hiccup at the idea of connection with extra-terrestrial beings, but maybe if our conscious awareness is expanding then this is another dimension of being that we might begin to embrace.
However, lest this quote raises feelings of scepticism, I turned to my trusted teacher, Anne Baring to see what she said about light and liked this quote:
“We are, in our essence, literally cosmic light, cosmic energy in every cell of our being…..Through the infinitesimal spark of light that is our human consciousness, the universe is becoming aware of itself on this planet.”
Our initial awareness can derive from what we read of the mystics of our own and other faith traditions, from quantum scientists or from hearing the stories of those who have returned from a near death experience (NDE). But above all, as best we can, we need to spend time in the silence of our deepest hearts, through prayer, meditation or time alone in nature so that we can focus on that spark of light within ourselves and radiate that out into the wider world.
Reading records of those who have had a near death experience as well as my friend Ursula’s descriptions of the reality she experienced after death (2) or from spiritual explorers such as Christopher Bache ,” Dark Night Early Dawn“, we can expand our perceptions of this amazing and beautiful world where we have been privileged to spend our present life time.
“I was brought to an encounter with a unified energy field underlying all physical existence. I was confronting an enormous energy field of blindingly bright, incredibly intense energy… This energy was the single energy comprising all existence”(3)
Then there is the description of Jesus at the transfiguration “with his face shining like the sun and his clothes white as the light” (Mt 17.2).
Possibly you too have had a mystical experience of some kind. Because the current consensus reality does not embrace this, many who have had such experiences are scared to share them in case they are labelled crazy or someone not normal. Maybe it is time that we share our experiences more and learn from each other.
We speak of God as the cosmic ground of being or a vast ocean of light and love which interpenetrates our world but in our busyness we often fail to see it. However, in the early days of the first lockdown it was a common experience to recognise that the natural world was glowing with a new radiance of some kind, the birds were singing more insistently and energy was felt by some as it emanated from parks, gardens and wild places. The light we see coming from the sun restores and renews; the light from an ineffable source maybe harder to detect. As the thirteenth century poet Rumi has said “The heart is nothing but the sea of light, the place of the vision of God” (4)
It was several decades before I was willing to share a profound peak experience that I had in our garden when suddenly as I looked at nature everything shifted and I could see a divine radiance pouring through every leaf, every bush, every insect. There was a radiant numinous light shining through living things which I knew was loving and beneficent and that this pervades all life. One can never forget this sort of experience and it has propelled me ever since to try to work for wider understanding of unity consciousness and the oneness of all being.
Maybe it is time that we share our experiences a bit more and learn from each other. In my conversations with my friend Ursula after her death, in the book cited above, she said “If you only teach one thing Janice, teach the importance of co-creating.” One of the shifts underway as we move from the Piscean era to an Aquarian era is a shift from a focus on individual consciousness to a focus on group consciousness. Maybe this is why so many people seem to be wishing to live in a community of some kind and the wisdom of John O’Donohue before he died suggested that “Perhaps community is a constellation. Each one of us is a different light in the emerging collective brightness. This has greater power of illumination than any single light would have on its own”
References
1) Baring, Anne, “The Dream of the Cosmos”. 2013, Archive Publishing
2) Dolley, Janice with Ursula Burton, “Awakening to a New Reality: Conscious Conversations across the Horizon of Death”,2020, Sleepy Lion Publishing
3) Bache, Christopher, “Dark Night: Early Dawn”, 2000, State University of New York Press
4) The Mathanavi