The Light of Your Own Being

"I wish that I could show you when you are lonely or in the darkness, the astonishing light of your own being."

-- Hafiz

You shine! We all do. And we're all blind, at least most of the time, to the incredible light that permeates, infuses, and oozes from us. 

Instead we see meat. We see bodies And we compare, and we miss the light. 

The Light is always being. The Light is our Being. It shines whether we know it or not. We all need to become one-eyed people in the kingdom of the blind. The one eye being the third eye, the eye that sees the Light, that sees nothing but Light.

"This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine," the old hymn says. "Let" is the operative term here. You don't have to make it shine. You don't have to will it, or force it, or learn how to do it. Just relax and release and let the shining happen.

It will, it does. I can see it in you, when you can't see it in yourself. And you can see it in others when they are blind to it, too. Light all around us.

Perhaps all we can do is give each other reminders, give each other clues. The Light never goes out. The Light shines in you, through you, as you. You don't need Tom Bodette to "leave the light on for you." It's always on. Even in the heart of darkness, see it shine.

Don't look!

"The devil inside

The devil inside

Every single one of us the devil inside"

-- INXS song lyrics

Back in the thank-God-they're-gone 80's there was a song entitled The Devil Inside. The chorus went something like "The Devil inside, the Devil inside, everyone's got the Devil inside." The edgy youth of the time loved it. Why wouldn't they? It was based on truth.

Don't get me wrong. I don't really believe in a red dude with a long tail and horns who answers to the name Satan. What I do notice, not believe, is that we all have some negativity in our souls. Call it the Devil, call it evil, call it Dick Chaney. It doesn't matter what you call it, it's an energy that is harbored within the dark side of each of us.

It's there. We know it. But there's no good reason to spend any time looking at it, feeding it, or giving it energy and attention. Sure, you and old Beelzebub may get into an occasional wrestling match or two during your dark nights of the soul, but that's your own personal business. No one can wrestle the Red Man for you. And any evil lurking in the hearts of others is their business. No rubber necking, please.

Evil is a fascinating phenomena. And it comes in so many creative guises and disguises. Our job, though, our path, if you will, no matter what your religion may be, is to choose love. When we look at others, we are looking for the best and brightest light that they can shine. We are looking beyond appearance to essence, beyond persona to Spirt.

And the more we choose to focus on Spirit, on love, rather than upon evil, the freer we are. We are free because Spirit itself is always already free, and we are It. We may have evil, but we are Spirit. As is everyone.

And so when we notice a tail under the priest's cloak, or the cold metal shine in the teacher's eye, or just the common, everyday examples of greed and pettiness that cross our path, we turn away. We turn away not from the person, just from the negativity. We turn away not in anger but in gratitude. Gratitude for the fact that we have the strength, the discernment, the heart to choose to see all the positive things that a person is and can be.

That is our freedom -- not to be compelled, constrained or controlled by evil, not to mistake it as Real, but to see all and everything, everyone, as Spirit incarnate.

Our whole business...

"Our whole business, therefore, in this life, is to restore to health the eye of the heart whereby God may be seen."

-- St. Augustine

Where do you see God? If your answer wasn't "everywhere," you, like me, have some work to do.

Sure, it's nice to see God in nature and in babies and in the saintly acts of others. But what about seeing God in whiskey-breathed panhandlers who get right up in your face, in stone-hearted old women who practically snarl and hiss at you in line at the grocery, in the shallow, bubble-headed teenagers who laugh like hyenas at stuff that isn't even funny. And I could go on and on. Can we see God in those whose behavior seems far from God-like? That's the real, acid test.

The "eye of the heart" is clouded by hurt, desire, and fear. We develop what Eckhart Tolle has termed "the pain body." The pain body is an emotional constellation that keeps us self-obsessed and unable to see the Divine, both in us and around us. Clearing the pain body, cleansing the eye of the heart allows us to really see that all is sacred, that there is nothing outside the Divine.

Be careful, though. Years ago, in my early twenties, while sitting in a coffee shop I decide that I would not leave the shop until I could see God in the each one of the 20 or so people seated there. Some people were easy. They had a smile, a look, or a gentle manner that easily and graciously expressed something greater. One woman though was a bitch! She was this sassy, loud, brash waitress who just totally rubbed me the wrong way. It took me almost as much time to see God in her as it did to see the Divine in the other 20 folks combined!

But here's the kicker. After I did finally see God in her, I fell totally in love with her! And she with me. And we lived together for two wild, tumultuous years which were kind of like relationship boot camp for both of us. I'm convinced the whole relationship never would have happened had I not undertaken that little cleansing the eye of the heart exercise back in the coffee shop. I don't regret it, not a bit. But it sure was a powerful exercise!

In a very real sense, seeing God in everyone is the entire spiritual path. I may meditate or read spiritual texts or attend worship services or whatever, but all of those practices are preliminaries, a means to an end. And the end? Seeing God right here, right now, in everyone and everything, ever and always, the eye of the heart clear and shining. One practice, one people, on heart, one God. One and only in all and every. That's it. All of it. Our whole business.

Manners

"Defect in manners is usually the defect of fine perceptions."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Manners seems like such a quaint subject. Outside of Judith Martin, aka Miss Manners, few people champion the use of manners in these post-modern times. I know all the arguments -- manners are old fashioned, they're phony, they're for old farts, they're irrelevant -- I was a teenage myself once and deftly spouted each attack on manners while feeling oh so self-righteous and sophisticated.

What Waldo (yea, he really preferred to be called Waldo) was wise enough to see is that manners have little to do with social convention and everything to do with the Divine. Huh? Here's the thing: When Waldo uses the term "fine perceptions" he's talking about our innate ability to see God in each and every person. Thus to not use the upmost manners in our dealings with one and all, is more than just a transgression of Emily Post's rules of modern etiquette, it is a slap in the face of God!

Waldo knew, as all true saints and sages of all times and all places have known, that each person is a holographic spark of Spirit. He recommended manners not as social constructs but as modes of worship. If Jesus was about to enter the 7 Eleven at the same time as you, wouldn't you at least hold the door for him? Every time that you, or anyone else, fails to respond to another in a mannerly way, it is because they fail to see that God is right in front of them! The postal clerk, the bus driver, the bag lady, the greedy CEO, the gangsta rapper, even the Governor of Illinois -- all sparks of spirit, all Divinity in drag.

That makes your spiritual practice oh so simple -- see God in everyone and act accordingly. Let manners flow from your "fine perceptions." Treat everyone the way that you'd treat Jesus at the race track, Buddha at the bakery, or Krishna in a cocktail lounge. Enlightened behavior, aka manners, grows out of seeing the Light in everyone.