"Picturing the Light..."

    It happened only a few days ago. It was evening. I was resting. Then it came again the next day in the early morning before I rose, a physical burning warmth, in my heart; in fact, though all my body. It was like a tree had been cut somewhere and when the sap was rising and the sap was all burning warming love, and life! But being as it was all heavenly and light and in myself 'I' am earthly and dark I could not comprehend it; no, not at all.   

   In the tree is life. And the life is the light of the tree. 'And the light shines in darkness, and the darkness comprehend it not:' for 'I' am one thing, and the sap is another; altogether other. But, oh, the light which seeps out, for a few moments of time, it is something wonderful, and intensely beautiful to me. In the place where life and light already resided inside me, there I could perceive it. And I did. But without any framework of thought to try to understand it in; because my own earthly mind and thinking is not capable of understanding it: the darkness cannot comprehend it: 'the darkness comprehended it not.'   

   The light had been poured into me. And I knew it had been poured in, in order to be poured out. To give light and life to all who were entering. But, how could I explain the things which I saw that could not be seen? How could I possibly make intelligible, things which had no form that my natural mind could grasp or that my natural eyes could see? I was blind to the things which were not of my own realm: just like a fish can’t see for long, out of the sea. Nor a mole find its way above ground! It simply was not possible! So one could not see in a realm which was opposite to one’s own. Like the fish out of water: I would be dead there. So then it was not my normal ‘me’ who could possibly see there. Only the new ‘me’ could see there. And that meant that I had to be as good as dead to my self before I could see beyond my self. Beyond the self-orientated self in me; which, in ever orbiting its own centre, ever worships it, in ever tightening and blinding circles around its own self.   

   I didn’t know why I wanted to explain the things of my heart, I just did.  All my life, ever since I can remember, it had been in me as a passion, to communicate the truth I couldn’t see by myself, that it might be made plain and visible, and understandable to others. But I had no words to do it in. For truly I was wanting to picture what couldn’t be pictured; or at least, perhaps, what had never been pictured before? I don’t know? I supposed that I should have to grapple for the right words. But, if that which was to be explained, was inside me…like the sap of a living tree, is inside the whole tree...(‘my substance in me, when I cast my leaves,’ Isaiah 6: 13) then any life which was there would surely come oozing out, somewhere? And so it did. And so I wrote. And in whatever words came out first.  

   Though, of course, what came out at first was all raw and rough, and basic and elementary – being only the beginning words of a babbling baby – it was what was wanted and the firstlings of a pictured understanding of the Light. And as the Light is Life, I trusted it would ever grow and grow and open up further and further for life was unending. Well, this was what came up inside me first; it was what I was given. (Only I cannot remember when it came? I don’t know why but I seem to have a passion for the dates and times of things; but here it doesn't matter.) What came was just one sentence:     

     ONLY WHERE I AM NOT CAN THE LIGHT BE! 

   I turned it over and over in my mind for awhile. Then I saw. But only when I gave up trying! For the light is opposite to me: it is altogether different! Only little by little pieces of understanding came to together and fitted into place to form a picture of the light. And I wrote: – 

   Where I am taken from myself, there I am not; and there the light can be, because I am not in the way. Like the ancient prophet Enoch: ‘he walked with God and he was not for God took him:’ took him from his self-orientated self, his ego, until he was all gone; and so he wasn’t! And where he wasn’t, God was; so he was wholly with God; and wholly in heaven; and therefore could his friends not find, him: he was not.  

   Firstly, I was given a natural, or an historical picture. A visible picture. Something which could be visualized. Enoch literally disappeared! He could not be found upon the Earth. Secondly, came the inside fulfillment of that visible example, teaching the greater thing: inner personal truth: only where I am not can the light be.  For ‘I’ get in the way, and block it! Any solid object in the path of the light blocks it. So the solid object gets only shadows. I can see only the shadows of the light where I am in the way. So shadows are all I have where there is no light! And in shadows, I see only the forms of things: their solids: their outsides – ‘the first things;’ not the ethereal substance and reality of them, which are ‘the second things.’ (First the natural, then the spiritual.)  

   Looking up, I asked for further picture in order to understand further. In a moment I found myself looking at a shrub along the driveway, which here had grown to the size of a tree. It was covered with large flowers. But it was not the flowers I was noticing, but their colour. Oh! Colour! And I heard, or saw, the path to the answer! I came to think of picturing the light, like this: …say, I am all one colour, and the light is altogether another colour. Then I ‘heard’ within me, ‘Storygirl, pick a random colour for your natural human thinking; black, or grey, or purple, or pink, whatever. It does not matter. The colour you pick to represent your self is irrelevant.’  ...Well, the flowers that I had noticed were a deep purple; so I said, ‘Purple!’ And the inner conversation continued, but with the first ‘telling-picture,’ first:   

   ‘You are solid, Storygirl, and the light is not. You are like a brick, and the light is like the air. You are all purple and solid; and the light is all white and as un-solid as the air! So, wherever you are purple in your thinking, there, there is no white thinking!  Or, in whatever place you are solid in your inner life, there, there is nothing un-solid. So there – there is no light!’   

   There was a pause. And I knew that I was on my own now, sort of. …I mean, that I had all that I needed now to work it all out myself. Oh, not alone, of course, but in the delicious working-it-out together with God. This was forever my delight! ONLY WHERE I AM NOT CAN THE LIGHT BE. ...AND ONLY WHERE THERE IS LIGHT IN ME, CAN I SEE, FROM THERE, MORE LIGHT!  Wherever in my mind I have decided upon my own opinions of something, and made my own judgments on it, and rely upon them, then, there, there is no opportunity or possibility for the light to come to me for I am solid in that place in my thinking blocking the light. Wherever I am solid the light cannot enter! And wherever there is a wall the light cannot go through! It cannot penetrate through the thick veil of ‘me:' that veil of my pride which covers the eyes of my heart and blinds them; and so the light does not enter me. It cannot, there is no room!   

   The light is gentle. It is all love. Light and love are, one. And like love, the light does not demand its own way; ‘love seeketh not her own:’ she does not demand her own way and neither does the light. 

 Oh; and I suddenly thought of another ‘telling-picture,’ another analogy. Maybe, a better one…? It was, gates, or doors. The purple place in me the solid place in my mind, acts also like a closed gate or a shut door! In whatever place I have made up my mind to something, and say in my heart: ‘this is it,’ and ‘this is how it is,’ I have unknowingly put an impenetrable closed gate to the light in that place. I have shut a door, so it cannot enter!   Why? Well, because the substance of the light of God is opposite to my nature and my way of thinking, I at first reject it; because I cannot understand it in the ‘first place;’ it cannot be understood there it does not compute! Wherever it comes in contact with my purple and solid place thinking – my earthly ‘first place’ thinking in me – there I find it to be either too challenging, or something I don’t like and want to repel. It may seem even foolish, or stupid. Or, it might seem as nothing; like nothing at all! For the light is as delicate as the hoarfrost, and as illusive as a melting snowflake, when you think you have ‘it,’ it disappears and is gone!  The light, which is the Desire of all Nations, comes in an instant when every eye shall see; for there’s no work involved in anything that is light. Light, just is! The moment it ‘switches on,’ I have it!  

   Thousands of searching people have written of their glimpses of the light; each glimpse captivating them to yearn for more. Some have seen and described the light in terms of fairy-tale and fantasy; and some in stories of mysterious ancient prophecies and modern psychology; others have glimpsed new thought in understanding the deaf and the unusually gifted, and through inspiration in new depths of insight in physics, mathematics, and science; and of course in every religion under the sun. In every field of human endeavour, light flows through as Life is experienced, and it is expressed in a million different ways, and throughout every age since the beginning of time! 

   But perhaps the people did not always realize the process of what was actually happening; namely, that these glimpses came only through the small openings in the mind of their heart, where, through some genuine emptiness there, they were receptive, and, for one moment taken through the veil of earthly pride and purple thinking, they became receptors of what was always there, ready and waiting! (...I can know that it was always there, because when it happens it always seems as if I had known it all along!) ...But all this is hidden to ‘me;’ it is all unconscious, and ‘I’ am not aware of this fleeting process of the light, all over at the end of the instant; so that when I come to describe and write of my glimpse, I do not always make the necessary correlation as to its cause. And, therefore, I miss its further  opening, and greater widening out to me – my mind, in that place, instantly reverting to its former purple-ness and solidity; which imperceptive matter and state of mind shuts my gates instantly, all unconsciously not wanting to experience any piercing there: and saving myself, losing the very light I sought!    

   Oh, I was hindering my own budding receptivity saving my skin; I was opposing my true self hiding from the light. Truly, I am my own enemy: for what I most sincerely seek I fight against! Fleeing the means to my highest joy all the while thinking I was protecting it from harm! Seeking to save my life I was losing it! But I came to see that the more my ego was yielded up and surrendered, the more light I would have.    

   All the darkness I have in me is where my ego has not been challenged and surrendered. Because if it were, totally, then there it would be all light: for all my ego blocks are the absence of light! There is no such thing as darkness it is just a word we use to describe the absence of light. Where the absence of light is there is darkness. But if when I sense the light I welcome it, instead of running from it and I step out of the way, and let it filter through the opened gates of my mind, and allow my own soul to be pierced by it through the revelation of the thoughts and intents of my own heart, I will soon find that the least glimpse of the light will thrill me. Touching me with such a pang of delight that the sweetest of all joys I could ever imagine, utterly paled in comparison. I exaggerate not. I would not trade one piercing of the light for a single fleshly joy; for the entrances of the light of God are eternal, and therefore they profit me more than all the gorgeous temporal things I could think of which I cannot take with me into eternity. 

   Underneath, below natural thought-patterns in my ‘public arbour,’ I think perhaps I have always sought the light. Though it may have been deeply hidden from me, I believe I have always been yearning for it all my life; because the light is entirely wondrous, and there are no words which can adequately describe it. Golden openings into a glorious vastness? Effusive transcendings full of blissful delight? My words can barely touch or hear the tiniest chord of it! But being more beautiful than anything else its sound is to me so piercingly bittersweet, that at its fullest point I am not even able to bear it, at all! But through the tiny glimpses of it, that I am given, I have discovered it is always something to be intensely desired; something I had always hoped for, beneath my surface rot, that is! 

   But each little glimpse caught was a treasure cherished all my life. Each one, remembered; I could never forget a single one. They were my own secret diamonds. My hidden pearls and open doors. My paths of gold through the bright streets of heaven. In times of need they always came to my remembrance to comfort me; and where they landed they fitted perfectly. When I found another it seemed to join together with what I already had; a further link in the chain of a never ending unravelling revelation. Within me they were as red beads on a black string: a living inner story-bracelet of life preserved by death! Keeping me safe! For each one pulled aside and kept back, my thick curtain! And then anointed my eyes that I might truly see; and more and more.   

   But only in true openhearted-ness and in being a little child had I any hope of the light: only in deep poverty of spirit could anyone see beyond the curtain. Unless I became as a little child I could not see the kingdom of heaven. Only very young children had no pride to get in the way of their delight when they found something beautiful that to adults was crazy! Being unaware of themselves they had no awareness of being foolish; or, of seeming so to the eyes of others; and having no need of protecting themselves from that, so they weren’t; they weren’t foolish, at all! When is a child not a child? When it can no longer find delight in spotting a lost coin in a gutter and making of its loss and finding a shining story and an open door into another world. 

   Picturing the light it wasn’t hard.

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