June 2010 Issue
by Robert Griswold
There is a candle in your heart ready to be kindled.
There is a void in your soul ready to be filled.
You feel it, don’t you? -Jelaluddin Rumi
No words of mine or any other person can fully convey the experience of the Inward Light to another. Each person must find this experience by themselves. Nevertheless, we all may profit from what the experience of others has taught, if we put it up against our own. These experiences reveal to us valuable insights into our own natures and to the complexity of the Inward Light.
Experience of the Inward Light teaches us that we are not stuck solely in a relationship with self. There is that to be found within which is awesomely real and commanding. And this is not a fabrication of our minds. It is experienced personally but it is not subjective or shaped by the ego. This experience gives us the certain understanding and courage to act lovingly and become tender toward all creation. This does not mean that we will never have another weak moment. It means we will know our weak moments to be weak moments.
We can stand on solid ground because we are connected to what is real. The Light is a relationship with Divine Reality. We are not smug because the self is humbled, and we are confident that we can act with justice, mercy and humility. This sense of being grounded or centered is what Friends mean when they use the word Truth. And a life lived in relationship with the Eternal is better than living forever as a being grounded only in self. If we are present now to the Divine, we are already resurrected and have no need of a heaven by and by in the sky—that desire is just another ego projection.
We need the support of others, the love of others, the loving correction of others that we obtain by living in community with others and worshiping with others. Spiritual growth requires the discipline of spiritual practice. If love isn’t coming out, being expressed in our daily lives, then the Seed will not fulfill its purpose of nourishing the world. It will wilt and die.
Lessons From The Inward Light
Experiencing the Light is not a nice thing.
At least it has never started by being nice to me. Nearly every experience of the Light in my life has broken open the comfortable place where I was resting; smug in my own wisdom. These experiences have shown me to be shallow, vain, arrogant, presumptuous and blind to the suffering around me. And blind to my own suffering as well. This is not nice! The work of the Inward Light or the Light of Christ is to break us out of the illusions that keep us in bondage to fear, addicted to distractions, busy with building our pride, and that allow us to avoid the covenants we might have with others that could make us their neighbor. In doing its work the Inward Light requires us to stop telling ourselves those little lies that let us off the hook of responsibility. It causes us to doubt that our business (or busyness) is the best use of our time on earth. It brushes aside all those habitual notions that lets us believe that we are different, separated from and superior or inferior to those people who…(you fill in the blank).
The Inward Light is not our conscience.
Our conscience is a “should” voice in our heads that we have incorporated along the way. Conscience is often stuffed with moral maxims and frequently these are contradictory, allowing us to choose the ones most convenient to our purpose. The Inward Light straightens out this mess. The Inward Light lets us know who we really are and our relationship to Divine Reality, and thus integrity lets us jettison conventional notions and act with clarity and responsiveness to a new awareness. Sometimes we have to be very patient to get to what the Light would have us know, but Friends’ faith requires us to prefer integrity to what may seem to be expedient action.
The Inward Light speaks to our condition.
Without the Inward Light we are in a condition of trying to guide our life following an inadequate authority– the inadequate authority of self. Self is the aggregation of notions, excuses, reasoning that we have acquired in the process of growing up. Instruction and misinstruction by parents, teachers and peers; ideas we have come across or have been dumped on us by TV, newspapers, books; experiences of hurt, disappointment, and loss; habits of worry, self-defense and meaningless self indulgence – these are some of the things we pack in the bag of self. The Inward Light weighs these things showing us what they are and what we must surrender so that they no longer subject us to their deception.
The Inward Light requires from us a discipline.
This is not about sitting quietly once in a while until we get a new idea. The Inward Light can transform us— but only if we have disciplined ourselves to truly be submissive to the leadings we are given. The Inward Light isn’t our local grocery store of the intellect where we can shop for good ideas of things we might do. The discipline of silence and openness must be practiced over and over, day after day, week after week, alone and with others. The Light nurtures a Seed in us but to grow, that Seed must be repeatedly exposed to the Light. This exposure is not over until our life is over. If you are a Christian this is called “taking up your cross.”
The Inward Light comforts us and gives us courage.
As we follow the discipline of the Light and the Seed grows in us, we gain in courage. The fears of self – you know them. “What will people think of me if I do that? “Is this going to be embarrassing?” What if people don’t like me because I’m doing this?” Wouldn’t it be safer to wait until someone else leads and then follow if things seem to be going well?” The problem is that when we follow our fears we never get clear and our fears confine us in a box made of worry and defensiveness. When we follow where the Light leads, the fears of self and for self drop away and we can act to make love manifest in the world. The Light always requires us to risk loving, and in risking love we find true peace.
The Inward Light is not a tool for us to use.
I must confess to a level of discomfort every time I hear Friends ask that someone be “held in the Light.” I appreciate our having a convention that directs us toward a care for others, but I have trouble reducing the Light to a convention. To me this approach seems to change the relationship between me and the Light. My experience is that the Light is a reality that uses me, calling me to account and making clear my path when I have been led astray by reliance on my own notions. Hence, I can understand that if I have knowledge of someone in distress the Light may point me toward an action that might relieve their distress. But I have no power to place them in the Light or hold them there. The Light for me is not something I can do and certainly there is nothing I can make the Light do. It is not something that I have in my possession and thus I cannot give it away.
There is another problem with this convention of trying to “hold ___ in the Light.” This practice sneaks back into Friends’ theology a version of Christian theology depicting the Deity as a remote and powerful being that we can and should beg for favors. In my experience of the Divine, “the Kingdom of Heaven” is no distance away from wherever I may be, unless I am standing in the way. Living in Truth brings real joy into our lives. The Light makes us whole and makes it possible to face what life has to bring – even death. This joy is what Jesus was talking about when he said, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” The “peace that passes understanding” comes through the Light.
Robert Griswold is a member of Mountain View Friends Meeting in Denver, Colorado.