How do you "feed the Light", especially as one of my friends in Mumbai put it, "in these dark times"? With the news and the emotional intensity of watching the escalating number of confirmed cases of the virus and the death tolls, the heavy shadow of sorrow as well as fear will naturally fall over you. And it isn't just your personal sadness, but a collective grief.
Yet, I am urging you to feed the Light. How do you feed anything in life? You first give it your attention...you attend. I can offer many techniques, and I will touch on some of them over the posts, but the primary thing here is giving the "Light" your attention. Sometimes you have to look for it, sometimes it comes to you, but the key is giving it your full attention and even your open heart.
I had an unexpected encounter with light and shadow once after a very difficult time of meditation. I finally just stopped the meditation because my emptiness was just too much.
When I stood up and turned to the Eastern wall behind me, I met a vision of a cathedral window, with a brilliant flaming rose colored light and a spattering of fractured prisms. I was stunned. The whole wall was radiant. A deep peace fell over me. My mind though was still sorting out the experience. Then I realized that what I was looking at was the shadow of the arched window, 90 degrees to my left. That northern window faced the street and a glass mobile dangled from it's top. The sun was just beginning to set in the west sending rays of light at just the unlikely angle to cast the shadow of the window casings and enlarge the splay of reflections from the mobile.
I thought of centuries of ancient architectural wonders, like Aztec temples and Lord Shiva's Temple in Bangalore, precisely constructed to allow direct sunlight to illuminate the inner sanctuary once a year--the power of light to invoke the sacred.
I let my window's shadow do the same to me as I watched it expand, glow and fade with the setting sun. This time, the Light fed me. (Susan Nettleton)