Tag Archives: clarity

be light, light, light – full of light!

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Right on cue, as I ponder putting this blog out to cyber-pasture, WordPress tells me that its “stats are booming” or that another handful of readers have subscribed to receive notifications of new posts, or someone emails me with their appreciation.  As some of you know, these days I post my own writing and poetry over at echoes from emptiness; inevitably, that blog tends to get more attention.  Yet I’m told the resources on this blog are valuable for those interested in the mystery of our shared primordial awareness – This Unlit Light.  So I guess I’ll keep on posting – albeit erratically.  Today’s offering is a little cluster of light-themed quotes glowing in harmony with Tatiana Plakhova’s astonishing graphics. (Do watch the video full-screen!)

Tatiana Plakhova, Complexity Graphics

 

God
pours light
into every cup,
quenching darkness.

The proudly pious
stuff their cups with parchment
and critique the taste of ink
while God pours light

and the trees lift their limbs
without worry of redemption,
every blossom a chalice.

Hafiz, seduce those withered souls
with words that wet their parched
lips

as light
pours like rain
into every empty cup
set adrift on the Infinite Ocean.

– Hafiz

Tatiana Plakhova - Flowerwings

 
[Physicist David] Bohm suggested that the explicate order is extracted from the implicate order in a similar way in which a holographic image is extracted from a series of swirls and shadings into a three-dimensional image when illuminated by laser light.

The illumination that extracts the physical universe from the implicate order is the light of consciousness.

In this model the act of observation draws ‘in-formation’ out of the implicate order and manifests it in the explicate order. Bohm was keen to use the term in-formation rather than information. By this he meant a process that actually ‘forms’ the recipient.

– Anthony Peake, Infinite Mindfield

We are constantly in the midst of light. We are surrounded, bathed, and nourished by it. This miracle we call light can transform. It can teach, reveal, evoke, and heal. It speaks in many voices.

We tend to see light as something that makes form visible, but light reveals much more. It reveals us.

In the subtle, soft undulations of a snowscape illuminated by an overcast sky, in the rare presence of a backlighted, towering, ancient oak, both subject and photographer are revealed. Light makes visible invisible.

– John Daido Loori, Making Love With Light

Tatiana Plakhova - Complexity Graphics

 

What we understand to be phenomena

are but the magical projections of the mind.

The hollow vastness of the sky

I never saw to be afraid of anything.

All this is but the self-glowing light of clarity.

There is no other cause at all.

All that happens is but my adornment.

Better, then, to stay in silent meditation.

– Yeshe Tsogyal

Quoted in Advice from the Lotus-Born

That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality — your soul, if you will — is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Teresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists; come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.
– George Saunders, speaking at Syracuse University

Tatiana Plakhova - Light Beyond Sound

 

Even the sense of ‘I am’ is composed of the pure light and the sense of being.
The ‘I’ is there even without the ‘am’.
So is the pure light there whether you say ‘I’ or not.
Become aware of that pure light and you will never lose it.
The beingness in being,
the awareness in consciousness,
the interest in every experience
— that is not describable,
yet perfectly accessible, for there is nothing else.

– Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That

In a dream I am walking joyfully up the mountain. Something breaks and falls away, and all is light. Nothing has changed, yet all is amazing, luminescent, free. Released at last, I rise into the sky … This dream comes often. Sometimes I run, then lift up like a kite, high above earth, and always I sail transcendent for a time before awaking. I choose to awake, for fear of falling, yet such dreams tell me that I am a part of things, if only I would let go, and keep on going. “Do not be heavy,” Soen Roshi says. “Be light, light, light – full of light!”

– Peter Matthiessen, The Snow Leopard

Video and graphics by Tatiana Plakhova
complexitygraphics.com

 

the realisation of radiance

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A luminous piece today written and illustrated by Chameli Ardagh

This Unlit Light: Painting by Chameli Ardagh - The Queen of Trust

You are the light of awareness
embodied in time and space.

Embodied awareness brings forth
embodied consciousness,
which is radiant light.

Bring your attention to the field of luminous awareness
that illuminates your experience right now.
Without this clear light of awareness
you would be without experience.

You cannot think or imagine your way
to this natural luminosity, although it
illuminates your thoughts and memories
and everything else in your experience,
as it is also illuminating itself.

Light illuminates light.

The primordial Shakti,
the Light of Manifestation,
is this self arising luminosity which permeates:

1~ the object of your awareness
2~ the one who is aware,
3~ and awareness itself.

Becoming aware of awareness
within yourself and others is
Sri Vidya, the realization of radiance.

In your embodiment practice you unclench
the fixation onto the appearances in the mind.

By recognizing and relaxing the automatic
mental and physical and emotional
reactivity towards your experiences,
the energetic knots in your body softens
and more Prana Shakti (breath and life force)
is allowed to flow through.
You open as a translucent and continuously unfolding
embodiment of luminous awareness

Lead me from opacity to clarity.
Lead me from the complicated to the simple.
Lead me from the obscure to the obvious.

Lead me from confrontation to wide openness.
Lead me to the place I never left,
Where there is peace, and peace.

– Upanishads

Practice – the Realization of Radiance

Rest in an open focus of the radiant field of awareness,
hold that which you are experiencing
within the awareness field of light.

Experience the object that the
light of your awareness is illuminating,
and the field of illumination both at the same time.

Thinking and feeling, sensation and memory,
fantasy and desire are all of luminous nature
as is your own awareness.

Art (The Queen of Trust) and words by Chameli Ardagh at Awakening Women

 Also from Chameli Ardagh:

who moves you?

a light with no source

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this unlit light blog is four years old this week!

 

this unlit light is four!

 

Back in 2009, I wrote on the who and why? page:

what is this?

so blatantly in my face
yet unable to be seen?

closer than my breath
yet unable to be reached?

shining through the mind
yet unable to be known?

And in my very first post – a naked lie – I made a confession about the only thing I can assert to be real and true in my life:

I know lots of stories about all manner of things, and I acknowledge that they are only the current version of complex commentaries.  But I only know one thing for sure, and it’s not an ‘about’.

It’s this:  Something exists here on this cushion.  Something is alive here.  Something is being breathed here.  Something senses Life here.  I refer to it as ‘I’, but I cannot claim possession of it.  It is just this.  Now.  Here.

This is what I can call real and true.  It passes my test.  It has never changed one iota in this lengthening lifetime.  It can’t be fragmented, measured, observed, described or denied.  All that I call ‘existence’ appears within it, and cannot be separated from it.  There are no words about it that are true.  So I will tell a naked lie, and call it this unlit light.

In the about page my intentions for the blog were set out – and have remained unaltered:

This blog presents a mélange of comments and confessions concerning this unlit light – brighter than the light of a thousand suns – in which, right now, perception of this web page and deciphering of these words is going on.

The luminous mélange has included references by saints and sages, poets and mystics, teachers and everyday holders of wisdom – all expressing in their own unique voice, their understanding of, and love for this divine light | pristine awareness | mystical luminosity.

I seldom add any comments to these gems.  It seems superfluous – they shine with radiant clarity when falling from the pockets of the wideawake.  Today’s offering comes from Osho.

In haste nobody can come to know himself.  It is a very, very deep awaiting.  Infinite patience is needed.  By and by darkness disappears.  There comes a light with no source.  There is no flame in it, no lamp is burning, no sun is there.  A light, just like it is morning: the night has disappeared, and the sun has not risen….  Or in the evening – the twilight, when the sun has set and night has not yet descended.  That’s why Hindus call their prayer time sandhya.  Sandhya means twilight, light without any source.

When you move inwards you will come to the light without any source.  In that light, for the first time you start understanding yourself, who you are, because you are that light.  You are that twilight, that sandhya, that pure clarity, that perception, where the observer and the observed disappear, and only the light remains.

~ Osho

Just Like That – Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

Source – sat sangha salon – a rich resource, well worth a visit.

Image source – google images

I’m grateful to Nadia at her blog To Know Beauty for introducing me to this extract from Osho.

your original luminous brilliance

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“… whose only beacon
is this unlit light”

 

Although it might seem to be the case if the three little words are taken literally and out of context, THIS UNLIT LIGHT does not refer to some kind of light – mystical or mundane – that needs to be lit, like a candle or a light bulb. In some scriptures there are references to mystical light that must be lit, but that’s not what is referred to here. Let’s be clear about this beloveds, so that we’re dancing on the same page.

The phrase “this unlit light”, as I use it, refers to a light whose brilliant origin cannot be found – a light that was already alight prior to the “big bang” moment, and every moment imagined, dreamed, or experienced in any way by anything possessing sentience. It’s described as “unlit” because it has never been ‘turned-on’ or ‘lit’ by any known technology, mental or otherwise.

This self-luminous light is sometimes called transparent, nondual present awareness; it is seamlessly intimate to every sentient being – so close it cannot be perceived, yet present as the awareing of every perception.

“this unlit light” points to the luminous clarity of awareness that knows, and in which knowing all existence and experience are birthed and named, even as it remains unmoved. Actually, to say that it “knows” is a step too far. (Even to say it “alights” is untrue, for it does n-o-t-h-i-n-g.  Words about the ineffable are automatically a contradiction in terms.)

Diamond Clarity

If readers of this little blog have scrolled down to the bottom of the page they will have come upon these words from J Krishnamurti – they have been there since its launch 3 years ago  –

A mind that is awake, intelligent, free, why should it need,
why should it have, any “experience” at all?
Light is light; it does not ask for more Light.

Light is light. Nothing is required for this light to be alight; both darkness and brilliance are as its shadow.

“this unlit light” – like Bankei’s “Unborn mind” – is right now awareing these strings of words displayed on this brightly lit screen. Simply awareing. Not judging, reacting or even understanding; not labeling or seeking meaning. Those functions are the province of thought and memory – and the miraculous movement of creative story-smithing. Stories are without number, and if one of them includes the need for the Great Light to be lit, no problem – enjoy the dance!

It might sound outrageous and irreverent, but “this unlit light” couldn’t give a toss about nonduality or any other philosophy. It couldn’t care less whether we’re spaced-out in the absolute, or beavering away heart-fully in the relative, or perfectly aligned in wisdom-compassion. It couldn’t care less whether we’re a hip Advaita teacher or a fierce dispeller of ignorance, a serenely blissful yogini or a story-sabotaged suffering seeker. It’s utterly unaffected.

Utterly unaffected.

It simply abides. Receiving everything; rejecting nothing.

That’s why it’s felt as unconditional Love; that’s why it’s called Beloved.

Your true nature is something never lost to you,
even in moments of delusion,
nor is it gained at the moment of enlightenment.
It is the nature of your own mind,
the source of all things,
your original luminous brilliance.
You, the richest person in the world,
have been going around laboring and begging,
when all the while the treasure you seek is within you.
It is who you are.
~ Huang Po

[My emphasis]

 

SIMPLY REST IN THIS PURE DIAMOND-LIKE AWARENESS – TRANSPARENT, YET REFLECTING THE ENTIRE MIRAGE OF CREATION

 

Dedicated, with deep appreciation, to

| jk | jax | jac |