The nature of light is that it illumes where it falls, therefore it illumes the part it is looking at...
Michael A. Singer
What are you shining this precious and powerful light of awareness on? The world out there with all its impermanent and ever changing forms? Probably, eh? In the midst of all that stuff you are shining awareness on, is likely to be a mirror, a convoluted one perhaps, where you see this image of yourself placed in the center of all that is happening around it.
Making it Personal
When we do that, we begin to see what is showing up in that small beam of light we are focused on as personal. We personalize it and say that it is "My world", "my life", and even "me". So in our ownership of what this light just happens to have fallen on, we create drama and story based on what should be and what shouldn't be showing up in that beam of light. We fear what might pop up from the shadows behind it and stand on guard against it. We hope and pray that certain things might come into our view that will make it all okay for the image in the center. We cry out in agony when things within this focus change, as things are sure to do. We reach out to cling to all that is pleasant as it threatens to dissolve or move out of the light. We curse at that which steps in the way of us seeing our mirror image clearly. We get all tangled up in this small beam of light and fail to see all that is outside that beam of light. We fail to see the impersonal nature of it all.
Not Personal
What if I told you that what you are focusing on is simply an accumulation of 13.8 billion years of cause and effect that has nothing to do with you? That whatever gets caught in your beam will go as quickly as it comes in to focus, as is the nature of things, and you cannot do a darn thing about it? What if I told you that what you are focusing on is not here to please you or to hurt this mirror image in the center of your light field? It doesn't care one iota about it? What if I told you that this image of you is not the main thing in this scene you are looking at, in fact, it is really not important at all? What if I told you that it wasn't even real, that it was just a visual illusion created by your light hitting glass? What if I told you that you didn't have to look where you are looking? What if I told you there was so much more to the world, to this light, to you than what you are looking at now with your narrow focus? What if I told you that there was an infinite number of other things, and experiences hidden in the darkness beyond the patch you are illumining that you could be focusing on simply by moving your beam a little to the left or a little to the right? Yes, you can control where the beam goes! What if I told you, you were that beam of light and not that which is illuminated? That you were that which illumes. Not that which the eye can see, but that by which the eye can see (Kena Upanishads)?
Would you believe me, I wonder? Or would you just narrow your light focus into the scene and the image within it a little more intensely, convincing yourself, even more, that it is all so personal?
The Light and not that which the light is shining on
Though, I still narrow my focus, allowing this precious light to fall on the selected field of insignificant again and again, I now know that I am not that which I am looking on but that which is doing the looking. I am not that which is illumed, I am doing the illuminating. I also know that, though it still feels so personal at times, there is nothing personal about this Life I am viewing. No matter what shows up in the beam or mirror in front of me, I know it is just a reflection and not who I am. I know this world is doing what it has always been doing without any help from me. It is vast and it is amazing! We get to experience it all! We do not need to stay so narrowly focused on that which keeps us stuck.
I am the light, as you are the light, that does the shining.Why then, do we want to keep our focus so narrowed on some idea of personal? Why don't we just open our hearts and widen our light beams so we can experience what we are truly here to experience....the impersonal nature of all of it.
Hmm! All is well in my world.
Inspired by:
Michael A. Singer/ Sounds True () Every Moment has Nothing to Do with You. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_BlUKv5idk&t=363s
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