The Mirror of Light
As we embark on our journey of Self-discovery we soon find that in the same way that time and space are synonymous, matter and energy share reflective positions. The energy that we bind into our idea of self is the same light pushed to points that we see as the material world.
An eye cannot see itself without using a third-party form of perception, for if an eye were to see itself directly it would cease to exist! That is if the eye was coterminous with its own field of vision it couldn’t be seen at all, it would have to be seen relative to something else. It therefore could only be described by saying what it is not. A mirror accommodates this.
When we look directly at the sun we find ourselves struggling with physical pain from looking at such a bright light, we can proposition ourselves with the idea that the photon particles are damaging to the retina in our eye causing blindness, but we must also understand that the very same light creates everything around us in the physical world, even the eye. Why then can the same source of creation be a source of pain or discomfort? The answer rests in the idea that we think we are coterminous with this physical organism we refer to as “I” and this physical organism is only a fractional part of the functional whole and as such contains with it a feeling of insignificance. But even this self cannot sustain the separateness long as it knows it is just a wave on the ocean of existence and longs to be reunited with its depth which knows no levels.
The body is longing for death from the moment it is born, the moment it is born it starts to die and it needs the support of the environment to unite with the Mind to survive and develop to the point where it is self- sustaining. It knows (by not knowing or “being”) that it is the breath and not a vessel by which the breath may pass in and out in an attempt to know itself.
We can equate this pain of looking into the light of the sun to the emotional pain we feel when we try to see our Selves directly, equal to the intensity of the brightness of the sun. In the same way light creates matter and matter creates light, feelings are the source of self-creation and the Self the creator of feelings. Feelings are how we substantiate thoughts which are in turn what we use to establish our sense of what we refer to as reality. Unfortunately, the self we see is never the same as our idea of self and this solidifies our feeling of separateness.
I would like now to establish a differentiation between “feelings” and “emotions”. Feelings are always the case, whether it is observed empirically (known) or felt in the depth of our being (unknown) it is a fluctuation of intensity. Pleasure and pain, loud or quiet, bright and dull, active or inactive, bitter or sweet, pleasant or unpleasant, can all be placed onto the scale of intensity.
Our human experience is a process of trying to label these intensities in an attempt to encompass the entirety of the scale, but as one cannot double itself out of nothing, it can divide itself infinitely, so the process of labeling can never end (there is always a space between two points). Thus, we have our concept of linear time, the playground of our existence.
To make it even possible to try and understand the relationship between these two selves (known and the unknown) we create a filtration system (mirror) that will allow us to identify with the process. In essence we take the very same light we create and restrict it, bottle it and push it to points creating matter or the material world. We think we are this matter so we feel that if we take our light body and convert it to a familiar form we will better understand it, that way we have something to compare it to saying “I don’t know who or what I am but I know it is not this or this or this…”.
But we are not the light! Our light body is in itself just the full realization of self, the Atman. The light is simply the releasing of the material world, allowing it to return to balance; this movement I refer to as the current of love which is one side of the scale with its opposite or “that which takes us away from love” on the other. I use the word love here very specifically as it is a point we can all relate to in our conditioning as an emotional equivalent to release, freedom or surrender. We can view Spiritual practice as not finding one’s “Self” but the releasing of the reference points that have created the idea of “self”.
A star is one such idea of self whose act of identity exists in this simple process of catch and release, but it too does not release its light in the same way it has found it. It goes through its life processes of nuclear fission turning hydrogen to helium, creating matter just to release it again.
The sun too cannot see itself other than to feel how its’ light alters the movement of the universe as a whole. If it could see itself directly, it too would cease to exist as such (the identity sought after). To try and find ones “self” is to have a preconceived idea as to what the self was or was
not to begin with. This is why it seems so difficult to embark on the journey of self-discovery, trying to discover a self without having an idea of what this self really is… but we are conditioned with the notion that it has to be something other than what we are now otherwise we would already know the Self completely. Using this logic, we can imagine that knowing who we are right now in this moment, as we are, is a full expression of the entirety of the journey. Unfortunately, it usually starts to become a process of accepting the points you refer to as “I” or “myself” as inevitable instead of dissolving into the fact that these points never existed in this moment until you brought them here to “accept”.
For example, you might have regretted an act of desperation that drastically distorted your idea of happiness such as hurt somebody you love. My former position, as is most spiritual practitioners currently, was everything is part of who you are and if you can find happiness in this moment those events that feel negative are as much a part of this happiness as all the greatest moments that have been labeled bliss, in fact my postulate was that this “self” that was “happy” is a sum total of all actions and experiences of your life which include a perfect balance of negative and positive points.
The truth is all of these points or their emotionally equivalents exist here and now in the form of the material world in front of you to which you or the “I” at the place you call here and now are the perfect balance.
What this ultimately means is you must alter your perception of this moment in order to accept the last, constantly fishing through your memories to find good ones to outweigh the bad. This is like looking into the sun separating experience into piles, in the same way that we separate matter and light, by saying what was formerly matter is now light (creating a self to release)
Gregory Phoenix
