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Thank you jane for this uplifting post
:)sharon
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, September 08, 2002 8:32
PM
Subject: FW: [globalnews] The Living
Light
THE LIVING
LIGHT
Christ is incarnate in all humanity.
Prometheus is bound for ever
within us. They are the same. They are a
host, and the divine
incarnation was not spoken of one, but of all those
who descending
into the lower world tried to change it into the divine
image and to
wrest out of chaos a kingdom for the empire of light. The
angels saw
below them in chaos a senseless rout blind with elemental
passion for
ever warring with discordant cries which broke in upon the
world of
divine beauty; and that the pain might depart, they grew
rebellious in
the Master's peace, and descending to earth the angelic
lights were
crucified in men; leaving so radiant worlds, such a light of
beauty,
for earth's grey twilight filled with tears, that through this
elemental life might breathe the starry music brought from Him. If
the
"Foreseer" be a true name for the Titan, it follows that in the
host which
he represents was a light which well foreknew all the dark
paths of its
journey; foreseeing the bitter struggle with a hostile
nature, but
foreseeing perhaps a gain, a distant glory o'er the hills
of sorrow, and
that chaos, divine and transformed, with only gentle
breathing, lit up by
the Christ-soul of the universe. There is a
transforming power in the
thought itself: we can no longer condemn
the fallen, they who laid aside
their thrones of ancient power, their
spirit ecstasy and beauty, on such a
mission. Perhaps those who sank
lowest did so to raise a greater burden,
and of these most fallen it
may in the hour of their resurrection be said,
"The last shall be
first.". . .
Our deepest
life is when we are alone. We think most truly, love
best, when isolated
from the outer world in that mystic abyss we call
soul. Nothing external
can equal the fulness of these moments. We may
sit in the blue twilight
with a friend, or bend together by the
hearth, half whispering, or in a
silence populous with loving thoughts
mutually understood; then we may
feel happy and at peace, but it is
only because we are lulled by a
semblance to deeper intimacies. When
we think of a friend, and the loved
one draws nigh, we sometimes feel
half-pained, for we touched something in
our solitude which the
living presence shut out; we seem more apart, and
would fain wave them
away and cry, "Call me not forth from this; I am no
more a spirit if
I leave my throne." But these moods, though lit up by
intuitions of
the true, are too partial, they belong too much to the
twilight of the
heart, they have too dreamy a temper to serve us well in
life. We
should wish rather for our thoughts a directness such as belongs
to
the messengers of the gods, swift, beautiful, flashing presences bent
on purposes well understood.
What we need is
that interior tenderness shall be elevated into
seership, that what in
most is only yearning or blind love shall see
clearly its way and hope. To
this end we have to observe more
intently the nature of the interior life.
We find, indeed, that it is
not a solitude at all, but dense with
multitudinous being: instead of
being alone we are in the thronged
highways of existence. For our
guidance when entering here many words of
warning have been uttered,
laws have been outlined, and beings full of
wonder, terror, and
beauty described. Yet there is a spirit in us deeper
than our
intellectual being which I think of as the Hero in man, who feels
the
nobility of its place in the midst of all this, and who would fain
equal the greatness of perception with deeds as great. The weariness
and sense of futility which often falls upon the mystic after much
thought is due to this, that he has not recognized that he must be
worker as well as seer, that here he has duties demanding a more
sustained endurance just as the inner life is so much vaster and more
intense than the life he has left behind.
Now
the duties which can be taken up by the soul are exactly
those which it
feels most inadequate to perform when acting as an
embodied being. What
shall be done to quiet the heart-cry of the
world: how answer the dumb
appeal for help we so often divine below
eyes that laugh? It is the
saddest of all sorrows to think that pity
with no hands to heal, that love
without a voice to speak, should
helplessly heap their pain upon pain
while earth shall endure. But
there is a truth about sorrow which I think
may make it seem not so
hopeless. There are fewer barriers than we think:
there is, in truth,
an inner alliance between the soul who would fain give
and the soul
who is in need. Nature has well provided that not one golden
ray of
all our thoughts is sped ineffective through the dark; not one drop
of the magical elixirs love distils is wasted....
Surely it was to bring comfort to hearts like
thine that that
most noble of all meditations was ordained by the Buddha.
"He lets his
mind pervade one quarter of the world with thoughts of Love,
and so
the second, and so the third, and so the fourth. And thus the whole
wide world, above, below, around, and everywhere, does he continue to
pervade with heart of Love far-reaching, grown great and beyond
measure."
That love, though the very fairy
breath of life, should by itself
and so imparted have a sustaining power
some may question, not those
who have felt the sunlight fall from distant
friends who think of
them; but, to make clearer how it seems to me to act,
I say that love,
Eros, is a being. It is more than a power of the soul,
though it is
that also; it has universal life of its own, and just as the
dark
heaving waters do not know what jewel lights they reflect with
blinding radiance, so the soul, partially absorbing and feeling the
ray of Eros within it, does not know that often a part of its nature
nearer to the sun of love shines with a brilliant light to other eyes
than its own. Many people move unconscious of their own charm,
unknowing of the beauty and power they seem to others to impart. It is
some past attainment of the soul, a jewel won in some old battle
which
it may have forgotten, but none the less this gleams on its
tiara and the
star-flame inspires others to hope and victory.
If
it is true here that many exert a spiritual influence they are
unconscious
of, it is still truer of the spheres within. Once the
soul has attained to
any possession like love, or persistent will, or
faith, or a power of
thought, it comes into spiritual contact with
others who are struggling
for these very powers. The attainment of any
of these means that the soul
is able to absorb and radiate some of
the diviner elements of being. The
soul may or may not be aware of the
position it is placed in or its new
duties, but yet that Living
Light, having found a way into the being of
any one person, does not
rest there, but sends its rays and extends its
influence on and on to
illumine the darkness of another nature. So it
comes that there are
ties which bind us to people other than those whom we
meet in our
everyday life. I think they are most real ties, most important
to
understand, for if we let our lamp go out, some far away who had
reached out in the dark and felt a steady will, a persistent hope, a
compassionate love, may reach out once again in an hour of need, and
finding no support may give way and fold the hands in despair. Often
we allow gloom to overcome us and so hinder the bright rays in their
passage; but would we do it so often if we thought that perhaps a
sadness which besets us, we do not know why, was caused by someone
drawing nigh to us for comfort, whom our lethargy might make feel
still more his helplessness, while our courage, our faith, might
cause
"our light to shine in some other heart which as yet has no
light of its
own".
GEORGE WILLIAM RUSSELL
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Be
the change you want to see in the
world.
--Gandhi
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