Emanate, Illuminate, Radiate
Our essence is light. Clear, bright, pure light. It resides at our center and it’s nature is expansive – it naturally radiates outward. More often than not it can, at some level, be dulled, dimmed, diminished, or filtered. Most of the time, for most of us, some of it shines through in some way, at certain times, during certain activities (need help figuring out which ones?? Ask me :)). We all have experienced this personally as well as by way of witnessing it in others.
That which dims, diminishes, filters, and blocks the light is created, reinforced, and perpetuated by us – consciously or unconsciously. Whether in response to or in anticipation of fear, pain or sadness, we create the barriers to our very own light shining out from our very own center. Call it your armor, your protective mechanism, your barricade, your shield, your opinions, your judgments, your ego, your rightness or righteousness… it’s all the same.
Begin to feel it – feel how you shut down, pull away, push against, resist, fight, block, or layer-on/build-up the protective structures that you think are keeping you safe or free from pain, suffering, or sadness. And begin to see it – see that where you’re blocking or pushing or pulling is simply where you’re getting in the way of your own light -- the open, spacious and accepting quality that naturally wants to express itself.
As we begin to learn to let go, to stop efforting at keeping it “all together,” to drop the armor, dismantle the barricade, dissolve the identities that we think we need to keep in place, the light begins to shine through. It shines through, perhaps, first in patches, in waves, in fleeting moments. But then, on it's very own, it grows and expands and it begins to soften the remaining parts that are resisting more strongly, the protective layers around the deeper wounds, the unconscious guarding.
I invite you to drop the hardness and invite the softness, to stop glorifying security and embrace vulnerability, to see the urge to close and, instead, open.
<3 e.