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!)
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
[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
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
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
Thanks for sharing!
- More
