Light from Light

Last year, the University of Derby offered us a research student for a month. We decided that the best use of her time would be to carry out an impact survey among people who had signed up for our weekly online meditation sessions.

The feedback and stories we received were richer than we could have imagined. One person responded, ‘Today I can say with honesty that I live more in accordance with my nature, maybe for the first time ever. I know myself. I acknowledge and trust myself. I can feel my anchoring in myself, in the world and in God.’

Made in the image of Love

At the heart of Christianity is a simple truth we easily forget: we are made in the image of God. The core of our being, the deepest truth of who we are, is God. There might be many reasons why we find it difficult to accept this. Life might feel like a terrible mess. We might feel we’ve made all sorts of mistakes which seem to ‘prove’ that we are essentially flawed. But despite what we may have been told, or told ourselves about ourselves, our deepest impulse is not towards evil, but towards love. How could it be otherwise when God is our being and God is Love?[1]

As we begin to see the deep truth of who we are, we become aware of how our life, and our relationships, can be transformed if we live from this deepest truth of our being. To begin to see this has profound implications for how we understand and relate to ourselves, and to others. We will want to live a life of love, simply because this is what it means – what it ‘looks like’ – to be who we are.

The journey inward

After many years of searching for meaning, truth and happiness, the great spiritual breakthrough which changed the whole direction of St. Augustine’s life, was the realisation that what he had been searching for outside himself was to be found within himself. This realisation led Augustine to write, ‘Come back to your heart. In your inner self Christ has made his home.’ Beneath all our self-criticism and striving lies something radiant, more beautiful than we can imagine.

The Cloud of Unknowing: Ancient Wisdom for Our Time

The great medieval texts The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counsel, are among the most important texts on meditation in the Christian tradition. Originally written as practical guides for his student, the anonymous author teaches with a clarity, directness and humour that reaches across the centuries.

The author sees the practice of meditation as a path of integration – which contributes not only to the well-being of the practitioner, but to the well-being of all people, of the entire universe. He writes with great wisdom about how the simple practice will help us discover the extraordinary truth of who we are.

I’d like to share some words I translated from The Book of Privy Counsel, which you can find in Chapter 9 of our book, The Missing Peace.

When we turn to this work of contemplation, we should not think about what we are going to do next. When thoughts arise (as they will), we should lay them aside, regardless of whether they appear to be good thoughts or not-so-good thoughts. Release all that arises in the surface mind and rest in a naked intent reaching out to God, without clothing this intent with any thought about God.

Let God be God and be content to accept that he is as he is without forcing God into any other shape or seeking to understand him with intellectual cleverness. Trust that God is God and let this be your foundation.

Add no thoughts about yourself, just as you do not add any thoughts about God, so that you may be one with him in awareness, without any division or scattering of mind. For God is your being, and you are what you are in him.

And so, in this work of contemplation, open your mind to God as you do to yourself, and to yourself as you do to God, accepting that he is as he is and you are as you are, so that your thoughts are not dispersed or divided, but one in him who is All.

He is the ground of being both to himself and to all things; and that all things have their being in him and he is the being of all things means that he is one in all things and all things are in his oneness.

In this way shall your thoughts and feelings be oned with him in grace without separation, if all your curious thinking about the attributes of your mysterious being, and of his, are pushed far back; so that your thought may be naked and your awareness unclouded, and you, in your nakedness, by the touching of grace, may be secretly sustained in your awareness by him simply as he is and beyond your seeing …

Look up then lightly, and say to your Lord, whether in words or in the silent purpose of your heart: ‘That I am, Lord, I offer to you, for it is you.’

Light from Light

Over time, our simple practice of meditation helps us to accept Christ’s invitation, ‘Come away to a quiet place and rest awhile’ – to rest, just as we are, in the mystery of the One in whom we live and move and have our being – to rest in the One who is our being.

In the loving-light of awareness we can recognise that God is our being, that our life is pure gift, that we are light from light (in the words of the Nicene Creed). As the Psalmist sang, ‘For with you is the fountain of life; in your light shall we see light’ (Psalm 36:9).

May God help us to know that the heart of who we are is more beautiful than we could ever imagine.

May we help others to know how beautiful they are.