Light from Light:

“Nobody anywhere in the world, at any time in human history, can stop being the image of God, for this image is chiefly in the soul or mind.”

Sylvester Houedard OSB[1]

One of the things that upsets me is the surprise, excitement and relief that some Christians express after they hear that the essence of who they are is more beautiful than they could ever imagine.

I’m not upset, of course, to hear people’s excitement, only that anyone could spend any time as a Christian without hearing this. Even worse, is that some may have been given the impression that the essence of who they are is in some way less beautiful than the image of God.

There might be many reasons why we might find it difficult to accept that we are made in the image of God. Life might feel like a terrible mess. We might feel we’ve made all sorts of mistakes which indicate or ‘prove’ that we are essentially flawed.

But it shouldn’t come as a complete surprise to a Christian to hear that their essence is beautiful. It’s just to say that we are made in the pristine image of God.

To really know this has profound implications for how we understand and relate to ourselves and others and the extent to which we fully embrace the gift of our shared life (which we’ll explore in future blogs).

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 understanding led Augustine to write, “Come back to your heart. In your inner self Christ has made his home. In your inner self you will be renewed in God’s image. And in his image, you will recognise your creator.”

When we come back to the heart of who we are, we discover that God has made his home there. We are renewed in God’s image. And in his image which we are, we recognise God, our creator.

You just can’t get away from how beautiful we really are, though we seem to spend a considerable amount of time trying to dodge this truth. To realise the essence of who we are is to recognise God, who has made his home within us and made this home the perfect image of himself.

How do we come back to our heart, to know the extraordinary truth of who we are?

Jesus teaches a simple way of prayer that reflects his own frequent communing with the Father in silence and solitude: “When you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”[2]

In meditation, we focus our attention on silently reciting our prayer word in unison with the flow of our breath. By this simple means we go to our “inner room” and pray to our Father in silence (in “secret”).

When we notice our attention has been distracted by a thought (by “thought” I also mean feelings, bodily sensations and any other object of experience), we quietly return our attention to our practice and come back to our “inner room.”

Over time, as we get used to noticing and lifting our attention off our thoughts, we come to see that we are not our thoughts (which ceaselessly come and go) but the witness and knower of them.

We find that our thoughts appear in a vast, open spaciousness of awareness which illuminates (knows) all that appears within it.

We come to know a great stillness, a great silent peace, and realise we are this peace of luminous awareness, vaster, fuller than we can grasp.

During a recent stay on the little Greek island of Paxos, I translated some chapters of the remarkable 14th century guide to contemplative prayer, The Book of Privy Counselling,[3] written by the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing.

Here are some extracts from the first pages of this guide, where the author outlines a wonderfully simple way of praying in the inner room of our heart, encouraging us to still our busy thinking mind and rest in loving, grateful awareness.

“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.

Accept this naked intent, rooted in trust, to be nothing but a blind awareness of your own existence, as if you were inwardly saying to God, ‘That I exist, Lord, I offer to you, with no thought about you.’

It’s as if you’re saying to God: ‘That I am, Lord, I offer to you, without adding any thought about you, but simply accepting you as you are — and nothing beyond that.’

Add no thoughts about yourself, just as you do not add any thoughts about God, so that you may be one with him in spirit, 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.

Thus shall your thoughts and feelings be oned[4] 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 — 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.’

And be aware, nakedly, plainly and simply that you are as you are, without anything added.”

Life might feel like a terrible mess. We might feel we’ve made mistakes which indicate or ‘prove’ that we are essentially flawed. But to realise the essence of who we are is to recognise God, who has made his home within us and made this home the perfect image of himself.

“Nobody anywhere in the world, at any time in human history, can stop being the image of God, for this image is chiefly in the soul or mind.”

In his Letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes, “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”[5]

From the perspective of Christian meditation, “renewal” of the mind is the unveiling of the heart of mind (the heart of who we are) as luminous awareness. And it is in the loving-light of awareness that we recognise God as our creator and that our life is pure gift, 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.”[6]

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

[1] From the paper BUDDHIST HALOES & CATHOLIC HALOES — ARE THEY THE SAME COLOUR? Or TALKING AT TALACRE ON TALKING TO TIBETANS AT TALACRE provided in 1986 to the Benedictine nuns of Talacre, the Abbot President of the English Benedictine Congregation, the Abbot President of the Subiaco Congregation, His Holiness the Dalai Lama and others, to support understanding between Benedictines and a visiting Tibetan delegation.

[2] Matthew 6:6.

[3] Working from the Middle English edition The Cloud of Unknowing and The Book of Privy Counselling, edited by Phyllis Hodgson (published for The Early English Text Society by Oxford University Press).

[4] “Oynd”, a Middle English term indicating the realisation (unveiling) of essential oneness.

[5] Romans 12:2.

[6] Psalm 36:9.