We Always Live in the LIght

Dear Friends,

It has been a long while since we worked with a sentence meditation  -- a method that has its own special benefits and risks. 

Our sentence for today derives from various sources and is a source.  Here:
 

We always live in the light.

One fruitful way to proceed is first to reject the sentence, forcefully and intimately, word by word.  So, for instance: Who is "we"?  What kind of colonizing impulse makes the author of the sentence, or us who might slavishly repeat it, dare to cast that "we" net?  Plus: I, we, obviously do not live in the light -- either physically or spiritually -- all the time.  So where does this "always" come from?  How about hateful, boring, ignorant or ridiculous times?  And what is meant by "live," and is it supposed to apply after death?  And then, "light" itself is such a spiritual cliché.  Isn't the whole thing just a feel-good sop?  

In this way, any initial resistance plays itself out. You push the sentence away as you draw nearer to it, like the lunar landing module thrusting away from the Moon's surface so as to approach without crashing.  Gradually, it is possible to drop the resistance and begin to investigate the words and their connection with a more open-hearted curiosity.  How wide a net do you yourself want to cast with that "we," for instance?  Can you include all humans?  The realms of nature?  The dead?  Non-physical beings?  Other times?  

You can continue, letting each word and the interplay among the words become more and more resonant with meaning.  A single word may come to glow with the significance of the whole sentence -- even a word like "in" -- while all the other words disappear.  Finally, even that last word may vanish, while the unfurling meaning remains.
 

We always live in the light.

 

wishing you joy in all you do,

Michael