The second post of the Simple Gift of Light series is the first step of relighting your life: fuel up.
The first step towards improving your life with the simple gift of light is to start seeing light like our ancestors did: as a mystical, magical, and even sacred gift.
This is going to take a little imagination. Most of our world is so polluted with trash light that we cannot see the beauty and magic our ancestors experienced every day and every night. And that’s our loss, because we slip into believing that light is just a thing we need, a commodity like toilet paper or a utility like electricity. For thousands of years, our ancestors thought of light not as the mundane but as the divine. In some cases, they quite literally worshipped light itself. More on the sacred nature of light in a moment.
This step may also require some patience because, if you are like me, you may want to skip to the action steps and get going. Perhaps because I am sitting on airplane while writing this, it occurred to me that this post is a little like fueling up the jet before takeoff. Perhaps you have enough fuel to get off the ground and are impatient, so you skip refueling. It may look like faster results at first, but you won’t get nearly as far. And, to carry the analogy to its conclusion, taking flight with nearly empty tanks could end in disaster. Trying out a new approach to light without fueling your imagination and desire might not be as life-threatening as a plane crash, but it could have life-altering negative consequences.
So, dig deep, and think about light for what it truly is – a phenomenon of epic proportions – and you will likely have the energy and focus needed to achieve the ability to wake gently, perform brilliantly, relax easily, and rest deeply.
THE SIMPLE, SACRED GIFT OF LIGHT
Light is woven through ancestral stories and beliefs from around the globe and throughout history; it is only in the last century or so that we collectively forgot the importance of light and relegated it to a building material like two-by-fours. I am no historian, but it is relatively easy to discover that:
The ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun god Ra. Ra was considered the creator of the universe, the giver of life, and a king who rode a boat into the sky each morning and then traveled through the underworld at night.
The ancient Greeks worshipped Helios, the god of sight and the Titan who rode a chariot of fire into the sky each morning.
The Quran utilizes the metaphor of light extensively, with the aptly named Verse of Light describing Allah as the Light of the heavens and earth.
The Hindu festival of Diwali, or Festival of Lights, marks the triumph of light over darkness, good over evil, and is celebrated with countless oil lamps, candles, and fireworks.
Buddhists seek enlightenment, a profound understanding of the true nature of existence, and Buddhas are depicted emitting light. Even names can reflect light; Amitabha is the Buddha of Infinite Light.
The ancestral stone circle builders in Senegal appear to have arranged some of their monuments to align with the rising of the sun on a particular day of the year, as did the enigmatic builders of Stonehenge for winter and summer solstice.
Across the ocean, the Mayans built entire complexes around the annual movement of the sun. At Chich’en Itza, during equinox, a shadow is cast on the 365 steps of the El Castillo pyramid that looks like a serpent’s body. A stone serpent’s head sits at the bottom of the steps, completing the illusion. Elsewhere, during zenith passages (when the sun passes directly overhead), observatories built by the Mayans allowed a beam of sunlight to hit a stone carving of the sun perfectly. This occurs only twice a year; the Mayans had the cycles of the sun, moon, and visible celestial bodies well integrated into their calendars and architecture.
In the book of Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Torah and Christian Bible, the first spoken words attributed to God are “let there be light.” Light is used as a metaphor as well, but it is worth noting that the first gift to the universe from God was light. And, as it is written, it was good.
Why did our ancestors – all of them – revere light itself? Perhaps because the only light they knew was eminently useful and endlessly beautiful.
SUNSHINE OR SMARTPHONE?
If there is one major shortcoming that robbed us of the benefits of light our ancestors knew, it is the fact that the best light in the world is absolutely free to everyone. Our current economy runs on consumption, on buying stuff and then buying more stuff, on upgrades and acquisitions. It is exceedingly difficult to make a profit selling sunshine when it happens everywhere, every day, with or without money changing hands. I think of light more as a gift, something freely given, because that is what happens outdoors naturally- and what should happen indoors but mostly does not.
Think about that for a second: our ancestors paid nothing for light during the day, and often very little in the way of wood gathering for light at night. We pay for light fixtures and electricity and all that comes with it for light in our homes, workplaces, schools, and institutions every day, yet our light pales in comparison to what our ancestors received working outdoors. If you have a lot of money and interest, the best electric lighting available today is simply an attempt…to make our indoors closer to the free light that exists outdoors.
It may be a cheap shot, but I will blame greed for why we are more likely to lean on cell phones than sunshine to get what we think we need out of a day. Our ancestors did not have the luxury (or burden) of smart phones.
The rising and setting of the sun marked the passing of time and still does to some extent, but we are more likely to end our workday when a time-keeping device tells us to stop. The sun is rising earlier and earlier each day as I write this and setting later and later as we move towards summer solstice, but I get up every day at the exact same time with the help of a digital timekeeping device. Our smartphones are our sunshine.
The Mayans used lunar cycles and solar cycles to generate calendars and, while our calendars still have remnants of moon phases (our months, the word itself a derivative of moon) and solar cycles (our years), I know that today is May 3rd because my phone told me so.
Ancient sailors used the stars for navigation, relying on tiny pinpricks of light billions of miles away to reach destinations here on earth. The looked up and enjoyed the beauty of the night sky; we look down at our smartphone or listen to its voice chirp out directions from satellite-driven GPS.
Light has infinite beauty, if we train our eyes to see, and can serve as endless entertainment. We could watch sunrises and sunsets, enjoy dappled sunlight through tree leaves, see the Milky Way galaxy around us. We could see cloud shadows racing across the ground and trace shadows of buildings as they move through the day. Instead, I download mindless movies to watch on the flight home after a conference.
Our oldest source of light we could control (if only barely) is flame and humans have danced around fires and cooked over them and stayed warm by them forever. When I go camping with my wife or family, we hope for evenings cool enough for a campfire. The heat is almost an unwanted byproduct; we want the warm, dancing, beautiful light of the fire most of all. To keep on with the smartphone analogy, I can order food from my phone without leaving the couch, but I will probably not get the joy of a roaring fire as well.
Our ancestors also used the light of fires for safety at night, creating a visible barrier between the dangerous, dark forests and the welcoming circle. We rarely use fire for light- it is terribly inefficient and literally functions by releasing carbon into our atmosphere- but we carry light sources in our pockets all the time.
A LONG HARD LOOK
My young adult son enjoys astrophotography, a science-based art form that grew in popularity with the advent of the digital camera. He attaches a camera to a telescope, points it at a particular tiny slice of the sky, and takes a picture. Then he takes another. And another. Some of his “photographs” require over fifty hours of exposure, each one catching only a few photons that traveled many light years to land on his camera sensor. Carefully, he stacks the photographs together and produces stunning images of galaxies once visible only to the Hubble telescope or other incredibly expensive and giant telescopes.
He looks for light hard enough and long enough and finds unbelievable beauty. We could learn something from his example.
Your first step towards living a better life through the transforming power of light is to stop, look, and see the magic and beauty of natural light around you. Watch a sunset and then ask yourself if you would appreciate a similar calming effect and beauty in your home. Connect with your ancestral roots and notice the sun’s position in the sky and how it is unique for this time of year, then wonder if you could spend a few minutes each day enjoying free sunshine instead of your smartphone.
Do you want light to become magical, mystical, and sacred again? Then you are ready to capture the four key benefits of light.