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Practising the Presence of the Light |
The Light Invocation is really not as simple as it often appears to people. There are many points of concentration, and in focusing on one, you must not lose the others. In other words, to receive that Light, every bit of you—every pore of your skin—has to be concentrated on what you are doing. Most of the time, we are just self-interested, but here is a place where you can use this self-interest as a tool to get you into quite a different perception of yourself. Then one day you will have that experience where the body, besides being just flesh and bone and skin, will be a mass of Light. And that experience is yours. Nobody, absolutely nobody, can ever take that away from you. We often talk about spiritual nourishment. We get inspiration by reading or perhaps doing little rituals. But what really gets you to Higher Consciousness is doing whatever you are doing really intensely, being really there with every fiber of your being even for just five or ten minutes. That’s what gets you there. Some people meditate four, five, six hours, but that is not everybody’s way. And what matters is not how long you do it, but how much you put into what you do, because that is what you get out. When I had the experience of the Light Invocation, I did not achieve a state of absolute purity. That would be a very misleading statement. I did not. So, if I could experience this, with all the shortcomings that I at that time, so can you. It’s really your desire, your longing for the Most High that brings you to the experience. You will not get it from wanting another human being. Any person will let you down sooner or later, because everyone has to go her or his own way, and another person’s development probably isn’t parallel to yours anyway. So the day comes when people have to part their ways. But if you follow the Divine, the Divine will never part from you. Maintain the thought that you are really never without the divine presence. Remember to be with the Divine all the time. To help you remember, you can link that thought to your breath. You can’t go for very long at all without breathing. So sit quietly and just watch your breath. Let the breath flow into the body, and don’t make an effort to breathe. Let the breath flow. Then link it in your mind with prana. That’s the Divine within you. Don’t wait. Get started and keep going. Never mind if sometimes you really have to grit your teeth to keep going, if sometimes your practice is just sheer willpower. You can’t help that. But if you stay with it and see yourself through, the Divine will let the sun shine in. By Swami Sivananda Radha |