Spiritual light, Light from Above, is literally awesome.  When it shines on me and I am prepared to not identify with what I see, it can transform me.  Nothing else has its power.

In the Gurdjieff teaching, this seeing is called “correctly conducted self-observation”.  And this seeing, the unarguable truth of it, causes real suffering in me.

But if I am too identified with what I see, I will get scared, and inwardly I will run from the Light in a kind of “spiritual photophobia”.

On the one hand, much in me craves this Light.  Yet on the other hand, I cannot control (except in the crudest way) how much of this Light will come inside.  I sense that if the Light shows me too much too soon, I will be really harmed to some degree.

So, I have a serious problem.  My ordinary mind doesn’t have a clue about this Light: it poses theories about it and has thoughts about it; it blusters (or demeans itself) about it.  But my thought doesn’t really know.

And the dilemma continues: I crave the Light and I fear the Light.

Here is where Conscience comes in.  My conscience, the representative of the Higher in me, knows how to be about Light.  And, like Light itself, my conscience can show me how to be.  It can show me the big picture, and I can know for myself that I must let go of my identification with what most of me is sure is the real me.

But the payment for this knowing—–is suffering.  Real suffering.  Real unhappiness.  With no escape.          I suffer who I am.

Then, when this seeing is paid for, conscience shows me more,  and I suffer anew.  Yet what is real in me is never harmed by this seeing.  Only what I can let go of, what I must let go of is hurt.

And with pauses and apparent setbacks, transformation occurs.  I don’t transform myself, I just permit the Light to transform me.  Slowly.  Glacially slowly.

The mind, ever accustomed to being in charge, tries to imitate and I just have to “step to one side” and let it pretend.  But something in me knows.

And the taste—the unmistakable taste—of following real conscience, will eventually prevail.  I do not lose hope.

.                   Lou Gottlieb                          6/17/2018