Greetings,

I too enjoy linking words to seek  meaning. Another word connection I think is meaningful is feeling light (weight)-- because moving into the light of a mystical encounter can involve being lifted and having gravity voided.    So the light brings this lightness of being!

My first times noticing light were when I would awake in a floaty happy mood with my eyes still closed and think of how happy I felt and what a beautiful sunny day it must be outside to have such a wonderful light shining even through my closed eyelids--then to open my eyes and find the room dark.  Opening my eyes while the light was bright caused a painful jerk/thud, so I think now that I had too abruptly ended an OBE.  But I didn't know that then.

Most recent explorations of light have been to step forward into the 3D light-within-darkness. It is an amazing space out/in there!

IMO the amount of light in an 'afterlife' experience seems to be a gauge of how much spirit is there. We can learn from darker dimmer images as well as from brighter ones, as long as we note spirit's presence and how that influences the message.

We are also light-bringers!

Love, Bets

I'd echo Bets experience. It can build to the most incredible intensity. It seems to be a natural phenomenon that develops after lots of meditation.

Light when its discussed seems to vary from a metaphor for what's good and wholesome to an actual sensory experience of the sort she describes. It can masquerade as higher entities, or as the portal to the afterlife too it seems, although I've not had those experiences.

These experiences with light tend in my experience to be incredibly energising - a half hour resting in the light seems as good as a night's sleep almost. (although the tiredness does catch up with you in a few hours as the effect wears off)

Buddhism teaches a basic rule of conduct in the Bardos (the afterlife - while cycling through to rebirth) which broadly speaking say 'go for the brightest light around at a given time' (the colours may vary a bit) if you want to avoid an unfortunate rebirth. They warn against heading for the warm cosy glow, no matter how harsh the light seems....

AhSoLaoTsuAhhOmmra - Thank you for those beautiful words.
Nanner

Nanner wrote on Dec 13^th, 2007 at 7:55am:

 

  You're welcome beautiful and intense looking Nanner/Anja.   I appreciate your appreciation.

I don't know everything about the light, Pulsar, but I met what looked like "light" beings in a lucid dream once. I've seen them in meditation too, in various forms. Of course, I don't know if it is all a figment of my imagination, but, in meditation and in dreaming, these were spontaneous images, so just part of a natural process.

Too, it is possible to "feel" light, internally, while meditating, to feel energy moving around. In fact, it feels very good.

We are made to follow the sun, and we will always be this way. It is part of our physical nature, and part of our instinctive longings.

Because of light, we see beauty around us. What kind of beauty would we be able to imagine and create in a world without light?

Of course, there is beauty too, beneath the ocean waves, where no light can shine upon it, but rarely.

So, it is true, that we cannot always notice everything right away, but without the light, where then would we be?

love, blink

I must be a bit slow, I'd not made the 'Nanner' connection.

On light and the like, with an eye to the other thread. I've consistently had problems with low thyroid and yet have tended to experience quite a lot of light - for what that's worth. I've never experienced it as anything other than a general and  highly energised feeling of light and love though - while it has happened for whetever reason I don't seem to much go in for experience involving separate beings.

No hassle on the Buddha/Christ thing J, it's not about winners and losers but about horses for courses. My instinct (not original) is that great teachers come when they are needed (in response to the needs of their time), and that it's not an option for us to somehow define one as good, the other as bad. Pearl fishing requires us to draw wisely from them all. (this last few might upset a few in both of the above traditions, but seems to be what was taught)

Of course not all teachers are great, but since we're anyway filtering teachings which have been passed down over very long periods of time and consequently may not be presented as original we have to apply a lot of our own discretion in deciding what we draw from who and where.

I can't account for the differences in astrological terms or anything, but the Buddha seems to have taught a very carefully figured out (in intellectual logicial terms) real life message which started from very conventional rule based living, but which extended to include the highest imaginable experience and consciousness.

He seems to have been injecting a less superstitious approach into spirituality - in an attempt to offset what he saw as the not so grounded nature of much as Dave has said contemporary belief which emphasised superstitious worship and invocation of a huge panoply of capricious Gods rather than personal work, and a rational engagement with our reality and path to produce spiritual growth.

It's argued that he avoided use of the word God and stayed with practically usable descriptions of the highest forms of consciousness (which is in my view just another way of pointing towards the same thing) for this reason too, his teaching would otherwise have drawn unnecessary flak and been lost in the system of multiple Gods around at that time.

Jesus, at least as I receive the message, seems to have taught the more basic factual stuff too, but then gone on to teach a more intuitive and in some ways simpler message of living through love. He seems to have taught very explicitly of the possibility of a personal relationship with God, but still very much in the context of a personal path of practice and growth.

I'm not sure why, but I could very easily speculate that this was in order to offset the unfeeling, rationalistic and intellectual mind we're so familiar with now which was then coming to the fore with the authoritarian culture created by the Roman empire, the Greeks and so on. His message has endured, but was arguably almost consumed by the Pauline church which was (with the help of the emperor Constantine)  was formally built on this culture. The scientific revolution and its cult of reason while important will if not softened now cost us our world and what remains of our hearts. (broadly as mentioned in the thread on the Golden Compass)  It's perhaps only now that his message is really getting through.

Buddhism has remained enormously important too, if only because it's rationality, tolerance  and practical applicability to one's life makes it very accessible for the modern intellectually oriented mind.

There are other great traditions out there too which if we can remain open enough to pearl fish instead of retiring to our bunkers and looking for differences to exploit and sow separation with all have so much helpful to say.

Anyway - more ramblings...

Interesting discussion. I had thought that light was simply the way we experienced God - something like Light = Life, and that's the major Source. But it might be explicable in biological terms.  My usual experience is in meditation when I seem to be getting into transcendental stuff.