Uncreated Light: The True You.

So many luminous souls who have gone before us have offered us the key to true discernment. Meister Eckhart was one of them and, in my view, was far ahead of, and went far beyond, Ignatius of Loyola.

Meister Eckhart paid a considerable price for teaching that the “Uncreated Light” present within every soul is the foundational core of our true identity. This is an identity that exists beyond the ego, the personality and the subconscious mind.

Interestingly, Richard Schwartz, the creator of Internal Family Systems therapy, has perhaps inadvertently and indirectly pointed towards this same truth. Within IFS, he describes a “Self” that is not simply another personality part, but rather the true agent of restorative healing. When we unblend from our various personality parts and allow the Self to become the seat of conscious experience, it is this Self that facilitates the healing and integration of those parts.

This Uncreated Light is what we can access in order to discern meaning and truth for ourselves. Yet accessing it requires something with which many of us struggle intensely: silence. It requires sustained periods of mindful silence in which we learn to become observers of the mind rather than remaining identified with it.

The more we practise this silence, and at times accompany it with periods of fasting when our health and circumstances permit, the more deeply this Light can illuminate dimensions of truth and understanding that the ordinary mind is incapable of reaching.

But the cost to the ego is high. To be drawn more deeply into this luminosity asks us to recognise that the egoic “I” ultimately knows nothing. To go all the way asks us to allow even our most cherished beliefs and opinions to be loosened, surrendered and, where necessary, dissolved. Yet we do not have to go all the way if that feels beyond us at this moment. I have not done this yet. There is no failure or weakness in this. We can still travel part of the way and begin to live more fully from the radiance of our Uncreated Light.