As you look around you, everything you see is light. Light flows from whatever you see into your eyes. It touches everything, and as it touches things, it changes them, little by little. Over time, curtains fade. Plants grow. Our moods respond to quantities and qualities of light.
Mostly, when we look at things, we don’t look at the light, we use the light to illuminate the things that we want to see. When we find ourselves just looking at light, we are in the moment, appreciating the beauty around us. Yet all the time, whenever we open our eyes, all we see is light. Sometimes we appreciate it, sometimes we don’t. Light doesn’t mind how we feel about it. It keeps touching us, lightly.
Our awareness is similar to light. When we are awake it is shining. It is watching, hearing, smelling, tasting, thinking and touching. As we focus our awareness on things we change them. If we concentrate on your school work it gets done. As we focus on the road, we get to where we’re going. As we give our attention to children, they grow. When we give our attention to our moods, they improve.
In order to elevate your moods, you need to practice using the light touch of your awareness. Like light, you shine your awareness on your feelings, you don’t expect them to change, you don’t will them to change, you just pay attention to them and observe the change. When you look at the feelings, you see the thoughts that come with them. It doesn’t matter to your awareness what the thoughts are, but it matters to the feelings.
As you observe the interplay between your awareness, thoughts, and feelings from the perspective of light, you find that you do care what the feelings are. You have a preference for pleasant feelings. That caring and preference is the basis of compassion. When your awareness holds compassion for your thoughts and feelings it touches them lightly and moves them along. Pausing to see the light in the light or your awareness in your awareness creates space for compassion, which opens the gates for love. Love is the ultimate light touch that heals as it shines.
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