Light

It's a fairly ubiquitous theme in mythology--that first, there was darkness--that the story began with light.

I had never given it much thought before. Why would light be the first act of creation?

Perhaps it is because without light, there is no creation. In darkness there is no substance, only potentiality—like Schrodinger’s cat, there’s a real possibility that the void is nothing but emptiness and death. Perceiving the darkness, there is fearfulness. Like the darkness, the universe is a thing made up of context. We all perceive the binary opposites that comprise reality, but in our perspective, things seem to have defined beginning and endpoints. But what east is there without west? There is no east pole or west pole, east and west only exist when you stand still and look for them. And even then, one simply flows into the other. Life and death, darkness and light, these are seemingly opposed forces that seem like they would cancel one another. But the light casts the shadow, does it not? And in that way, perhaps life and death are forms of the same type of energy as well, simply misunderstood by we mortal humans as we stand at a specific moment, the now, in between the two sides of the perceived spectrum of past and future.

Like east and west, the past and future do not exist outside of the context of one moment in time. That moment in time is now, and it emerges continually without interruption. The past flows out of the now, and is created by it, despite the illusion many people are under that the past created them. Any person can change the way they think about past events, and in doing so change how those things construct their identity, their life story. Time travel is already possible in the mind--and we can go back and change whatever we want by finding a new perspective through the lens of experience.

The future is also nothing more than a fluctuation of possibility--a wave pattern of potential outcomes that constantly changes as the present moment unfolds. 

So if the universe and all binary mechanisms are simply misunderstood parts of the same whole, light takes on a new significance. In darkness, the future is a state of fluctuation and probability, with no clear outcome or solidarity of meaning. The past is the same, an extension outward from the now, but with the illumination of the light, of our perception of it, what happened, and how it affected us.

Light is the first blessing of the cosmos. Through the light, we are granted vision. Our visionary powers are extraordinary, they allow for the collapse of infinite potentialities into a specific outcome, through our point of view in the here and now. With our sight, we can see the connections between all things, even things that seem like opposing forces. Through vision and will, one can find the beauty in each moment as it unfolds. When your true eyes are open, there is no death in the sense that our culture perceives it. There is only the ever-shifting wave of energy that powers all spirit, emerging into and out of the forms that we give it.

The recognition of this harmony creates an intense feeling of gratitude in the beholder, as all of the connections one can bear witness to become the catalyst for the next level of perception: the reality of infinite blessings that we all share. The natural state of energy is fluctuation, either via an entropic drain (negative energy) or a feedback loop (positive energy). Gratitude and blessings are the mechanism for positive feedback of the spirit. Thankfulness is a direct reaction to the realization of the miracle of your existence—seriously, just stop and think about the mathematical odds against your own existence, or the odds that you are even reading these words. There are no coincidences or accidents, only the emergent now. The feeling of gratitude serves to amplify your spiritual energy, this radiates out of you and into the cosmos. And once the gratitude has set the charge inside you, the blessings of the cosmos will find their way into your heart, like metal shavings to a magnet.

This is why light comes first—so that we may have the vision to perceive our blessings and be grateful for them.