If anything actually “is”, I think it is the Glow. Everything I can see, touch, hear, smell, taste or imagine are but tiny glimpses of the Glow. They are but small differentiations of the Glow. They are facets on an all-encompassing diamond. My notion of self is like one of those facets.
When I was born, all I was aware of was the Glow. Time, space, self were all unknowns for me. Gradually, I no longer saw the Glow as it was but began to distinguish various features as I learned to use my senses to put stall in some kind of order I could understand. Concepts and names became the framework of my world based on my experience and the teaching of my parents.
Repeated experience gave my world texture, color, shape and meaning. Shape and color combined to create images that I learned to associate with taste and touch. The glow became dimmer as objects and people filled my consciousness.
Order imposed by my own mind replaced the all-embracing Glow, fragments appeared where there had been only unity and oneness. My universe broke into manageable and useful pieces.
My notion of self grew as my process of individuation shaped my experience and concept of who I was. My gaze that once only knew the Glow became more and more constricted. It gradually turned inward for understanding and reference, learning to see only the sketchy countenance of people, places and things. Eyes that once only saw sunlight soon looked through stained glass windows that defined my world.
I learned to see only the forms that I created, touch what I expected to touch, slowly restricting my awareness of what is. My parents and culture guided me along on this odyssey. My consciousness gradually learned to understand the Glow through the limits of my body and culture.
Like my fellow humans, my body had evolved to a point where the sense of self and separation dominated my consciousness. The sense of self and separation had become more important than my unlimited awareness of my universe. This probably helped survival. Nevertheless, the Glow had been reduced to a mere glimmer.
I’m working to turn this process around, to unlearn much of what I have learned. I am trying to recapture that awareness of the Glow that I first experienced when I was born, but now with a lifetime of experience to support it. I am now so much more capable of allowing myself to be immersed and absorbed in the Glow. First I have to rid myself of all the crusty growths that have shaped my consciousness. They have been helpful in a sort of manner, and they are so familiar.
This does demand work, but it is mainly a kind of surrender. Hello Glow, my old friend.