The Fire Within
We were sitting around a campfire in the High Sierras of California
We were sitting around a campfire in the High Sierras of California recently, watching the flames leap and lick from the firewood we had collected from the forest. As the fire began to die down at the end of the evening, it occurred to me that there was very little left of the logs after the fire was gone from them— just few simple ashes. I remembered that the Toltecs tell us that everything is made of Light. We might also say everything is made of Consciousness, or Life, or Love, or Divine Mind, or God. There seems to be one animating power that is in and through the entire universe, which animates the material universe, but is not material itself.
This Light (or Consciousness, etc) is alive, and not limited in time or space. If you look into the night sky, or very closely at your own body, you discover that everything is made of points of matter (stars or atoms), suspended in what appears to be empty space. That space is not empty however, because anything put into that space will be illuminated by the Light that is everywhere. Space is filled with light. Since even in the smallest object, the space occupies much more room than the points of matter, we can see that there is no boundary to the Light. There is no place where the Light between the stars in the Heavens ends and something else in the space between your atoms begins. It is all the same open space, and all the same Light.
By whatever name we call this Light, IT is that which makes up most of the Universe.
As the campfire slowly consumed the logs, I saw that it was the Light that had come to earth as the creative force, and had taken form and grown as a tree— looking solid and permanent. And as that Light was released back out of the wood as the “fire,” what was left was very little actual matter. Only a few ashes remained, as those points of matter, when the animating Light returned to from whence it had come.
If we were to burn our bodies, we would see the same thing. Only a small cup of matter would remain when the Light returned to its source. So what are You? Is the truth of You that small cup of matter that seems so real and important to you, or is the true You the Light that animates and gives substance to the matter?
The campfire made real for me the truth of “I AM.” I AM that One Thing that is in and through all of Creation. I am The Light. You are The Light. And that makes us the same One Thing. It does not matter what you call it. I hope you can feel it.
WE ARE.
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