Waiting for the inner light to be revealed

“And once I remember hearing Mother tell how the Quakers in church sat silently and waited for the ‘inner light.’ ”
Brenda Ueland
Me

I am sitting silently waiting for the inner light to reveal itself. In this moment I have no words, or too many words. I am feeling lost. I don’t want to say the wrong thing, I don’t want to babble on just so I can come up with a blog post. And 322 days in, not having missed a single day, I cannot not write one.

But sometimes filling the space for no other reason than to fill it is not very fulfilling work either. What, then, to do?

So I paged through some of the books piled high here on my desk. I am surrounded with piles of books just now that I have pulled from my bookshelves for the writing of my class material for the Sunday Night Writing Group. And I opened this book, worn and weathered with age, by Brenda Ueland whom I love (Her 1938 book on writing, If You Want To Write: A Book About Art, Independence and Spirit is one of my all-time favorite books on writing. Me is her autobiography.) and I came across the quote at the top of the page. And it made me think.

I am not a church goer. I was raised Catholic, spent most of my adult life as a Buddhist, and in 2009 was ordained an Interfaith Minister. I have spent my life searching and seeking but organized religion has never been able to hold me for long. What I have sought for decades now is what I call “Direct Communion.” I have written about this before. Oh, I believe in God, I talk to God all day long, I am, on some days, what feels like in a continual state of prayer, but I don’t want to sit in a building and have someone preach at me and tell me what I’m supposed to believe, and how I’m supposed to live, and do life in general. The quote that has best described my feeling about the whole matter comes from the Dalai Lama…

“This is my simple religion.
There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy.
Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.”

If you want to know what I believe that is it.

But, still, I think as we grow older we want to be part of something, we want to have a sense of community. At least I am finding that I do. A couple of years ago I went to Unity Church where I had attended when we lived in Virginia for several years. Lovely people, beautiful teachings, not my cup of tea. I wasn’t comfortable there. I didn’t fit. I left again with the resolve not to look for organized religion because it is just not a fit for me. But then I keep coming back to these simple Quaker teachings. Sitting in silence, in community, no one proselytizing, simply speaking, from the heart, if they are compelled to do so, by the inner light revealed. This is my very simple understanding of how it works and I’m sure it’s not completely accurate, or I don’t really understand it, but for the first time in a long time I am curious. I may just want to know more.

But for now, today, as I sit here waiting for something to be revealed, not something that I feel like I have to say to say something at all, but something that wells up from within that might fit what I have just read about their religion, “Most Friends (Quakers) believe in continuing revelation, which is the religious belief that truth is continuously revealed directly to individuals from God.” (This is exactly the “Direct Communion” I have been seeking for decades.) I am realizing that there is nothing for me to say today. There is the holiness of sitting in meditation and the knowledge that when something is meant to come it will come. In this moment nothing has come. I am satisfied and at peace with silence.

We live in a world where unless the airspace is filled with noise — words, machines, constant idle conversation, the humming of electronic devices, the painful droning on of social media — people become ill at ease. I have been trying to make my life more than it has been because I felt like I had to be a more social creature, as though that was the right way to be. But the thing is I have never been a social creature, not easily, not since I was an only child growing up in a frightening world, or through adulthood when though I loved my family, my children, more than life itself, I always craved solitude and silence in a painful way. I have done well living alone for nearly 20 years. It’s just been in these last years I have begun to get lonely but I have, interestingly, begun to question whether I am really lonely or simply trying to live in a way I feel that I should.

What I do know is this, whether or not I ever attend a Quaker meeting, I want to spend less time talking, unless I really have something to say. I want to wait for the inner light to be revealed. That made sense to me when I read it, it felt right, and it somehow eased my heart. I have never been able to bear social settings where people prattled on about surface matters and random conversation. I have been trying to be what I am not just to fit in with others. I am not going to do this any longer.

This is even reflected in the way that I teach. In the writing we go very deep. When we read we read only what we wrote. No more. I don’t allow conversation, or explanations, or critique. The writing stands alone. It is a container of profound depth and wisdom. We sit with what we wrote and let it teach us what it needs to teach us. It is not a social group, it is not a support group, it is a place where deep truths are uncovered, where what is holy and profound deep inside us is revealed. An inner alchemy happens when we sit in the silence with what we have written. Some people don’t like this and leave. They want to chatter on, they want the class to be a social gathering. It is not and it is never going to be. When we write the inner light is revealed. We sit and bask in its glow.

I never quite understood this in the way that I have today and I have been teaching these classes for 40 years. This Sunday Night Writing Group is a deeply spiritual process, writing as a spiritual practice, you are here to do the deep work or you may leave and if you do I bless you, release you, and pray that you find what is exactly the thing that you really need. I only want to work with people who will commit deeply, who want to change their lives. And this work will do that.

I had no idea I was going to write about my writing classes here. I just realized the connection as I started to write. Perhaps that was the inner light revealed that I needed to see today. We are 4 weeks into these classes tomorrow night. I get clearer each week about what this is and I am deeply moved as I see it unfold, and as an incredible number of women show up each week to do the work. Maybe I don’t have to sit in a Quaker meeting. Maybe I just need to be here. Hmm, that is something I will think about. But today I need nothing more than this. Kindness, silence, and the inner light revealed. No more, no less. This is what I want. I think I am getting clearer on my life and what I want it to be. This is a greater revelation than I imagined I would come to today when I started writing this, but I know something else. I have been in a lot of pain, I have really been suffering, because I was trying to live a way I thought I was supposed to. I was trying to live a way I thought others wanted me to. But I simply want silence, peace, and to do my work. I want Direct Communion with God. And I will have it. I need nothing more, not now. I just heaved a sigh of relief. I have been trying so hard to be something I am not. That stops today.