Collecting Tools for Your Spiritual Toolbox - Light

In my garage I have a plastic container in which I keep a lot of my more commonly used tools.  Living in a rental, I don't have too much use for them.  So, the other day I noticed that the tools were pretty dusty and a few even had some early signs of rust.  Tools tend to be essential instruments only when we have need for them.

Human beings are endowed with set of spiritual tools to aid them in building a grounded, centered space for existing.  Grounded people build sensitive grounded communities with a central focus on a Sacred Center.  How often do you reach into your spiritual tool box?  If it has been awhile since you felt any need for a spiritual fix, then your spiritual tools have likely gotten misplaced or fallen into disrepair like those in my garage.

This blog, as you can see by the date of my last entry, has been sitting dormant gathering cyber dust and rust.  For the next few weeks heading into the end of the Christian calendar and into Advent I will be writing about different spiritual tools that you possess, which you may have forgotten were there.

Today I am going to remind us about perhaps the single most fundamental tool we have.

You are the light of the world....  Matthew 5:14

Every human being is born with a light inside.  This light is the basic indefinable energy that is the driving power we refer to as "life."  When a baby is born, God strikes a flint and that spark causes the diaphragm to contract and the first breath grabs hold.  The inner metabolic furnace holds that light and it will continue to burn until the lifespan of that person expires.

We forget we have this God light within. Like other tools it can get ignored and if we don't feed it that spirit light dims.  A good way to keep it bright is simply by focusing on it.  The following meditation might be helpful. 

1. Take a few deep, slow breaths into the area where your heart is located in the center of your chest.
2. Imagine a bright light - God's light - in the center of your chest and like a flame it brightens with each in-breath.
3. With each in-breath the light grows brighter, warmer, and larger.  
4. Continue breathing until the light is filling you.
5. Imagine that everything troubling you, all your anxieties, worries, troubles are a dark cloud.
6. On the next in-breath, breathe in the dark cloud and see your God light evaporate the cloud.
7. Continue with this meditation as long as you wish.  When you are finished express your gratitude to God and go on about your day or evening.