A Speck of Light

What you are is nothing ordinary, nowhere near being ordinary. We have gotten used to seeing ourself small, a speck of consciousness in the wider picture of the universe, with its trillions of other specks. We have made consciousness a mere apparatus, something that allows us to apprehend reality. For most of us, reality as the world is the real thing. Consciousness is nothing to speak about or even mention: just a tiny, taken for granted sparkle in the mind. A mere instrument at the service of a limited, separate entity. This instrument is nearly transparent, hardly worth considering, and is often reduced to what is called conscience, which is in fact only mind. But could it be that the most important aspect of our lives resides there, in and as that speck, in and as that sparkle that we have ignored and misunderstood for millennia? We have been exclusively fascinated by the content of our minds, by our bodies, and by this enthralling world, and we have stopped there, leaving the most precious jewel of our lives aside. But this attitude is in fact an elaborate system of avoidance. As Krishnamurti once said: “Your whole concern is with escape.”

We are constantly privileging the content at the expense of the vessel that holds it, and the known at the expense of the unknowable. We want to possess and control, and feel the satisfaction of it. We prefer having experiences to exploring the nature of all experiences. But there is a seed waiting in the tender soil of our mind, that needs our attention and care. It thrives when being observed. It grows under the scrutiny of a loving contemplation. Its infinite proportions are a thing to watch, that can turn your life upside down, and sweep it clean of its erroneous foundations. You have longed all your life for what it can give you. It will strip you of your hopes or beliefs. You will have no use of them, for you will hold in your heart and as your experience the object of all beliefs, and the fulfilment of all hopes. Don’t always go for what is manifest in your life, but attach yourself to the intangible, to that little piece of emptiness that hides behind all your endless desires and pursuits. This is the secret for a good living. This is your speck of light in the darkness.

The evidence that consciousness is literally felt as nothing in our experience is revealed in the fact that some languages don’t even have a word for ‘awareness’. It is as if that thing in us that is conscious is declared not there. As if there was nothing between the body and the world but sense perceptions — just the seeing, the hearing of manifested existence. How would that suffice to make a knowing, a being aware, a presence? It shows how a simple belief has the power to erase reality, how a theory of reality can conceal reality. But life is nothing but the experience of that which is aware. Without the foundation of awareness, experience cannot experience itself and is therefore rendered as deaf and blind. Without the running power of consciousness, life’s engine comes to a stop. Life is like swallowed back into non-existence. So overwhelming is the presence of consciousness that it is lending itself as the constituent of the world. The world is transformed, devoured, its nature rendered visible as consciousness. The thousands broken, separate pieces of the apparent world all gathered in one single piece of knowing. This is what our believed speck of consciousness is in fact, when it is considered and examined.

There is this interesting French expression, ‘prise de conscience’, which refers to an insight or limited awareness, an opening, a tapping into understanding, a realisation. This is the moment when we are being invited to silence, the place where our mind is allowed to expand and see in that expansion something new. In this ‘seizing of consciousness’ lies the source of all creation. Something shows up, declares itself to yourself. And this something is you, who you truly are. It is that insignificant speck of consciousness which is now discovered to be everything, the very fabric of reality, and the key to your feeling whole, gathered in your true identity, and therefore profoundly happy. You have sorted out the world and yourself in one big sweep of understanding. And your life in fact begins with this realisation, for it is enriched by it and seen in its proper light, not distorted or disfigured. You discover that you didn’t know that life, that you were only learning to be. You were in the making, in infancy, torn between suffering and seeking. To only be is to experience the adulthood of life. It is to share its true purpose, which is to radiate being, and to act wholly, together with everything, in one single movement of living. Life ceases to be a quest and is now lived as a gift. And consciousness has gone from being experienced as a speck to being realised as the very vault of your life.

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Text and photo by Alain Joly

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