Community activist Rosemarie Freeney Harding (1930–2004) describes her experience of contemplative awareness—what she calls “the Light”—and how it sustained her throughout her life:
I can’t say exactly where the Light entered, where it started from. Suddenly, it was just there with me. A white light, bright enough that it should have hurt to look. But it didn’t hurt. In fact, as the Light grew and enveloped everything in the room, I felt the most astonishing sense of protection, of peace. It surrounded me and I was in it, so joyfully. I don’t know how long I was engulfed by this Light, this space. But when I came out of my room my family was looking at me oddly, like there was something different about me they couldn’t quite name….
I had come in from work and greeted everyone awhile. Then I went into my bedroom to rest. I was just lying on the bed. Maybe dozing. And then I was in the Light….
The Light became a kind of touchstone in my life. It was so much love. Like an infinite compassion. At the same time it was something very precious and intimate. It awed me, really. And when I walked out of the room, everything looked different. Clear. Even later, outside the house, in my classes and at my job, everything looked sharper. It was like a heightened sense of presence. Almost a shine.
Freeney Harding honors numerous paths that can lead to the deepened spiritual grounding that “the Light” provides:
I do believe that whole experience put me on a path. And the Light stayed with me a long time. It gave me a sense of security and deep internal connectedness to God, I would say. All these journeys I’ve been on, these spiritual practices and traditions—from the Mennonites to Bawa Muhaiyaddeen and the Dalai Lama—the meditation, the prayers; I’ve been trying to sustain what the Light gave me. What it awakened and showed me. I guess that’s what the definition of “spirituality” is for me: whatever sustains us like the Light sustained me for years. Is it similar to the Light? Is it the Light?
As I moved away from my family and struggled for years with the unexpected strains of my marriage I needed the grounding and shelter and strength of that Light. There is something in there, in that profoundly embracing energy, that allows you to come out with a kind of forgiveness, an absence of animosity. It’s like the Dalai Lama says, there’s nothing we can’t go through. We can live through it all with compassion. I want to tell you that this Spirituality of Compassion, if we can call it that, can come through very ordinary people…. There are so many ways—some people go through Vipassana meditation; some say they have seen Jesus; or that they’ve met the Buddha. However they describe it, they’ve met … Help. Encouragement. A deep deep encouragement in this life. For me, it was the Light.
Reference:
Rosemarie Freeney Harding with Rachel Elizabeth Harding, Remnants: A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering (Duke University Press, 2015), 1–3.
Image credit and inspiration: Exisbati, Untitled (detail), 2021, photo, India, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. Silence invites us to attend deeply to the present moment, like a hand extended in a field, aware of each blade of grass sliding over the skin, simply being here now.
Story from Our Community:
I stopped receiving CAC’s Daily Meditations for a while but have returned. Whenever I read a meditation, I am both comforted and challenged. I can’t thank you enough for being here. I am not alone.
—Nancy M.
