How Can Sun Shine In Us?

Even with its refined sophisticated order of spinning on its axis around the radiant sun, our world will someday be engulfed by the sun itself!

The NASA scientists say so.

“Like all stars, our Sun will eventually run out of energy. When it starts to die, the Sun will expand into a red giant star, becoming so large that it will engulf Mercury and Venus, and possibly Earth as well. Scientists predict the Sun is a little less than halfway through its lifetime and will last another 5 billion years or so before it becomes a white dwarf.”

In contrast to these seemingly endless five billion years of earth, each of us has much less than 100 years to live. We get to do limited things, in limited time, in our limited body, in our somehow limited world which is so ephemeral and altering in itself.

Frankly! We are so finite!

Yet in the thick of this infinite limiting outer world, we have a boundless infinite inner substance that is making every effort to keep finding its way to shine through us.

But the tragedy is in this- we draw long thick curtains over this sunny side of the window that even if light wishes to penetrate it can’t. It is not the fault of your light. It is how you have trained yourself to see things through another dim window. We easily become flatly dull; uninspired; easily give up; dropping our knees too soon, too early!

“There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no attention to itself, though it is always secretly there. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life. Without this subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing. Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is wedded to the energy and excitement of life. This shy inner light is what enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here as blessing.”

– John O’Donohue

How to tap into our sunny side?

All of us are immanently imprinted with wild-wild fierce possibilities within us. The outer world always will remain at odds with this inner self. How we live in our thoughts is how we live in our lives and eventually, that is how we become!!

Maria Popova says, “Who we become depends on how we tend to our inner garden — what qualities of character and spirit we cultivate to come abloom, what follies we weed out, how much courage we grow to turn away from the root-rot of cynicism and toward the sunshine of life in all its forms: wonder, kindness, openhearted vulnerability.”

Contemporary musician and writer, Nick Edward Cave, is obsessed with dealing with this inner-self, greatly after the death of his son, Arthur (15) who fell from a cliff near Brighton, England and died from his injuries on 14 July 2015.

In Nick’s case, he let his brokenness become a portal to find deeper meaning in his life and his contemplation stands tall like a lighthouse for many who may be in the pits of their sorrow.

Nick speaks of the two virtues for a meaningful life, that may loosen the tightness from the tenderness of the life, that can soften the sometimes stiff, unbent world system. He says,

1. “The first is humility. Humility amounts to an understanding that the world is not divided into good and bad people, but rather it is made up of all manner of individuals, each broken in their own way, each caught up in the common human struggle and each having the capacity to do both terrible and beautiful things. If we truly comprehend and acknowledge that we are all imperfect creatures, we find that we become more tolerant and accepting of others’ shortcomings and the world appears less dissonant, less isolating, less threatening.”
2. “The other quality is curiosity. If we look with curiosity at people who do not share our values, they become interesting rather than threatening. As I’ve grown older I’ve learnt that the world and the people in it are surprisingly interesting, and that the more you look and listen, the more interesting they become. Cultivating a questioning mind, of which conversation is the chief instrument, enriches our relationship with the world. Having a conversation with someone I may disagree with is, I have come to find, a great, life embracing pleasure.”

“To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
– E. E. Cummings