People use the words “love and light” as a kind of derogatory slur against positive, happy people.
The stereotype is that such people are overly optimistic, are dangerously ignorant of the distinction between niceness and kindness, and are generally untrustworthy and disconnected from reality due to their happy-go-lucky nature, etc.
These critics make fair points.
And yet!
I recently realized that “love and light” is… kind of inspiring to me. Even very helpful.
Love corresponds to metta and the brahmavihārās; and light corresponds to something, too!
Loosely speaking, light corresponds to what we might call reiki, or qi, or universal life energy.
I’ve been doing a Reiki Level 1 Training with Tricia Pickren.
I expected to have quite a bit of resistance, confusion, and skeptical doubt about this process.
But honestly, from the beginning… I just got it. It just made sense. Felt intuitive.
So far, it seems to me like Reiki is incredibly similar to all the work I’ve done with metta and love practice.
And that all the work I did in my training, with the breath and energy, is also helping.
I’m just really glad to be receiving formal training in it.
To be able to talk to someone I love and trust about what’s happening, to receive their instruction and counsel and guidance.
So far, one of the best ways for me to connect with Reiki is to visualize it as white healing light.
I think of it like a spectrum. I see love and metta as red and pink. I’ve done lots of visualizing of sending love this way. I can easily visualize compassion as purple. And I can view Reiki or universal life energy or divine love as white or golden light.
I remembered the teachings of Peace Pilgrim, and how she talks about Visualizing God’s Light:
Occasionally some condition is brought back into my conscious mind because I need to really concentrate on it. If some person is in dire difficulty, and that person returns to my mind for thought, I sometimes use the prayer of visualization, which has always been very natural for me, but I understand not so for everybody. I reach out— my divine nature reaches out— to contact their divine nature. Then I have the feeling of lifting them, lifting them, lifting them, and I have the feeling of bringing God’s light to them. I try to envision them bathed in God’s light, and finally I do see them standing and reaching out their arms bathed in golden light. At that point I leave them in God’s hands.
You can visualize God’s light each day and send it to someone who needs help. Your divine nature must reach out and touch the divine nature of another. Within you is the light of the world, it must be shared with the world.
Visualize a golden light within you and spread it out. First to those about you— your circle of friends and relatives— and then gradually to the world. Keep on visualizing God’s golden light surrounding our earth.
And if you have a problem, take the matter to God in prayer, and visualize it in God’s hands. Then leave it, knowing it is in the best possible hands, and turn your attention to other things.
For those of you who are seeking the spiritual life, I recommend these four daily practices: Spend time alone each day in receptive silence. When angry, or afflicted with any negative emotion, take time to be alone with God. (Do not talk with people who are angry; they are irrational and cannot be reasoned with. If you or they are angry, it is best to leave and pray.) Visualize God’s light each day and send it to someone who needs help. Exercise the body, it is the temple of the soul.
Or about Your highest light:
You begin to do your part in the Life Pattern by doing all of the good things you feel motivated toward, even though they are just little good things at first.
So I got busy on a very interesting project. This was to live all the good things I believed in. I did not confuse myself by trying to take them all at once. If I was doing something that I knew I shouldn’t be doing I stopped doing it, I always made a quick relinquishment.
And if I was not doing something that I knew I should be doing, I got busy on that.
It took the living quite awhile to catch up with the believing, but it finally did. And when it did, a progress began which never ended. As I lived up to the highest light I had, higher and higher light came to me.
Or how about she seemingly literally sees people as light:
Of course, I love everyone I meet. How could I fail to? Within everyone is the spark of God. I am not concerned with racial or ethnic background or the color of one’s skin; all people look to me like shining lights! I see in all creatures the reflection of God. All people are my kinfolk— people to me are beautiful!
In all people I meet— though some may be governed by the selfcentered nature and may not know their potential at all— I see that divine spark, and that’s what I concentrate on. All people look beautiful to me; they look like shining lights to me. I always have the feeling of being thankful for these beautiful people who walk the earth with me.
Love and light!