Experiment with Light: New possibilities

Rex Ambler continues the series on ‘Experiment with Light’ by examining how it is being explored by Quakers today. Last week he wrote about the practice as a recovery, or retrieval, of a method rooted in the worship of early Friends

by Rex Ambler 7th October 2011

The practice of ‘Experiment with Light’ is simple, which makes it all the more remarkable that it seems to have been largely forgotten.  It is a matter of attending to our present experience of life so that we can move from there to a deeper and fuller experience of it. We are not looking immediately for guidance or inspiration, which is often the concern of modern Friends. We are looking to see, first of all, what is going on in our life. This may sound like a rather detached and factual concern, which in a sense it is. But when we discover, as we do when we put it into practice, that there are all kinds of resistance to our knowing the simple truth, it becomes quite a challenge. However, as early Friends found to their amazement and joy, there is a resource within us that enables us to rise to the challenge: to look at the reality and accept it for what it is.