‘I soon saw myself sliding down a chasm, down and down into the unknown, and the word “horror” came forward. Strangely enough... I felt a deep sense of Peace.' Photo: by Apurv Das on Unsplash
Peace in horror: Angela Greenwood shares her experience of an Experiment with Light
‘I was comforted by my felt sense of Peace, but I found myself wondering about it.’
I did an ‘Experiment with Light’ meditation recently. When beginning, it was perhaps inevitable that my heart was full of pain around the conflict and suffering in Ukraine, and the unbearable pain and loss some of my close friends are experiencing.
I soon saw myself sliding down a chasm, down and down into the unknown, and the word ‘horror’ came forward.
Strangely enough, though, I felt a deep sense of Peace at the same time.
I was comforted by my felt sense of Peace, but I found myself wondering about it. It was certainly paradoxical. I quickly scribbled down a character, someone who seemed to be both crying and shouting, and whose eyes were a cross.
Sliding into the abyss was horrific, but the Peace?
And then it came.
‘Being Peace amid the horror.’
This felt like a very helpful piece of guidance to take away, and sure enough it has stayed with me for over a week now.
The following week I did another ‘Experiment’ and for some reason I was reminded of Margaret Fell’s phrase ‘Now, Friends, deal plainly with yourselves, and let the eternal Light search you, and try you, for the good of your souls. For this will deal plainly with you. It will rip you up, and lay you open, and make all manifest which lodges in you’. ‘Rip you up’, not comfortable at all. Like something was being ripped away, I wondered. I stayed with it and the word ‘rip’ seemed to become significant – RIP! Rest in Peace… of course!
Without thought I drew again: a swirly circle pattern. It felt like lots of circles enclosing a peaceful place, with no thoughts or tensions. An empty calm no-thingness in the darkness perhaps. I was reminded of my phrase, ‘Being Peace amid the horror’.
At the end of the meditation I even found myself wondering: ‘Is there a world scale version of this?’ I don’t know. Certainly at the moment it can feel like being in horror. I guess life is like a journey into the unknown.
1 Corinthians 13:12 came into my mind, in the King James Bible version: ‘For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’
