Uncovering the Light of the Soul
As we study the mystical teachings of our religion, we begin to reprogram the subconscious mind and mold it like we mold clay. We become more conscious of our fears. We tell ourselves, “There is nothing to be afraid of. There is not one thing to be afraid of.” We are able to talk to the subconscious mind in this way. It is called affirmation. “I am a fearless being. I am a fearless being,” we keep saying to ourselves time and time and time again. In affirming this truth we begin reeducating or reprogramming the subconscious mind. Finally, we begin to remove the layers upon layers covering the soul.
In India there is a traditional analogy of a lamp whose light is concealed by a screen of colored pieces of cloth. It is said we can uncover the lamp, representing the light of the soul, by reprogramming the subconscious. First we take off the black piece of cloth. The dark green one is still there, so little light comes through as yet, and we are faced with the instinctive emotion—our great protective power of being jealous. Both fear and jealousy are protective mechanisms of the mind. We work with our jealous nature as we make other affirmations. “I have all that everyone else has. The same power that is within everyone is within me.” In this way we begin reprogramming the subconscious and gain more and more confidence in ourselves. Jealousy is inferiority. We feel we lack that which someone else has, so we try to cut them down a little bit to our size. Jealousy makes people mean. Finally, we work our awareness through this dark green sheath of jealousy, and we remove that sheath from the lamp of the soul. A little more light now shines through, and we begin to feel good about ourself—“I’m not so bad after all. In fact, I’m pretty good.” We become more confident and penetrate even deeper while working on the next instinctive quality, and the next and the next and the next. Finally, as we take off the last sheath, we find that we are That which we were all the time. We are inwardly free. We have removed awareness from the conscious mind and brought it through the subconscious state into pure superconsciousness. Now the physical body seems to us but a shell, a place in which we live in order to express ourselves on the surface of the Earth. The spiritual body seems to us to be our real body, and we wonder why we didn’t realize that before.