the bowl of light- as told by a hawai’ian shaman
Each child is born with a perfect bowl of light. This bowl represents her true identity, a vessel of shining Light. If she is taught to love and respect her light, then she will grow in strength and health and she can do anything – swim with the shark, fly with the birds, know and understand all things. If, however, she judges her experience of life as bad and becomes fearful, ashamed, or resentful, she drops a stone into her bowl of light and it blocks some of the light. The stone and the light cannot hold the same space. If she continues to put stones in the bowl it will eventually be full of stones, the light will go out, and she will become a stone. A stone does not grow, nor does it move. If at any time she tires of being a stone, all she needs to do is turn the bowl upside down and the stones will fall out, and the light will grow bright once more.
In this Hawaiian story, the bowl of light represents our true essence: pure light, pure love. When we are conscious and respectful of this light, we are living in our highest state of freedom, our sovereignty.
The stones in the bowl represent the pain and suffering that we cause ourselves by resisting life instead of trusting it, and by not accepting others or ourselves as we are.
If we fill our bowl of light with stones, we lose connection with our essence and feel separate from the source of love and light.
It would be nice if we could just dump our stones out and start over again. The reality is that all of our experiences, both painful and pleasurable, will always be part of who we are. It’s not possible to deny or eliminate them. What we can do is return the light to our bowl so that the memories of our wounds no longer affect us negatively. We can turn our stones into crystals. We polish them with our loving presence. This is the alchemy that transforms our experiences of pain and suffering into a treasure chest of pristine, multifaceted jewels. Our bowl of light is now full of shimmering, sparkling crystals, representing a richly lived life.
