In a sense, light is my faith, my religion. I worship light. The Kabbalah, one of my most cherished sources of spiritual inspiration, is filled with writings about the sanctity of light, many of the mystics believed light was God, it was sacred, it was the mystical representation of  holiness.

That is a beautiful and powerful idea to me, the idea that darkness and light were once inseparable and could be separated one from another. The mystic authors of the Kabbalah were feminists, clearly and also intensely creative, they worshiped the creative spark as the foundation of spirit.

Mysticism is a number of various practices, texts, ideas, symbols and institutions, a form of religious practice based on the idea that knowledge of spiritual truth can be gained by praying or thinking deeply. I have always been drawn to the mystics, and one of the great works of mysticism is the Kabbalah, written by the ancient Hebrew mystics.

I read from the Kabbalah today, and the passage I read quotes the famed Rabbi Isaac as writing that the light created by God “flared from one end of the universe to the other, and was hidden away, reserved for the righteous in the world that is coming as it is written: Light is sown for the righteous, then the worlds will be fragrant and all will be one. But until the world that is coming arrives, the light is stored and hidden away.”

The mystics believed that when powerful light is concealed, it is revealed. “Though concealed, the light is actually revealed for were it not concealed, it could not be revealed.” The ancients said this idea was like looking at the dazzling sun, it’s brilliance conceals it, but if you look at through a screen, you can see the light and not be harmed.

So it is with spirituality and emanation, the mystical theory of the radiant creation of the world. The mystics had their own ideas about how the earth was created. This idea of revelation is also a message for seekers. With the appearance of light the universe and human life expanded. When the light is concealed, this permitted all things that exist to be created in their variety. This, says the Kabbalah, is the secret of creation. And, the writers added mysteriously, “One who understands will understand.”

I guess one who doesn’t understand doesn’t.

I mostly understand, or I think I do. Darkness and light, like life and death, are not different things but interwoven parts of the same thing. Light is only revealed when it comes out of darkness but light is never fully revealed to us.  The spiritual path never ends, it is in so many ways a journey through darkness and light, it is not possible to separate one from another, each gives birth to life in its own way.

Everywhere we pray and seek God, says the Kabbalah, “one thread-thin ray appears from that hidden light and flows down upon those absorbed in her. Since the first day, the light as never been fully revealed to us, we only see parts of it, but it is vital to the world, renewing each day the act of creating and creation.