John 12:36 Meaning While You Have the Light

The light is the awareness alive in you at this very moment. To believe in it means giving your attention to consciousness itself rather than to the restless stream of thinking. Do this while the light is here, which is always now, and you no longer merely have awareness. You become it.

The teacher then hides himself. Presence cannot be kept as a picture in the mind. The instant you reach to grasp it as something outside you, it disappears, because it was never a thing to hold. It is the awareness that is doing the looking.

The light is the inner illumination present in a person for a season, and trust in it while it shines turns one into its offspring, made of the same radiance rather than merely lit by it. The window does not stay open forever; the higher awareness withdraws and hides itself when it is not received, sinking back below the surface of the ordinary mind.

The departure is inward: the light retreats into the depths of a person and grows dim, waiting there unseen until it is sought and welcomed again.

The light is only ever available now, and postponement is the mind's one reliable trick, promising tomorrow what is offered this moment. Trusting the light does not mean agreeing with a doctrine about it; it means turning toward the awareness already burning behind thought while it can still be seen, before the habit of past and future closes over again.

Then the withdrawal. A man who hides himself from the crowd is giving the only gift left: nothing outside to lean on. Borrowed light keeps people gathered around a person and blind to their own. Children of light are those who stopped circling the flame and became it.