The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.Nikos Kazantzakis
I suppose that is what makes a better writer, as well. Often the darkness we gaze into comes from our own inner critic, but sometimes, it comes from the naysayers, the reviewers, the rejection letters, and the textbooks wherein their glaring revelations make us realize we have to work a bit harder on sentence structure and clarity.
Whatever the darkness, whatever form it takes, or however it manifests itself, we can only overcome it if we stare it in the face. We have to confront our own shadow just as we have to confront the darkness beyond it. True enlightenment does not lie in our defeat of the darkness, but in our understanding and embracement of it, as disagreeable as it might be.
The art is “Fall of the Rebel Angels” unknown artist 14th Century.
2 comments:
I guess what he's saying is that an enlightened person produces his or her own light and so finds no darkness intimidating.
I think so too, the light being the confidence to look at the darkness objectively.
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