You Can Be Light Unto Yourself

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You Can Be Light Unto Yourself

Text from The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti

Vol. 13

To be aware is to watch your bodily activity, the way you walk, the

way you sit, the movements of your hands; it is to hear the words you

use, to observe all your thoughts, all your emotions, all your

reactions. It includes awareness of the unconscious, with its

traditions, its instinctual knowledge, and the immense sorrow it has

accumulated—not only personal sorrow, but the sorrow of man. You have

to be aware of all that; and you cannot be aware of it if you are

merely judging, evaluating, saying, " This is good and that is bad,

this I will keep and that I will reject, " all of which only makes the

mind dull, insensitive.

From awareness comes attention. Attention flows from awareness when

in that awareness there is no choice, no personal choosing, no

experiencing . . . but merely observing. And, to observe, you must

have in the mind a great deal of space. A mind that is caught in

ambition, greed, envy, in the pursuit of pleasure and self-

fulfillment, with its inevitable sorrow, pain, despair, and anguish—

such a mind has no space in which to observe, to attend. It is

crowded with its own desires, going round and round in its own

backwaters of reaction. You cannot attend if your mind is not highly

sensitive, sharp, reasonable, logical, sane, healthy, without the

slightest shadow of neuroticism. The mind has to explore every corner

of itself, leaving no spot uncovered, because if there is a single

dark corner of one's mind which one is afraid to explore, from that

springs illusion....

It is only in the state of attention that you can be a light unto

yourself, and then every action of your daily life springs from that

light—every action—whether you are doing your job, cooking, going for

a walk, mending clothes, or what you will. This whole process is

meditation....

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