This is the third recent post in which I have pondered the meaning and the application of something that I read long ago and that has stayed with me since I first read it: “Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.”

I have never met an angel, nor can I claim any authority about the existence of angels. However, I do suspect that if angels exist, they definitely do take themselves  lightly, and they definitely can fly.

I can’t fly. However, there have been plenty of times when I felt very light, in the sense of open, accessible, intuitive, spontaneous, and caring. These have usually been times when I was behaving lovingly to my wife or to someone else.

To love is to be focused in a caring way on someone other than oneself. While you are loving, you are free of the burden of your own self-centeredness. And that means lighter, more expanded in consciousness, more heart-felt — and less burdened.

The more loving you are, the lighter and more free you become. That’s pretty close to flying, I’d say.

If angels exist, they are highly-evolved beings, for sure. I suspect that angels are very close to pure love, which would make them beings of light. Angels can fly, because they have very little ego self that ties them down.

The more loving we are, the more highly-evolved we become (just as the more murderously we behave, the less evolved we become.) The angelic may be well beyond our reach. However, we can still learn from the angels. We can learn to behave more lovingly. And in the process, we can become lighter and less a burden to ourselves and to others . We can realize what may be the real reason that we are here on the earth — to brighten the lives of others through our love. Through love, we can take flight.

Are you much too weighted down with worries, concerns and insecurities? Do you wish that you were a lot lighter person than you often experience yourself to be? If so, I think that I have an approach that can help.

In the previous post, I mentioned a quote from a book I once read. The quote has been very helpful to me in lightening my own load of self-preoccupations and may do the same for you.

The quote is “Angels fly, because they take themselves lightly.”

To me, taking ourselves lightly means getting beyond our usual ego-centered concerns. Whenever I am into my rights, my needs, my resentments, my situation, I am doing the opposite of taking myself lightly. I am heavy (and sometimes ponderously) into myself. And if my wife is around then “heavy” is one of the words that she might use to describe me.

On the other hand, when I am focused outside myself, and in particular when I am involved in the welfare of someone else, I really do take myself lightly — in fact, I’m pretty much not thinking of myself at all. This is one of the tremendous benefits that I have found in being a therapist: When I am working with a couple or with an individual, I totally cease to be a problem to myself almost always. I am focused on the couple or person before me, not on me.

At times, as a result of taking myself lightly, I can “fly,“ in the sense of being spontaneous, intuitive, open, connected in a way that I definitely am not when I am heavy and caught in myself.

The key is to get beyond our small self. The best way to do that is to love.

We’ll get back to the angels in the next post.

Have you ever been seized by a quote from somewhere that simply won’t leave you alone? Maybe it’s from a bood you’ve been reading, and the first time through you underline it. Maybe you go back and read that quote enough times, until you finally write it down and start carrying it around.

This experience has happened to be a number of times. The quotes that get this treatment are always ones that speak to me in a special way. They seem to say, “This is for you. Pay attention to it.” The meaning of such statements is seldom entirely clear to me. It speaks to me, and yet I don’t for sure know what it means. I’m meant to spend time with the statement, do my best to figure out what it means and then, make it mine, by following it, in some sense.  

Of all the statements that have spoken to me in a special way, the one that has hung around the longest is this one:

“Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.”

Now before you read further, take a moment and give some thought to what that statement actually means.

“Angels fly because they take themselves lightly” speaks to me partly because I am not naturally very good at taking myself lightly. In fact, I can, at times, be quite heavy and dark — rather than light — with fuss, or fear, or discouragement, or loneliness — or any other of the characteristically heavy conditions that weigh us down and make it hard to take ourselves lightly.

I would like to take myself more lightly than I do, and the “Angels fly…” statement is beginning to help.

An invitation: Please join in. We’ve got the makings of a good conversation here — better than a monologue.

At the celebration of their fiftieth wedding anniversary, the husband said to his wife, “You are the light of my life.” What did he mean? If you were present and asked the man, he might have responded with a variation on what he had said already. He might have said, “Her humor, her generosity and thoughtfulness have been sunlight to me. My life would have been so much darker without her in it.” It is clear that this man‘s wife has given him a great deal over the years. You get that he is celebrating the gift that she has been to him. But what about these references to light — what do they actually mean?

I’m not sure what they actually mean. However, I wonder about this question a good deal. They seem to point to something really important.

This is a good time of year to celebrate the mystery of light. The Winter Solstice was just a few weeks back. The celebrations that involve light are recently over — Christmas, Hanukkah and the Hindu Festival of Lights.

Consider these references to light:

• “His face lit up when he saw his son.”
• “They had a marriage lived in the Light.”
• “After his resurrection, Jesus appeared bathed in Light.”
• “The Buddha taught the way to En-light-enment.”
• “At her wedding, her face was radiant when she said ‘I do’.”
• When my wife threatened to leave me, I finally saw the light.”
• “The ancient prophets sought to lead the people out of darkness into light.”
• “An illustration in an edition of Dante’s Paradiso shows souls ascending from earth into the light.
• The Apostles and saints are often represented as having a halo of light around their heads.
• People who have had near-death experiences often report of being drawn to a brilliant light that appeared at the end of a tunnel.

What do these references to light have in common? What do they suggest? When in your life have you felt full of light?