3,350 years ago in ancient Egypt, the pharaoh Akhenaten, husband of Nefertiti, discarded the traditional pantheon of his culture and adopted the worship of Aten, the disc of the Sun. This monotheistic reverence for the solar deity lasted only a short while. After the demise of Akhenaten, Egypt’s traditional polytheism reasserted itself.
What was that brief adoration of the Sun about? Impossible to know all these millennia later. Most of the records of that ruler were destroyed after his death. But just look at this guy! What do you see in his face? Something truly unique, for sure. We know who is inside, behind those singular features. Not a figurehead or front man for a dynasty but an individual, incomparable as you or I.
There are powers that move in our depths. Among them is the self-illuminating reflex of dreams and hypnagogia. And deeper yet, the radiance of the self, the presence of consciousness. This energetic presence, this I Am, is the imprint of the Sun. It is the one star that has sustained us for the four billion years it took to find our way here, to our brief moment of individuality.
Odd emotions challenge us. Inhumane energies slip in and out of awareness. The blues. The dark night of the soul. The death wish of depression. What is to be done? Akhenaten had an idea. Sunlight breathes us and sets glowing the soft flame in each cell of our bright-winged bodies.
Few believe. And fewer yet know. Our long journey here to this day, to a mind that knows and a heart that blesses, found its way through the deprivations of fire, out of the mystery of light.