A Single Drop of Light

Field notes from a 24-hour "fission fast."

You can listen to Brad and I do a musical reading of this essay here:

A Single Drop of Light: Musical Reading

At the end of January, the Sacred Ecstatics Guild held its second annual “fission fast,” a twenty-four hour solitary retreat that creates a chain reaction of spiritual electrification in the Guild. For one full day we cease all social interaction and worldly distraction to concentrate wholly on music, movement, and prayer.

That was the first instruction given at 9am, along with the day’s first musical audio teaching. Similar instructions and audio tracks were released every hour, on the hour (sometimes more) to foster concentration and saturation. This, in turn, yielded higher excitation and exhilaration—it’s a fission fast, after all. We’re less like monastics quietly praying in stillness and more like n/omastic¹ charged particles trying our best to collide with the Creator and trigger a nuclear reaction that spreads through everyone’s soul.

Unlike vision fasts of old, our retreat is conducted entirely online which renders it a unique and imaginatively rich experience. Forty people spread across four continents, solitary but in sync, helping the World Wide Web live up to its name.

Our only communication during the fission fast is clicking a tiny red “heart button” on the screen every time a new post goes live. Heart buttons are everywhere these days which can make them seem trivial and banal. But during retreat, the heart button becomes hallowed. With mystical eyes open we see it’s actually forty index fingers around the world gently bowing and saying, “I’m here.” It’s a red flare in the night sky from a faraway ship, reminding us we’re not alone at sea.

During the first six hours of the fission fast Brad and I go live on Zoom hourly to introduce a new prayer key or password. It’s a line of prayer that is recited or chanted in special ways to foster deepening immersion. These prayer keys also advance us along the path; each one unlocks access to the next destination.

Here we are during the retreat, delivering a new line:

Last season we walked the trail of the Sufi mystics and drew our prayer keys from the Turkish poet, Yunus Emre. This year, dreams led us to a different source of inspiration: the spiritual awakening testimony of an anonymous 19^th century woman known only by her initials: C.M.C. Brad first encountered her testimony in R.M. Bucke’s 1901 book, Cosmic Consciousness, which he discovered after his own awakening in a Missouri chapel at age 19 (more on that below).

Brad always says that C.M.C.’s report most closely matches his own experience with its richly physical descriptions of vibration, heat, and electricity, culminating in “the gladness and rapture of love, so intensified that it became an ocean of living, palpitating light, the brightest of which outshone the brightness of the sun.” (C.M.C.)

We distilled C.M.C.’s testimony to six prayer lines, each one marking a station on her spiritual highway. Here’s one to grab hold of when you need a lifeline to the light: “I love infinitely and am infinitely loved.” (C.M.C.) Try chanting, reciting, breathing, drawing, walking, or singing those words for even one minute and feel how it turns the inner ignition and alters your whole condition.

Infinite love is what C.M.C. felt that fateful day in 1893 when the veil between worlds dropped and she was bathed in Holy Light. No matter how much hatred and greed exist in the world, we know from the many testimonies of those who have encountered it that this limitless, luminous love is real. It’s the current, the lifeblood, the very foundation of Creation. We exist to feel it, meet it, trust it, and spread it around.

(Yes, we often fail at this. But nevertheless, the mission remains.)

The night before our fission fast, we prayed for the retreat and everyone in the Guild. Then Brad had a dream:

Before going to sleep, I started to pray and was flooded with the memories of my major spiritual awakening at age 19.² It took place in 1970, a time when the country was in political turmoil. Racism, sexism, greed, ecological ignorance, and war threatened our fragile world. I then recalled the most surprising aftereffect of my initiation: I felt deep, abiding peace while at the same time perceived the suffering of the world more vividly than before. As I lied awake pondering this paradox, that same peace returned to me. Immediately I had no fear or worry about anything, including death. I thought to myself, “This is what everyone wants—deep peace and joy with no fear of death.”

I knew in that moment I could easily crank up the spiritual engine and bring back the full fire of my chapel awakening. I’ve done it many times. Yet something within me held back. I felt satisfied that on this night, one drop of blessed assurance was all I needed. Just one drop of this luminous peace is worth more than all the riches in the world. Feeling completely satisfied, I fell asleep.

Later I dreamed that I was watching Hillary and I sleeping. A small lightning bug flew over us, flashing its light. It filled me with wonder and I recalled how my favorite nature experience as a child in a small farm town was catching lightning bugs.

I didn’t recognize until waking that its tiny glow echoed the luminous drop of deep peace and joy I felt before going to sleep. But I was certain that this was the light that would shine over the Guild during our retreat. Not a grand illumination beaming down from heaven or a supernova fireball of splendor, but a single drop of light.

There are many ways to seek sanity and comfort when things go haywire, but Brad and I prefer going straight for the light. We don’t dare face the day without it. Especially right now as we watch an irrational political mean-machine go on a rampage of lies and destruction. There’s no shame in feeling fear or despair. It’s a sign of big-heartedness and clarity, not weakness or lack of perspective. But we’re not going to let the Crusaders of Cruelty distract our attention or weaken our connection to the greatest sustaining power in the universe: the infinite ocean of divine luminosity that is “the eternal love, the soul of nature and all one endless smile.” (C.M.C.)

It’s okay if you can’t conjure a whole spiritual fire to illumine your room when the darkness creeps in. All you need is the light from a single firefly. It may be small but “its glow, warmth, and tenderness fill the universe.” (C.M.C.) The ancients teach that each of us carries an indestructible drop of this Holy Light inside. We exist to feel it, meet it, trust it, and let it shine.

Never forget: you love infinitely and are infinitely loved.

Hillary & Brad

P.S. Thank you for hitting the heart button! And here’s a link to C.M.C.’s full testimony. Read our previous essay about C.M.C. below (“Contrarian Medicinal Contrition.”)

P.P.S. We’re excited to announce that registration for the next Guild season opens very soon! We’re now accepting applications. Click here for more info and to apply. Our next adventure begins October 2025.

Other essays you may have missed:

Vessel of Light

Contrarian Medicinal Contrition

Hooked in the Heart

1. N/omastic is a portmanteau of n/om + monastic. January is “n/omastery month” in the Guild, which culminates in our daylong retreat. What’s n/om? Click here.

2. You can read Brad’s full testimony here.