Holding Holy Vigil

Dear Vigilant One,

While working with a client recently I received a message that offers a profoundly new understanding about Holy Vigil. With so much upheaval in the world, the idea of holding vigil has great potential for good just now, as a spiritual work for our lives and our world.

Vigilance and vigil have become greatly misunderstood over time. Vigilance comes from the root “vigil.” Holding vigil is a sacred act and being vigilant is as well. Holding vigil and being vigilant are holy actions done gently, peacefully, in quietude. Holding, within us, to what is most true. To our truest nature.

Another way to think of surrender is to understand it as holding vigil. By seating ourselves at the flame of truth in us - with constancy - we hold vigil to the truth of who we are. This is the real meaning of vigilance. To continually surrender to the Light and Truth we are.

We have had another connotation for the word vigilance… a somewhat negative one… meaning excessive and often strident effort. What we have called vigilance has merely been hyper-monitoring of the altered ego. Usually out of fear about losing something or the need to guard against something. The original intent of the word has been lost. This misunderstanding removes the sacred from the original intent of the words.

Both vigil and vigilance are important words to reclaim as a way of beginning to restore the language of the sacred for our own use. So many sacred words have been high-jacked with ideas and usage that gradually leads to negative connotations.

In this way we have lost much of the language of the sacred which results in the sacred becoming harder to discuss or think about or bring ourselves to. This is a considerable loss and we would do well to notice and to begin to reclaim sacred words that have been removed in this way.

Vigil - such an important concept, spiritually. Holding vigil to what? Where? Why? To the truth of our nature that is known by our Soul . To gather around the flame of truth residing in our heart. To reside there.

We might indeed ask, Why is vigil an important spiritual concept? As long as there is any belief that we are separate from God, from one another or from wisdom, harmony, peace, then our purpose is to hold vigil regarding the real truth of this.

We are not separate or abandoned by that which is God. We could never be for we are one with God. We are that Light, that Beauty, that Wisdom. And so we sit in vigil around the flame of truth, at the heart’s hearth, holding space, allowing it to illuminate our existence here.

The idea that vigilance is onerous comes from using it as a spiritual practice… all those lives in monasteries, ashrams and isms. All that striving. We are among those who lowered the frequency and meaning regarding vigil and vigilance with our excessive striving. Isn’t that funny?

Real vigilance has a purity to it. Pure vigilance is an effortless surrender, not a doing. We are not doing vigilance. We are surrendering consistently, constantly. That is vigilance. The action of vigilance, is surrender not effort. Surrender is the essence of Holy Vigil.

In vigil, we are not encountering patterns, events, objects and others. When we go within, vigilantly, to see what is really there, it is not with effort or guilt. It is not to find fault or room for improvement. It is not to find anything.

There are no objects, no events, no others in pure vigil. There is only the all-encompassing life we are. The rest is all surrendered at the door of Holy Vigil. It is such a relief, such true freedom, to sit in Sacred Vigil. Inexpressible relief!

In that place, we are not an individuals surrendering this habit or that thought or pattern. We are not the individual petitioner beseeching the sky. We are the sky itself, observing the experience of being individual. Can you feel this? That is the purpose and nature of self-inquiry that leads to surrender. It is the return to this surrender that is vigil.

To be vigilant means to be spiritually constant - in physical form - as long as there is separation. As long as life includes the ticking off and winding down of our desires, as long as we are experiencing ego, as long as there is breath in the body we continue in vigilantly holding this quiet, gentle vigil of light and truth for the world. Sacred Vigil - that is what it means to be a light carrier. Isn’t that beautiful?

Vigilance is pure joy! It is the ultimate freedom, it is one of life’s greatest blessings and is bliss itself.

Constant surrender is your true nature, becoming one with God again and again and again.

That is what the saints have known, the constancy of this vigil. The vigilance that is awake to what is Ever-Present.

As a way of supporting a world experiencing tremulous times, I’m going to sit in holy vigil a few minutes each day to re-integrate into my field the real meaning of these words and the depth of truth they offer.

Would you like to join me? I thought it would be so lovely for us to be bringing ourselves back to Sacred Vigil together over the holidays, illuminating the world with the truth of The Light We Are.

In Sacred Vigil, always,
~ 💖 Mayet Leilani