There are times in life when experiences that once felt confusing, overwhelming, or difficult to understand begin to gather into a different kind of clarity.
“Rising Light” reflects part of that process.
The imagery in the song grew out of healing-oriented meditative journeys undertaken during a period of deep searching, suffering, instability, and longing for restoration. At the time, these experiences were not approached as doctrine or spiritual authority, but simply recorded honestly as they unfolded.
Only later, through ongoing reflection, psychological exploration, and study grounded in spiritual truth, did deeper patterns and meanings begin to emerge.
The animals and symbolic landscapes within the song reflect different layers of human experience encountered symbolically during these journeys—instinct, protection, fear, strength, longing, trauma, discernment, inherited tendencies, emotional memory, and inward development. The “lower world” within the song reflects this inward symbolic landscape of exploration and healing through which many of these deeper layers of experience were encountered and revisited over time.
As understanding gradually deepened, the experiences themselves also began to be seen differently. What once appeared primarily as symbolic imagery increasingly became part of a larger process of reflection, discernment, healing, and spiritual reordering centered on the Lord.
The song does not reject symbolism, imagination, or inward experience. Rather, it reflects the growing realization that such experiences become more understandable when brought into the light of truth, conscience, humility, and spiritual discernment.
“Then the Lord began to show me
what was His—and what was mine.”
That distinction became deeply important.
By the end of the song, the waterfall lies behind, the sunflower turns toward the sun, and the eagle rises into open heavens. The imagery begins gathering into alignment around a clearer center, reflecting the beginning of a life becoming more inwardly ordered and guided.
This is not a song about arrival or completion.
It is a song about the beginning of healing.
If you would like to explore some of the larger themes behind this reflection, you may also wish to read: “How the Higher and Lower Work Together”
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These reflections are part of the ongoing “From Confusion to Clarity” project exploring spiritual psychology, healing, discernment, and inward order through a framework inspired in part by New Church thought.
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