Sarin was an angelfish who taught me an astonishing lesson during her brief lifetime. I loved her very deeply. She belonged to my girlfriend Koko.

One night Koko came home and noticed that Sarin was suspended gently in the bubbles from the aerator at the bottom of her tank. She was, literally, taking a ‘bubble bath’. But when Koko turned on the light, Sarin darted around the tank, smacking into the walls in a panic, before, finally, burying her head in the gravel. Koko called me, and we discussed this. She was worried something was wrong with Sarin. After a time, Sarin seemed to recover, and gave the common signals of well-being, including eating some worms. At the time we were confused about what happened.

The next day as I took a shower, I began to ponder this deeply, trying to understand the event. It was then that it struck me: -=fish do not have eyelids=-. And here is the thing we must understand: for millions of years of evolutionary time, the sudden onset of impossible brightness meant one of two things: the immanent presence of God (or the body of the divine), or Death. Perhaps both. And both, were, generally speaking, terrifying. Sarin thought she was going to die. She could not close her eyes, and so, she buried them in the gravel.

Now here is what I realized: inside ourselves, we are like Sarin. The ‘eyes’ of our souls have no eyelids. And the sudden onset of ‘impossible brightness’ (i.e. the divine or enlightenment) is similarly terrifying (I know this from direct experience and discussion with many seekers). So what we do is we immediately bury our spiritual heads in the ‘gravel’ or dirt of our shadow. We flee, and hide ourselves in the deep darkness of our ordinary and habitual patterns of avoiding the light.

And I cry with thanks every time I remember the lesson this little angelfish taught me. I shall never forget her, or her teaching. May you find use in it. And share it with others who may also benefit.