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About This Author
My name is Joy, and I love to write.
Why poetry, here? Because poetry uplifts its writer, and if she is lucky enough, her readers, too. Around us, so many objects abound to write about. Once a poet starts with a smallest, most trivial object, he shall discover that his pen will spill out what is most delicate or most majestic hidden inside him. Since the classics sometimes dealt with lofty subjects with a lofty language, a person with poetry in his soul may incline to emulate that. That is understandable. Poetry does that to a person: it enlarges the soul and gives it wings. Yet, to really soar, a poet needs to take off from the ground.
 
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Daily Cascade #1098193 added September 28, 2025 at 1:31pm
Restrictions: None
Oh, All That Light!
Prompt: Light
“Travel light, live light, spread the light, be the light.”
Yogi Bhajan
What do you think of this quote and how many kinds of "light" can you think of?
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So much illumination! I hope I can make my answer short enough.
To begin with, since it was said by a Yogi, this quote is a mantra, a spiritual roadmap. It shows a four-stage evolution within its one single sentence, from the physical dimension to its metaphysical core. I found this quote to be extremely complex, but also, singular at its end.
Also, the question--asked in relation to the quote--goes beyond the four distinct kinds of freedom, since I'll first take the word light here, as a synonym for freedom. If I am to look at the four stages as freedoms, therefore, they are: Physical Freedom, Emotional Clarity, Active Influence, and Spiritual Essence. I have to say, all that is okay when I try to think philosophically. And philosophically speaking, there is only one light: the divine, universal consciousness, which shows up in our world through the countless choices we make. This one light one, some of us call it, God. The quote, therefore, does not offer four separate lights, but rather four progressive methods for turning into a single, ultimate source of illumination. 
Then, philosophy aside, how about electromagnetic radiation, which is all over the universe. I googled electromagnetic light and came up with this little gem.
"There are seven main “types” of electromagnetic light (radio to gamma). the electromagnetic spectrum extends far beyond visible light. In that sense, there are many “kinds of light”: Radio waves, Microwaves, Infrared (heat radiation), Visible light (red through violet), Ultraviolet (UV), X-rays, Gamma rays.
All of these are “light,” just at different wavelengths and energies."
This made me recall the light wheel, which our seventh-grade art teacher, way back when, so insisted that we memorize and take into consideration for our clumsy creations: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.
Then, in art and daily life, we refer to light as warm vs. cool, soft vs. harsh, direct vs. diffuse.
There are many other ways of seeing light, even if (psycho-talk here) we don't really see the light, as in: 1. natural light, like that of the sun, fire, and the biological light, which claims that even an olive gives off a light. Go figure!
2. Artificial light from lamps, cellphones, computers, lasers, LEDs, and such.
After all, light, poetically or spiritually, can be a metaphor for knowledge, hope, and divinity. For example, To “spread the light” means to take our internal clarity and share it with a world, which is often lost in darkness or shadow. This light may be knowledge, compassion, grace, and kindness; in other words, empathy.
It is quite possible that there are many other lights in the universe that we, the underling earthlings, don't know about, but our ignorance doesn't stop us from poking our noses into iffy places, possibly in search of more light, like the two Voyagers that are scaling the space and giving the U-tubers enough material to scare us out of our wits. 
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