The second foundational aspect of your spiritual self is the Light. This is the one that we hear repeatedly that we should strive to become one with. And that isn’t necessarily wrong but it is something that we need to understand.
Once again, Good and Evil are concepts we as humans own. We have the market covered on them. To say the Light is Good and that we should strive for that goodness is not a balanced viewpoint. As I said in the post of Good vs. Evil, the extreme of either is dangerous. The same can be said of the Light. Shadow again is a type of darkness created by light. Shadow is naturally the balance between Light and Darkness. This is why the Shadow, while widely misunderstood, is the least upsetting of your base spiritual aspects.
While Shadow can be attributed to your strengths and weaknesses, the Light can be associated with your Power. And power can be used in both healthy and unhealthy ways. Your power refers to what special gifts you hold from the universe. The unique combinations of energies the Over-souls have given you to be effective in the world as a fellow energy shaper. The problem arises when we abuse those powers.
Abusing our power and our Light turns us into parasites of our spiritual self. We want what those aspects offer but we refuse to accept the guidance they provide. Abuse of power comes in the form of manipulation, degradation, subjugation, possession, obsession, etc. What is happening in these cases figuratively is people put their hands in the stream of light but turn their faces away and refuse to look at it. Their light is so strong they cannot even look at it.
And therein lies the ultimate problem with people getting to know their spiritual selves. They want to look or touch but they don’t want to integrate and become one with their spiritual selves. If you stare directly at the sun too long you will go blind but if you dive into the sun you will burn up. That is the dichotomy we all have come to face and why people are ok with being “near” their spiritual self but not diving into it. Let’s look at this another way though. If you maintain separation from the sun staring at it you go blind, but if you dive into the sun you become one with the sun. You integrate in a way that you cannot be separated from it. Like making a cake, once the ingredients are mixed in there is no way to separate them back out.
That’s what we fear though, this loss of self and loss of identity. But our Light is ourself so we still have a unique energetic pattern when we are merged with it. The longer we try to keep ourselves separated from it the more we try to over-compensate by making grandiose displays of power. This abuse of power is our way to assuage us for not living within our power. We are close enough to know WHAT our power is but not integrated enough to know HOW our power works. But we know what it is and we want to “show off” that we have power. When we live within our power we learn how to appropriately and healthily use our power for both personal and communal necessities.
Light is seen as the ultimate symbol of goodness and holiness in society. But light in excess is still just as damaging as alcohol or food can be. Sunburns can cause skin cancers. The only color of light proven by science to reduce or stop headaches is green light. All the other colors of light have been proven to cause or make headaches worse according to Harvard studies (https://hms.harvard.edu/news/green-light-migraine-relief#:~:text=At%20high%20intensity%20of%20light,pain%20by%20about%2020%20percent.) Concentrated light can cause fires and we all have seen or known of the sadistic killing of ants with magnifying glasses.
Diving into your light is not an easy thing to do. I know this from my struggles as I grew into what and who I am now. We have many doctrines and dogmas in society that preach sacrifice or denial of self rather than acceptance of self. We are taught to fear darkness as a form of corruption yet what is being handed down is a fear of personal power. We are taught that power corrupts and changes people. I have a summarized quote tattooed on myself that says, “Power doesn’t change people, it reveals them.” I used that as a reminder to myself to stay in control of my power and keep it hidden. I created a self-imposed Sword of Damocles situation for myself. I wanted to know my power but I was scared of what it would reveal. I was scared of what using my Light would be perceived as. I had to learn that others' perceptions and perspectives of me living in my Light did not matter. I had to learn the more I hid my Light and the power it contained the more others were able to exert false power over me through influence or control. I was not growing under their Light, I was simply adopting their beliefs. Adopting their beliefs meant I wasn’t living in my truth or my world, I was living in theirs and playing by the rules of a game I could never win.
When I shed their beliefs and focused on what I believed I learned the things that do matter. What matters is that I embrace my Light and the power it contains to better embrace myself. It comes down to feeling worthy. And each of us is worthy of being who we are. We are all worthy of knowing and loving ourselves unconditionally despite how much others want to mold us to their ideals. We should live in our Light and let it reveal us. We should revel in who we are. But we are systematically broken and beaten down if we do allow ourselves to be revealed. It is a weaponizing of that particularly strong quality of light.
Think of a time when you put on a shirt and it looks great in your house. Then you walk outside and the different type of light cast by the sun reveals some big blotch of discoloration you didn’t notice before. Light harshly reveals things because it cannot help but radiate. Another example is someone who delivers harsh truths. They don’t seem to care if they cause pain from their statements and deliver the “truth hurts,” cliche as though it makes the behavior ok. There are ways to deliver the truth without being callously hurtful. The revealing quality of Light has caused us to fear the darkness not because of the dark itself but because of what lives in the dark.
The “things” that live in the dark are NOT monsters though. The real monsters live in the light. The concept of monsters in the dark came from people who were shamed by others and driven into the dark. People living in the light would see things like deformities and birth defects and cast judgments on people afflicted with these abnormalities. The victims of this treatment were then treated as villains as they would be driven deeper into hiding. This is not the work of darkness, it is the abuse of Light.
Again, I want to stress that Shadow, Light, and Darkness are incapable of Good or Evil. When we abuse Light or Darkness WE are performing evil acts. Evil again seeks justification for its actions. If the example of monsters in the dark being victims of the light made you think of historical or archaic examples then you would be right and wrong. This behavior is still prevalent today making anyone different go into a mindset of hiding or blending in. This is the “normal” people abusing their light to force others to feel ashamed about their unique light. We will see a lot of examples of this in the next series on Pathworking when I discuss history.
The Light should not be your end goal with spirituality. It is one aspect, not the grand finale. I have said that about a lot of things up to this point like Meditation and Intentions. I hope you are noticing the trend which is that there is no true end goal. The real goal should be to go out and experience EVERYTHING and enjoy the discoveries you can make. Taking one or even a few people’s writings as law is where we limit ourselves. And in terms of your aspect of Light, you end up living more in their light than in your own. Some people want that to be the case while others want to use their light to help ignite your own.
You have to be the one to carry your Light though. Living with your Light is a burden because it gives you a sense of duty and purpose. Trying to use someone else’s Light is theft. Being degraded and forced to carry another’s Light is subjugation. That is how cults are born and fall apart. Someone says a few things and imposes their Light on others forcing them into a follower or “less than” role. We are all equal though. Yes, we each have different types of power. We do not have different “levels” or “quantities” of power though. That is a myth that someone could be more or less powerful than another. But comparisons like that are another pitfall in our understanding of the Light. The pitfalls are not the “fault” of the Light. The pitfalls come from our lack of understanding or rather lack of utilizing Understanding. Ancient Teachings shouldn’t be regarded as law either, but the way Ancient Teachings came to be was from people seeking to understand and make sense of what was occurring around them. These ancient teachings were not spur-of-the-moment musings but long-thought-out concepts coming from the thinkers taking time to grasp the meanings behind their discoveries. But the reasoning was always for them and the people OF THAT TIME. Things do change and evolve as we progress through this existence. This is why it is so important to discover your Light, integrate with it, and live by it.
This is how we continue to progress and expand in existence. As time goes on things change in our environments, our cultures, our society as a whole, etc. What may have been true at one point in time can still hold truth but needs growth to incorporate the changes. Your Light is needed as much as my Light is needed. This isn’t something for a privileged few, it is the duty of all people to do their part. The more people we can each inspire to find and live in their spiritual selves the more growth we can begin to see in the world.
All work and no play makes us dull and tired though. That is why we must also honor our spiritual aspect of Darkness as much if not more than our Light. More on that though in our next post. If you thought this challenged your perspectives get ready for the real challenge.
And with that, thank you again for reading along. These posts aren’t as long as I thought they would be if I am honest. I’ll see if I can keep that trend going. Have a great day and let YOUR Light shine!
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