A couple of days ago a friend told me that I am clearly a lightworker. That doing lightwork was a deep and essential part of my being.

As someone who has spend a long time in resistance to even the concept of lightwork (along with several other terms and concepts used within the New Age community) I was perplexed by this statement.

I quickly ended up explaining, like I usually do, that, yes, I do see a value in light and its positive attributes, but that there are also a lot of nourishing and positive aspects of darkness. That there is an inherent danger in identifying too strongly with the light if that means rejecting and even demonizing darkness.

While there is a lot of truth to that statement I now feel like I completely missed the point at this moment in our conversation. I was so in resistance to being called a lightworker that I didn’t even ask what he meant by that term exactly or how he sees me doing it.

The reason why I am so much in resistance to the terminology of lightwork is not just that some people who make use of it have used it as an excuse to deepen the rift of separation within themselves and the world (a rift which I perceive of as the root of all evil). There is also an aspect within me that doesn’t want to identify too strongly with a movement and community which is judged by some as a bunch of crazy people. I do not want to be seen as insane by association.

At the root of all this is my shame.

While I do see the value that my extrasensory abilities have to myself and others they are also something that parts of me are still ashamed of. These parts feel shame for being the weird kid. These parts feel ashamed because other people think I am seriously crazy. These parts feel shame because I was told that the realities and beings I perceive are just expressions of human fantasy and are not to be treated as real. They feel ashamed because I have been taught that ‘hearing voices’ is one of the clearest signs of insanity.

One of the threats that my mother made regularly when I was growing up and not behaving in ways she wanted me to was that people would come to put me into a psychiatric ward. That there was only one future for me if I didn’t start to act ‘normal’: imprisonment, isolation, never being taken seriously, being physically restricted, being in pain and being constantly medicated.

As a result I tried suppressing my abilities as a child and stopped communicating about the magical worlds and beings that I continued to perceive. I was alone with the faeries and ghosts I saw. Isolated when I talked to the trees. Craving for people who might one day be able to accept me as well as the song of creation I heard in my mind.

That’s one of the reasons I started to get involved with spirituality to begin with. Not just to better understand what I perceived, but also to find a community which would embrace me with all my gifts. Gifts that parts of me had started to believe made me unlovable.

While I had the pleasure to meet a lot of beautiful and loving people on my spiritual path so far it is only now that I begin to fully realize how much of myself I still kept holding back. I could cast spells with Witches, dance with Pagans, muse with New Age friends over the spiritual properties of crystals – but I always restricted my truth and self-expression to a degree to remain acceptable and liked by the respective group I was with.

The same way that I had tried to fit into main stream society before I still tried to fit into the social roles, norms and expectations of the spiritual people I was involved with. Still holding on to the underlying belief that my true and complete self-expression was unacceptable, unlovable and would be rejected.

I do acknowledge that I already released and transformed HUGE amounts of shame since I started my spiritual path. Witchcraft and shamanic practices as well as intensive use of the Completion Process served me very good so far. They will continue to serve me as I allow myself to become more inclusive and expressive of my whole Self.

Am I a lightworker?

Probably yes. As long as lightwork means bringing things back from the shadows of unconsciousness into the embracing, loving light of awareness in order to (re-)integrate them. Which is all the term really means (and which ironically is also a definition of Shadow Work).

And as long as this doesn’t mean excluding or demonizing the things that are dark – because there is also much beauty and healing found in the embrace of darkness.

Excluding and demonizing the dark is actually the very opposite of what lightwork is actually about. It is not about waging war with darkness nor the things hiding or simply living there. It is about embracing duality. Or even more correctly: It is about integration of all that is (including light and dark) and raising your awareness to a level that can actually do that and sees not only the necessity of it, but also the beauty and joy inherent in that process.