When @tribesteemup poses a question, I usually jump right in and answer it, mainly because I don't want to read everyone elses responses first because I want to write straight from my own heart without being distracted or intimidated. This fortnight's question was more of a struggle for me, however.

The question asked:

What does it mean to be a lightworker?

I guess it was tough because I've not really encountered the term before, or if I have, I've ignored with some some cynicism - it smacked of glitter and unicorn poo to me. I guess I'm a little abashed about that confession now, but hey, I'm all about honesty! Even then, google the term 'lightworker' and most of the first searches that come up don't gel with me - it all is far too new age for me and my spirituality is far more practical and grounded in neuroscience and yogic philosophy so terms like 'star seeds' and 'angels' and 'psychic resonance' just don't resonate with me. In fact, I find a lot of the writing to do with 'lightwork' gobblydegook and jargon. I don't identify with the label, so I struggled a lot with this question and have had to mull it over for longer than I usually would.

The outer sun is a reflection of our inner sun - our subtle and spiritual heart and the seat of our consciousness and higher wisdom. Thus, we all work with light - because it is within all of us. Is this what it means to be a lightworker? Or is something more?

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However, what started to emerge from reading other's posts about this question was the following. These aren't definitions from google searches - they're what I observed in my readings over the last few days.

• Light workers generally had experience with darkness, and had grown from it.
• Because they'd encountered their shadow selves and faced them, they'd grown from the experience and welcome their struggle as integral to who they were and what they could bring the world
• They often helped others or felt a desire to help others (there's quite a few healers in TSU)
• By their very actions, they made the world a better place (and by that identifying characteristic, I'd say there are LOTS of lightworkers on Steemit, even if they don't label themselves in that way!)
• Compassion and empathy are often part of who they are, perhaps because they'd experienced the dark side and thus could recognise it in others and thus felt for others too.
• They've learnt to be good at treating themselves kindly, because how we treat ourselves reflects out into the world in kind.

Sometimes when we answer these questions, we find that someone else has said exactly what we wanted to say. Thus I'll share @trucklife-family's words to reinforce something that resonates for me, 'lightworker' label or not:

For me a light worker is someone who draws from the darkness, in order to fully embrace the light. A true Light-Worker is not here to preach and tell others what to do. They understand that We need to be empowering ourselves, not adding to this age of dependency, where we are always looking to others to sort our lives out. There is this desire to help people re-awaken to the awesome power that we all hold inside. This ability to see the beauty in everyone, in everything, the ability to accept everyone for who they are. Accept and move on if needs be, but the brightest light comes from a place of love. That is the light the world needs today. A light that breaks down barriers, that helps unite and creates a world that radiates and blasts out love. This is what a light worker strives to do. And yet there are times when the darkness pulls us back in, because we need that darkness, it is the fire that drives us and propels us into the light.

It struck me that this term is simply what most of us know, if we've done any spiritual work or self work in the past - we're all in constant fluctuation between light and dark - yin and yang. It's a thinking that's also comment to yogic thought also.

In Patanjali's yoga sutra 1.36 he writes: विशोका वा ज्योतिष्मती॥३६॥ - visoka va jyotismati. Essentially this means that when we connect with the radiant light (jyotismati) within, we reach a place of serenity without pain (visoka). Commentary enlightens us further: BKS Iyengar said inner stablity could be gained by 'contemplating a luminous, sorrowless, effulgent light' and Deschikar says that 'when we inquire into what life is and what keeps us alive, we may find some solace for our mental distractions'.

Sunrise, Ingyinbin vipassana monastery, north of Mandalay, Burma

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This light has been described as a candle in a deep cave, or smaller than that - a spark at the end of a tiny thread in a dark cave! This spark is free of all sorrow and pain and affliction. It's always there, even in the most difficult moments. Meditation and yoga practice helps us through these dark caves to reveal that light within. To me, that's light work - it's hard, but it's an important process to heal, and be a better person that can help others.

This helping of others doesn't need to be taking on the role of a healer or a guru in any dramatic way. We all have that light, so we're all capable of shining it outward into the world. This can be oh so subtle - smiling at someone as you pass them in the street, or calling up an old friend to see how they're faring. It could take on the form of environmental work in caring for the planet or simply taking small actions to live more lightly on the earth. Your deeds and words impact others - true light work is setting an example through what you do and say. Your story can be an inspiration to others, even if that wasn't your real intent, but if you're working with light you generally are light - if you are feeling compassion, love, humility, grace, gentleness towards your own self, how can this not be manifest in your outward actions?

Personally, I've dealt with a lot of darknesses in my own heart and life. It's not necessary to share them here - that's for another time, or maybe not at all. However, I'm so grateful for this darkness, because without it, how could I have found that tiny divine spark within? Such wisdom in dualities! I think it makes me a better teacher (of teenagers, and yoga) and writer, a better mother, wife and lover, a better human being. It's not just about 'me' any more and my own angst, but my participation in the world, however slight, needs to be for a greater good. And I try to practice that every day.

Entering the dark forest, before the sun burns through the fog

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This might be a digression, but I have been thinking about this all week since I watched this short documentary about Gregory Smith called 'Out of the Woods'. Smith had a really terrible childhood - an alcoholic and abusive father, abuse in an institution, and chaos that followed him into adulthood - he became alcoholic himself, got into bar fights, set fire to a share house, and so on - so much so that his own sister wanted nothing more to do with him. His trauma was part of a collective experience of abused kids now recognised as 'the forgotten Australians'. He left school at 14 and was labelled as a sociopath and on the 'dull' end of intelligence, given an IQ of around 80, a self belief that persisted for a long time.

Always light, even in the darkness. Otways forest, Victoria, Australia

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One day Gregory just kept walking into the forest and stayed there for 10 years, on the edge of starvation and entering into psychosis. He was a wild man of the woods that some in the Byron Bay area thought was Jesus or some kind of spirit guide. He ate mushrooms and grew weed to sell in town, drank a ppotent home brew and was nearly on the edge of death when one day he had a vision:

"I was 45 years old. I had my bourbon and my wine and my dope, everything I owned was on that bench with me. I knew no one, had no one to talk to. I just wanted to die. And then I had an epiphany."

His epiphany was that he was on the battlefield of the wreckage of his life, but the only enemy was within - it was him creating the world he was living him. He left his booze and drugs on the bench he was sitting on and walked away, got himself back to school, ended up doing a PhD with an honours thesis about people like himself – the generation of "Forgotten Australians" who had endured trauma in violent homes and institutions.

Are you kidding me? Talking about finding your spark in the darkness! He managed to rise above that definition of himself as a sociopath lacking intelligence and an unwillingness to be aany where near the human beings that he could not understand tto someone who now works in education and helps people understand that their experience is not only their own - something he thought for many years. He hopes that his story resonates with others to help them - and it has, and it does.

This, to me, is a walking and living example of a lightworker - someone who has gone through the depths of darkness and emerged with an ability to both live with this darkness as an integral part of who they are, and a deep compassion and empathy for others that becomes action in the world.

What do you think? How would you define a lightworker?

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