Someone introduces you to a person. Or you’re at a dinner, a get-together, anywhere the subject comes up. And at some point, to place themselves, they drop it: «we’re beings of light, you know. I consider myself a being of light, at least».
And they look at you, waiting for you to nod. To confirm it. To tell them how nice, how luminous. Because that, of course, is the good thing to be. And there’s a touch of condescension in the look, looking down at you a little, from someone already standing where you haven’t gotten to yet.
It happens all the time. Everybody’s into this now, all very connected, all on the same trip, and the phrase goes around in conversation like saying you do pilates. And sure. We all want to be light, obviously. But there’s something in the way they say it, so flat and so closed, that puts me on guard. Because I know what usually comes next.
Let’s play for a second. I tell you I’m a being of light. What did you understand? Something good. Someone you can trust. A good person. And notice I haven’t said a thing. Not one thing you could check. I handed you a word and you supplied the rest.
* * *
Light doesn’t mean anything, and that’s why it works
Try asking someone who works for the light what light actually is. You’ll get one of two things. Either a tangle of vibration and energy and rising that goes nowhere, or a look like you’d just asked what color Tuesday is.
It’s not that the word means nothing. Physical light has plenty of definitions. It’s that here they’re not using it to say anything you can check, they use it as if it meant something good and obvious without spelling out what. And that’s no slip. It’s exactly what makes it useful. A concrete word you can argue with. If I say «I’m honest», you can throw back the three times I lied last week. But «I’m light», there’s no handle on it. There’s nothing concrete to argue with, because they haven’t said what it means. It’s a word that isn’t for saying something, it’s for producing an effect on whoever’s listening.
And we almost always let the effect through without thinking. They hit us with light, or soul, or essence, and instead of stopping to ask what you mean by that, we go along with how it sounds.
* * *
A being of light who loses it over a parking spot
Okay, you’re light. All the way. So there’s no shadow in you, no dark side, nothing of the other polarity.
«Come on, of course I get angry, I’m flesh and blood too.» Yeah. Obviously. Nobody said a being of light doesn’t lose it over a parking spot. But you started out saying you are light, and the second I press a little you climb down to «well, what I do, I do from goodness, from the good».
«Being of light» sounded like a rank, like standing a step above everyone else. And once you scratch it, it comes down to «I try to behave well». Which is what everyone tries to do. The guy in the car you got mad at also thinks he does things from the good. Nobody gets up in the morning and says today I act from evil. So what promised a special place turns out to be what anyone would say.
And even if it were true, doing things «from goodness» guarantees nothing about how they turn out. Being convinced of your own light doesn’t keep you from doing harm. Sometimes it even makes it easier. Good intention is a statement you make about yourself. It’s not proof of anything.
«Well, I’m working on it.» A process with no end and no way to check whether you’re moving isn’t a process. It’s an excuse with the date left blank.
Jung said it a century ago, and he wasn’t talking about you, he was talking about the people of his own time who did the same thing: one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The second part is uncomfortable, which is why it doesn’t sell. Some people have written whole books about chasing the light to avoid looking at what’s underneath, they call it spiritual bypassing. No need to go there. Seeing the contradiction head-on is enough. Because someone who’s really where they say they are doesn’t need to say it fifteen times.
* * *
Working for the light, therefore anything goes
I work in the name of the light. Light is the good. Therefore whatever I do is good in advance, no matter who’s looking.
It’s a free pass. Whatever I decide, whatever I say, whatever idea I defend, of whatever kind and whether it has anything to do with light or not, is justified before it starts, because it’s signed by the good side. Nothing to prove. The word already vouches for it.
* * *
Light entities, light of what?
And then there’s the company. «I’m surrounded by beings of light», «I’m guided by light entities», angels, guides, presences. All luminous.
And how do you know they’re light? The answer is almost always the same. Something speaks to them, something keeps them company, it gives them a good feeling or it’s told them it comes from the good. And since it sounds like light, they take it as good. Done. Not one more check.
They’ve settled the most serious question of all, what they’re actually dealing with, just because the label said light. And a nice feeling doesn’t prove what’s on the other side. If your only filter is «it feels like light», you don’t have a filter.
«But they’re angels, they’re beings of light.» Ah, well, that’s what you believe. What you’ve actually got on the other side is another conversation, and I’ve had it elsewhere. Here this is enough: you say light and you stop asking.
* * *
He’s such a luminous person
And facing outward it gets ugly. Because if I’m light, and light is the only acceptable thing, whoever shines less is already worth less to me.
To say someone’s a good person they say «he’s a very luminous being». And for the rest, the ones who don’t make the brightness cut, there’s the pitying look, the raised eyebrow, the «they haven’t woken up yet». And what about those people? Don’t they get to live? Do they have to turn into someone like you to be worth anything? Because what they’re running, smile and all, is a conversion like any other. You enter the light or you’re surplus.
* * *
Le Guin put it in one line: to light a candle is to cast a shadow. There’s no light that doesn’t throw a shadow. If everyone were light and everything pulled toward the light, the way they ask for, the whole system would tip out of balance. And no, I’m not saying you have to work from the dark. I’m saying light with no opposite isn’t purity. It’s a child’s drawing.
Light that wants nothing to do with its shadow doesn’t illuminate. It dazzles. And dazzling is the best way to keep you from seeing what’s underneath.
This article draws on many years of my own work and on a few checked references: the idea of the shadow in Carl Jung (Alchemical Studies), the concept of spiritual bypassing, coined by the psychologist John Welwood and developed by Robert Augustus Masters, and the line about the candle and the shadow from Ursula K. Le Guin in A Wizard of Earthsea. What is my own interpretation, I hope it’s clear that it is.
