Lightwork

Your guide to lightwork

Lightwork is a term that has been around for a few decades, and it is increasingly used as an umbrella term for the sort of healing work that is undertaken by a raft of different people which could be said to be a force for spiritual good - or light, if you prefer. As such, the term lightwork indicates any endeavour that is positively spiritual in nature. Therefore, some critics of the word will say that it barely has any meaning because it is used to cover anything from deeply held religious faiths around the spirit of people, animals and the wider universe to much less well-defined aspects of spirituality, such as a casual belief in angels. Nevertheless, the term has caught on to try and capture all positive work in the spiritual world, and it can therefore be used to distinguish these sorts of belief systems and activities from that of the natural sciences.

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Michael Mirdad, the American spiritual teacher, healer and author, is often cited as the person who first coined the term lightwork in respect of spirituality related activities. His works often deal with intuitive healing and, in particular, obtaining a higher level of consciousness through the life and example of Jesus. Mirdad used the term lightworker as far back as the 1980s when he was writing about encouraging light and love to enter people's spirits. His early work is generally based on the 1976 book, A Course in Miracles by Helen Schucman, but it is Mirdad who first coalesced many of the themes in her book into the wider concept of lightwork. In the late 1990s, Doreen Virtue, another American healer who specialises in chakras, published the book, The Lightworker's Way, which helped to popularise the term still further. Focussing on New Age ideas, Lightworker: Understand Your Sacred Role as Healer, Guide, and Being of Light by Sahvanna Arienta was published in 2011.

Most people who conduct lightwork would accept that at least part of what they are doing is highly intuitive. They tend to 'feel' something within them and behave in a way that strikes a chord with that sensation. How this works may be very different from person to person, but it tends to feel right because it is natural. That said, there is something of a paradox with the intuitive nature of lightwork. This is because people who do it and are interested in it will often be on something of a journey of spiritual awakening themselves. As such, they might intuitively understand what lightwork could be, but they want to keep learning and understand more about its wider spiritual context. That is why so many self-help books on the subject are about spiritual awakenings rather than being straightforward guides for lightworkers to read. In the main, lightworkers will function in healing, teaching or guidance roles largely because of the wider intuition they have, however.

There are a number of character traits that are common among lightworkers. Again, there is no single personality type that is drawn to lightwork. That said, a willingness to believe and the ability to accept things that cannot always be seen or proven – such as religious faith, astral plane knowledge or angelic healing processes, for example – are prevailing traits. Other common characteristics of lightworkers include the ability to have empathy with others to a significant degree as well as the desire to help people, usually from a psychological or spiritual standpoint. Many lightworkers will already have careers in healthcare, caregiving, or social care before discovering the spiritual side of such work. There again, some people come to it later in life as they realise their chosen career did not always satisfy a yearning in their heart for more light. People who remove themselves from situations where negative energies might be present are also more likely to be lightworkers.

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Yes, to many people, performing the role of guiding or healing spirits is a form of lightwork. Indeed, it is often cited as the most typical form of such spiritual work. Most people who do this sort of work will be driven by an understanding of those around them that connects them to the Earth and the wider universe through a universal consciousness. Because they are aware that their spirit – or soul – is interconnected with that of everyone and everything else, they will often use their perceptiveness to help others make similar connections. Given that this sort of work will often be described as bringing light into the hearts of others or – in some religious senses – revealing the light to them, this is one of the most archetypal forms of lightwork you could find. Of course, someone does not need to be a professional spiritual guide to be a lightworker. Anyone who helps others formally or informally in this way could be said to be a lightworker.

Having a psychic understanding of the world does not necessarily mean you are a lightworker. However, many psychics would use the term about themselves to describe at least part of their make up. Generally speaking, lightworkers try to be good to those around them, to make a difference to others and to leave the world a better place than they found it. Some people who are psychics may not always fall into this category, but many do. Conversely, people who consider themselves to be lightworkers will often seek inner truths of themselves, and this can lead to some people discovering psychic skills in themselves they never knew they had. As such, there tends to be a considerable intersection between psychics and so-called seers and lightwork. In short, some lightworkers will use their psychic abilities to spread positivity and lightness around the world about them.

There is no way of telling - from an empirical point of view, at least – that lightworkers are incarnated. However, it is something that some lightworkers will say they think is so. In this sense, lightworkers are 'created' from birth and always have the spiritual calling within them to conduct such work, even if it is a calling that is not always answered. And yet, another explanation of lightwork is that it is within everyone or, more precisely, that all people have the capacity to take part in it. Whether you believe in lightworkers being incarnated or even reincarnated is likely to come down to your personal beliefs around the nature of the soul or spirit and their relationship to the body. Given that science cannot prove or disprove incarnation at all, it remains an open question as to whether this is something that specifically relates to lightworkers or not.

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A twin flame is a term that is used by some people to describe their alternate or mirrored soul. This aspect of spirituality relates to ancient beliefs about the soul whereby the same spirit could sometimes be split and enter two separate bodies. To some anthropologists, this concept is an early way of describing the intense emotional connections two people have who fall in love with one another. And yet, for others, it is more literally interpreted whereby two individuals could indeed share one soul. Given that lightworkers are, generally speaking, more open to ideas about spirituality and New Age explanations of souls, they also tend to be more likely to see a twin flame in another person. Indeed, some people have estimated that the majority of lightworkers will consider themselves to be one half of a twin flame whether they have found their twin or not. Others think that all lightworkers are effectively twin flames of one another because they all share a common soul.

Regarded by many lightworkers to be a particularly higher calling form of lightwork, gatekeeping refers to the spiritual pathways that connect all people and, indeed, the entire universe. If you can imagine spiritual pathways transcending the natural world and into a universal grid that crosses through time, space and even dimensions, then you are part way to understanding what gatekeepers do. In such a model of interconnected spirituality, some lightworkers would argue that as well as pathways that spirits can follow; there will be blockages and negative energies. Essentially, gatekeepers see their role as keeping the pathways open within the grid of interconnected spirituality. Being lightworkers, they do this to allow positivity and love to flow through them. Of course, not all lightworkers do such work, nor does everyone who would describe themselves as a lightworker agrees with the notion of an interdimensional grid of spirituality that connects everything in the first place.

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According to the International Lightworkers Association, lightworker syndrome is a common complaint among people who regard themselves as spiritual. Although this is certainly not a term that any medical practitioner would use in a professional sense, lightworker syndrome has some of the traits that would be common to a psychological condition or ailment. Usually, it is used to describe the feeling that spiritual people feel as they broaden their horizons. Sometimes, they feel very connected with the universe and others while, at other times, they feel as though they have no spiritual insight at all. Some lightworkers can feel disheartened as the work they have all this motivation to do is not possible or appears to be ineffective. Acceptance of this situation is often a way of shaking off the effects of the syndrome. Rather than being stuck or regressing in spiritual terms, these feelings are usually a sign of growth in spiritual understanding.

Some people who manifest things in their life do not consider themselves to be lightworkers. That said, manifesting is often thought to be a form of lightwork by people who are using the technique in a spiritual sense. Essentially, manifesting means being able to channel energies such that what is desirable will come about. For example, a manifestor may tell themselves that they will achieve a certain outcome or imagine themselves with a type of lifestyle. By affirming it and reaffirming it in their minds, they believe it is more likely to come about. A lightworker will use similar techniques but tend to have a focus on the well-being of others, such as manifesting them into a better spiritual condition or even better health. Some will even work on manifesting an improved human consciousness among all people, aiming to bring about world peace through their efforts in human rights.

Many quizzes and self-assessment tests are available to score yourself as a lightworker. These are often little more than personality questionnaires which make a fairly bald judgement about the sort of person you consider yourself to be. They will also often lead you in a certain direction rather than offering genuine insight into how many lightworker traits you may possess or otherwise. The sort of questions you can ask yourself about whether lightwork is something that is for you would be: do you consider yourself to be spiritual, do you have an inner yearning for a higher calling and do you have beliefs that are outside of the mainstream, which you cannot always explain? Frequently asked questions of a more general nature - such as, do you think you are ready to make a leap into a new life? - can elicit responses for a much greater number of reasons than being predisposed to lightwork and are, therefore, often useless.

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Although lightwork is often associated with New Age belief systems and wider spiritual movements that take in paganism and organised religions, there is another way the term is used. Other than its commercial usage – Lightwork is also the name of a digital video mastering software suite – the word is also used by some people who try to challenge conspiracy theories. Although this work is not spiritual in its nature, it attempts to overcome some of the darkly negative aspects of such conspiracies, hence its use of the word light. In this sense of the term, a lightworker is someone who will confront the ideas that underpin a conspiracy theory in the hope that it will be debunked and fewer people will end up believing in it. Consequently, it is important not to get these two separate definitions of the term confused or conflated with one another.

Overall, lightworking is about being positive with whatever spiritual teaching, guidance or practices we might have at our disposal. Although New Age ideas are at the heart of the way many people speak about the concept of lightwork and lightworkers these days, it can take in aspects of all sorts of spirituality and different beliefs so long as the person drawing upon them is doing so for the good of everyone. In this sense, lightworkers can basically be anyone who wants to do something positive for others around them, no matter what religion they belong to or how they might identify spiritually. Teachers, spiritual guides, reiki practitioners, transmuters of negative energy, gatekeepers, ascension guides and even artists can all be considered as lightworkers in that regard. Indeed, there are many more examples than that.

A lot of people who are describing themselves as lightworkers would say that they are on a spiritual journey. As such, very few people would consider themselves to be the finished article when it comes to lightwork, or that they are some kind of experts who have reached the highest level of what being a lightworker means. Rather, they are on a pathway to greater spirituality or enlightenment and simply sharing their knowledge and skills with the wider world as they move along on that journey, and all for the common good. The work of lightworkers may sometimes go unnoticed or perhaps even unappreciated, but that is not stopping people from all over the world from pouring their positivity into it.