Many years ago, when I was twenty years old I experienced a massive and radical awakening through what I later discovered was a Kundalini experience. What I never realized was what this single experience did for me, for the rest of my life. In the intervening years, into my mid-forties, I explored everything. I resolved, in a poetic way, that the unexamined life wasn’t worth living, so I explored as much as I could. I intentionally opened myself up to everything that would come to me, and that’s when the synchronicities began.

At first, they were curiosities, coincidences and happy accidents. I was beset by strange memorable dreams, deja vu, and a whole host of little oddities that I could comfortably ignore. My explorations included a bunch of discoveries, and realizations that not everyone starts their life like I did mine. From eight years old, I knew what my life purpose was, I wrote it out, and I never revised it since, and it’s been with me for forty years of living and I have no reason to change it now. At twelve years of age, I lost what little drabs of organized religion were impressed upon me by everyone else, and I lost it in the most amusing of places, the Church Library at the First Presbyterian Church in Ithaca, New York, which was my maternal grandmothers church, and the one where I was baptized and grew up frequenting on Sundays. Then zoom forward, seventeen years of age, and I encountered a medium / psychic fellow who helped me remember a previous incarnation. I was an Irish Catholic priest, mid 1800’s, and being inducted into that understanding was at the time just another amusement, but turned out to be fundamental for all the things that came afterwards. All of these events, little accidents, little nudges, all to place me on a certain path, and now that I look back in retrospect, it is hilariously obvious that I was always going to end up here.

Then several years ago, I started knowing things. I would be able to guess, with shocking uncanny success, if I was posed with a problem or question, and in the first heartbeat, that answer, which more and more started just happening all by itself would just land in my lap. After a series of self-exams where I would honestly test myself, test this gift, and after I was rocking nearly 100% accuracy I accepted it and let it become a part of who I am. I don’t use it intentionally, instead my instincts guided me to regard it as just another worthwhile input, pouring all of what the world had for me, all my perceptions, the events that happened in my life, all into a central pool and let everything mingle. I later discovered that this gift has a name, it’s called claircognizance. The ability to acquire knowing, gnosis, immediately without having to expend any sort of mental labor to reach the answer. I still had no idea what was happening to me, but I wanted desperately to follow all these breadcrumbs left for me, like a trail of M&M’s.

Over time, I picked up many more skills, through my young adulthood I picked up Tarot, Runes, and Bibliomancy and started to appreciate the more numinous and subtle shadings of existence. I started asking the big questions, the purpose of life, why we exist, and trying to understand this world that I exist in, what it means and my place within it. Then I had three lifelong lessons to cope with co-dependency. The first lesson was co-dependency in my family, then in my love life, and finally in my public life. Each time I thought I was done with the lessons to learn, only to careen into the next lesson. All of this set me up for my development, but also encouraged me to start addressing all the shadows in my life. Early traumas, sadnesses, and hurts that all goaded me into a kind of compartmentalization. Every interaction with others was jarring and painful, unpleasant and upsetting. Turns out, my nascent empathy was traumatized and as such, I created barricades around this, to protect myself. Everyone who wanted to grab a token and hurt me could line up, get their abuse jollies and I would just sit there and take it, stoically. It was just dissociation, which I came to understand much later in life. You can’t reach me if I’m not here, so I would leave. Leave within myself.

Years of this, of being the black sheep of my family, to being isolated and lonely, a permanent outsider, never once fitting in properly anywhere, never a part of anything, always browsing from outside and looking in on a world that seemed to be really quite wonderful, but also not for me. So I decided that I could just do it all alone, I was isolated and lonely anyways, nobody could understand the vast sweeping ideas that I was having, so I just determined to keep it all inside. That I could explore where I wanted to go, how I wanted to evolve in this lifetime and I would do it as a solitary practitioner. It felt right, I had mile-high barricades built around me, I kept my caring parts, my empathy, close to me, protecting it from a rude and nasty world full of rude and nasty human beings, and I resolved that I would live the rest of my days, cut off and happy. Happy in my separate peace.

And then, suddenly and unbidden, I started to channel. I would talk to myself, or more clearly, I would hear my own voice talking to me, and there was both messages and feelings to this exchange. I didn’t think I was losing my faculties, I felt like it was another gift from the Universe, maybe something like a consolation prize for an unhappy childhood, perhaps. And I accepted it, if it was going to be a part of me, then I would welcome it, add it to the chorus that was feeding into the central pool of experience building slowly within my mind. By accepting it, it doesn’t upset me, and some days the channel “pops open” several times a day, and sometimes it doesn’t for weeks at a time, it comes when it comes, it says what it says, and always the messages are advice, suggestions, and above everything else, this pervasive feeling of love and support. I can’t make anyone proud of me out there, but I apparently can for my channel, and whatever is on the other side of the line. For good or ill, I accept it.

Then after a while, with a lifetime of material building up within me, I started feeling this unfocused foreboding sensation. Like I could feel something coming towards us, from the future, something we were all blindly stumbling into, traipsing into. That’s when I tried to reach out, I didn’t know what sort of warning I could give, so I started to try to help people. My gift comes with a curse. The curse of Cassandra is the closest mythological story I can come up with. Gifted with knowledge, the gnosis from the claircognizance, but the curse that I would never be believed. I came to understand that I was still an outsider, but oddly enough, I started to also find people who could actually hear me. I think they would be proud to call themselves neurodivergent, and when I would share with them, they would hear me. It was jarring and shocking. The curse was always with me, making me othered, separated, an outsider with those that surround me, except for the neurodivergent.

Over time, I came to learn that everything that was happening to me was suited to a much greater purpose. Ticking boxes, checking off elements, and slowly evolving my way into becoming a Lightworker. I had this sense of foreboding still, and I carry it to this day, it’s still with me. I then encountered a dear friend who I never considered interested in any of this stuff, but he started helping me by saying the exactly right things, at the right time. The channel kept on telling me that someone would walk into my life, sometime very soon, and that they would help me to grow and open up. So, with my channel telling me it was the best path for me, and nudging me with synchronicities and unexplainable coincidences, I gave up my barricades and let each one of them crumble. This one person, this one very special person, enabled me to share all that I had become, all I had discovered, and everything that I had to say. This person could hear me, they would listen, and they offered kindness and support. I then started to dream again, I wasn’t remembering the dreams like I had, but I felt this irresistible pressure build within me. I wanted desperately to grow, to relax, to unclench. I knew exactly what would be my next step in my personal evolution, and that was that I needed to be Bright. As a Lightworker, I am told that I have a presence and a glow to me, perhaps I do, but I also feel this urge to actually try. Not just to accept what the channel and other sensitives and empaths share with me, but to grab the reins and pursue it. This pursuit has become one of the most exciting and passionate pursuits of my entire lifetime.

I know what I am supposed to do, my role in all of this. As a Lightworker I am supposed to inspire others. I am to follow a path of ever increasing emotional vibratory frequencies. I have to ask at every juncture, what do I prefer? What choice would lead me to where I want to go, this image in my mind of a world that we all want to live in. One built out of kindness, compassion, love, and respect. That’s my path, and as a part of it, I felt this overwhelming revulsion to all my prior low-frequency emotions. Hate, Fear, Anger, Rage. So I actively spurned all of those, at each juncture picking hope, kindness, compassion, and deep feelings of love over all the awful feelings. I was so angry, all the time, and I have come to understand that anger and fear are just messengers from beyond me, helping me to push myself towards the light. More than just abandoning the low frequency feelings, I embraced them, felt them, let them reach expression through me and as I did, they one by one faded out of my life. As it turns out, I was doing shadow-work, without even knowing that it was called that.

For me, in this world, I see the realm we exist in made up of three spheres. The lowest sphere is what my channel has termed “The Tar”, it’s hot, black, sticky, and has a breathtaking undertow that will grab you and pull you under with it. The Tar is a world of hate, fear, risk, suspicion, and scarcity of everything. It’s repugnant to me, and when I feel it, I try to steer away from it if I can. The next sphere is “The Dim”, and that’s our current world. You can see the light, it isn’t bright, but it is visible. You know what you should do, you see the path, you just need courage to walk it. We all live in The Dim, it’s the work-a-day world, the subsistence of living, the endless trudge of Same Shit, Different Day. The last sphere, the sphere I am working to enter, to champion, is “The Bright”. This sphere is one of kindness, compassion, respect, understanding, and is the home of my irrational altruism. That impulse to do something nice, unbidden, without any recompense because to give of myself in this way feels authentically vital.

I figured, as my journey started to take me down many unusual and out-of-the-way avenues, which I term my “woo woo” landscape, that really all of this, how I got here, what it all means, can all be reduced down to me simply wanting to have the Bright feelings, kindness, compassion, love, hope… the things that gain and generate and produce without working for it. A balm to the scarcity of The Tar, I suppose now that I have laid it all out for the first time from thoughts to words. My Lightworker nature just gives me a kind of vector, not only do I want to be more in The Bright, but I want to bring more of The Bright to everyone around me. All the advice that I get from my channel and all the sensitives and empaths that I have gotten to know on a personal level all give me little nudges. At first I wanted to scoop up everyone that I cared for, like a kind of shepherd of my flock as it were, and try to literally drag them into The Bright with me, because I didn’t want to lose any of them to The Tar. I could help them rise above The Dim, if I could just be strong enough, and convincing enough, to try hard enough. Once I had started trying, the channel and my sensitive friends all started to beat the drum to correct my path, another nudge. My place wasn’t to force or cajole or even prompt people, but instead to understand that what really matters in everything isn’t hard power, but soft power. Hard power is slapped down by Karma, where soft power is supported by Karma. So I shifted my approach and now I am concentrating all my energies on picking the right options in each juncture, and flowing from trying to make people hear me, to trying to inspire people. I can’t inspire without actually sharing myself with others, and so, this blog post was born in my mind and I write it out in an effort to be Bright and to shine.

The foreboding of what is coming is still with me. The world has sputtered and coughed in recent years, and there is this sense of something on the horizon that we are witlessly marching into, all of us. I don’t know what it is, nor when it is supposed to be, but I do know that I am right where I need to be. I need to tell people who I am, what I can do, and to simply inspire and shine as best that I can, being as damaged as I have been – and to rise above that trauma, all the reasons deep inside me that are screaming at me to not write any of this, to not share it, to not shine. If I don’t shine, I won’t be noticed, and I’ll be safe. If I ignore all of that, if I chase this Bright down and embody it myself, then I will shine, I will be noticed, and there might be risk. Then I smile and recall that I am to pick whichever choice is brighter at every juncture, and so, it’s brighter for me to share this with you all, knowing that an act of deep disclosure of a personal vulnerability is a monumental act of grace and trust, fills me with such joy and happiness. It’s scary, it’s frightening, and it’s also incredibly liberating! As with many things, when you are up close to a thing, all you can see is that thing, so this feels huge and monumental, but over time, and perspective that develops, this is just a blip, a pebble on the path, not a mountain.

The time for me to inspire, to learn to shine in time to reach my loved ones, if not more people, is running out. I don’t want to convince anyone of anything. I want to only share ideas, not beliefs. Ideas are fluid things, they can be endlessly revised and they don’t pick up the kind of baggage that comes with belief. Soon the foreboding event will happen, and I, and the other sparsely distributed Lightworkers will be standing alone again, but instead of being alone and separate from the rest of everyone, we are supposed to stand and guide. To be independent and strong, and to show the way.

That’s what occupies my time now, all my thoughts, every motive is bent to pursuit of this Brightness, and right now my channel is open, and whatever lies on the other side has this to share here, “The thing that scares you the most is quite often your next step. Be brave. Do your best.”

And that’s what all this comes down to. Do my best. My gift to give is giving itself. I am to give my shine to everyone, in hopes that they understand what it is that I want of the world. To leave the Tar and the Dim behind, to be Bright.

Walk in the Light.