this is part of a multi-part series on discernment. what are my ways of discerning what some traditions would call “god’s will” and what others might call in alignment with highest good for me or what deepak chopra calls communication from our nonlocal intelligence? i will use the terms “god’s will,” “highest good” “nonlocal communication” interchangeably throughout the series so look alive. click through the first post (how do i discern what is alignment with my highest good and why might i want to?) to see what lies ahead or what i’ve already brought forth.
in this time where the entire globe appears to be waking up to the violent consequences of systemic racism, many people are asking themselves the question what is mine to do? all of the discernment series can help me to assess that. one question in particular than could help is “what is light for me?”—it also has the potential to open the door to a way of being that may be totally new.
as you’ll see below, getting in touch with what’s light means letting go of “shoulds.” this can be interesting for a white woman like me who has spent her life on the protest line. “light” isn’t necessarily the same as what human structures say is “right.” it may not match with what a #blacklivesmatter app tells me are my options. we are in a time when the use of violent force itself is being (finally) called into question. yet many of the ways of standing up for change are themselves connected with a heavy energy of force. the roots of the word “protest” are from the latin where men would grab their testicles (proteste) to swear that they were telling the truth. the feeling of light may not match with the energy of grabbing our testicles. it may be more like grounding our ovaries to mother earth and being connected with all there is. that energy may suggest a way of being rather than doing and it may not always be obvious what we are being. dr. king’s radical tactics of nonviolent action were a new way of being in his time and they completely changed the parameters of the possible. what new way of being is light for us now?
a few years ago, i got introduced to a teaching/set of tools called access consciousness. i’ve taken a few classes in it and as usual i consider that that’s enough for me to hold myself out as an expert on it (hint: i’m not). my initial teacher focused a lot on the concept of “what is light for you?” she treated this question as identical to the question “is this true?”
if i or someone asked me “is this true for me?” and i got a “light” feeling, then the answer was yes. if i got a constricted, heavy, feeling the answer was no. the teacher treated this as simple and obvious.
light = yes
heavy = no
the problem was a) i couldn’t really tell what was light or heavy and b) to the degree that i could tell, it was much easier to discern heavy than light and heavy felt like a yes to me. so when ever she would ask me is this light or heavy? or is this true? i would stare at her like a raccoon caught in headlights (slightly more malicious than a deer because it turned out i had a lot more at stake than i realized).
i thought should meant have to–as i played with this concept over time i came to understand the difficulty. one was that the feeling of “light” is, for me anyway, really an absence of heavy more than a presence of light. heavy used to be my default setting, both literally and figuratively. i had a heavy body and i took everything seriously. i thought that what was true for me was what i should be doing. i was very focused on obligation. i had exactly no experience in discernment other than discerning what my parents, or society or, now, “god” thought i ought to do.
shoulds feel heavy–obligations constrict my chest and my throat and they bind me to them. so the idea of feeling what is light and free and expansive and non constrictive is actually a radical and dangerous one for me. how dare i even been interested let alone do what feels light? i am supposed to do what i should do. in other words it was my lifelong unconscious belief that heavy was true and light was impossible.
make a game of it — as i began to pay attention to this feeling of lightness that was now discernible to me, i began to experiment with making nonconsequential choices on the basis of it. see why should i practice with the small stuff? or how playing sudoku can build trust in your intution— i loved this experiment because its sudoku, who cares? i started playing harder levels of sudoku than i had the analytical ability/patience to handle and using lightness of a choice between one number to guide me as to which to put in. almost every single time, the lightest number was the right one. this is a great exercise because there is a right answer so you can really see if it works.
eliminate the thinking–as i built confidence, i began to use lightness for more important choices. that original teacher suggested that if we are trying to decide between multiple choices we can write them down on identical pieces of papers and then turn them over and move them all around so we don’t know which is which and then just put our hands over the choices and feel which is the lightest. this is a sort of double-blind study to take the thinking part out of it. when i can’t see which question i’m considering, i don’t even know what i’m thinking about so i can’t think, i can only feel. i usually do it like 3 times to see if the results change and if they do i’m thoroughly confused lol.
light is already here—what can we do to be it in the world? in the end, my experiment with noticing what’s light for me, regardless of whether lightness becomes a reliable way for me to make decisions, has brought more self-knowledge and a stronger connection with my spirit. you may find that light and love are not something that we have to bring more of into this world. there’s already plenty of light and love here. it may be that we do choose to be more of it and that we come to understand what that means. it may well mean marching, donating money and voting and what else is possible? how does it get even better than this? what energy space and consciousness can me and my body be to be love and love in the world today? and anything that doesn’t allow it, am i willing to destroy and uncreate it?
