About how they might find a sense of aliveness, potency, joy, connection.
I understand this longing completely – it’s tender, honest. We all share it.
It rises at different times in our lives – we are all the same. Plants reach for light, and so do we. It’s an organic impulse.
Light is our birth right. Not mine, nor owned. I’m certainly not an authority on it. Despite this, I am happy to share what I’ve noticed.
For me, the brightest light is always in deep intimacy with the dark.
In many ways.
The acceptance of the dark within us, and the cultivating of a powerful dark-light that is strong enough to insist on shining in a world that often tries to dim it.
Dark and light are not binary. They exist within one another, one, sacred thing.
We all have our melodies and maladies.
The greatest secret is acceptance of this.
Of holding sacred, the power of both the dark and the light to fuel us, drive us, open us, deepen us and push us all forward – to ignite and enliven us into an existence so rich, we can’t help but let life dance us – all the way – whether in suffering, or in joy.
We can cultivate this.
Potency, for me, is about how we sit inside ourselves, imbibe ourselves, feel toward ourselves.
It’s not about what we’re doing, or wearing.
It’s not about that curated Instagram shot.
It’s about – what is my unique truth and who am I being, as I move through the world?
It’s about releasing being defined through another’s eyes, and instead defining ourselves through our inner eye. “Do I approve of me?”
Returning deeply to ourselves, over and over, deeply to our own truth and living it courageously.
Questions might be, am I here to have people like me? Approve of me? Look sexy? Or am I here to be what I truly am, and so be free to celebrate life, myself and others too, in all our juicy differences.
Can I let myself be the powerful force that I am? Can I go toward all the murky blackness and the sweetness in me? Or will I shut down these energy currents and so become tighter, sadder, less alive?
It begins, and ends, within us.
As we move toward the dark in us, it is finally homed. Our bodies and systems relax in ease, no longer pushing against parts of ourselves – and this is what allows light to flow through us freely.
Our song is our art. Our song is our work. We are tethered to the energy that we cultivate within ourselves and we will always move and create from that energy.
We will always be animated by that energy.
It cannot be, any other way.
If that energy is chaos and unacknowledged weights – darkness we push away – we will lead our lives from turmoil and inner division, and much of what we touch will produce dysfunctional results.
We often push pain away or avoid it because we don’t want it to overwhelm or run us. And by pushing it away and not allowing it to be felt, it does run us because it remains, a deep discordant hum underneath everything we run to.
If we have cultivated acceptance, power, equanimity, love, in our bodies then we move from there, and all we touch benefits from that.
The undepleatable source of our flow, alignment and love is our own connection with ALL of who we are.
This, is the intelligence required.
Our connection to deep-light, is simply the connection to ourselves. Which is also the connection to God, source, infinite intelligence, whatever you want to call it. It’s all the same thing.
The only undepleatable, truly luminous energy source – is within us.
That is where we can turn again and again and again to be filled, lightened, animated and imbued with true power, wisdom, might, security and the richest connection we could imagine.
Instead, we tend to reach for energy injections (we could call this false light) outside of us – food, a new crush, people pleasing, another pair of parted legs, scrolling, gambling, drugs, booze, shopping, whatever.
Those energy injections always run out and we find ourselves depleted again, reaching like addicts, again.
We always feel insecure from this place because we are puppets on strings to those things.
Instead, being totally available to the rich source of energy within ourselves optimises everything outside of ourselves. So this work is the best thing we can do for everyone around us, our families, our communities.
We might ask – what energy currents am I sitting in as a human? What am I too afraid to see that I am? Where do I home myself, and place my power? How can I raise, raise, RAISE this energy that I find within – in the body. Perhaps in a whisper now, but always there.
How can I host this juicy, incredible light, more permanently through the body? How can I then weld that consciousness in the world?
If you look, you will find it, deep inside you.
Keep coming back, through the fear, through the darkness, through the hollow parts of you, the orphaned parts of you, the hate-filled parts of you and eventually – welcoming all home – we find our truth, luminosity, peace, power.
We can discover and honour our ways of connecting to ourselves and source and never look back. Insisting on this time, this space to connect, no matter what shows up, inside or outside.
Eventually, a clear, powerful, dark-light settles in us. Immensely grounded. Incredibly precise. Fiercely intelligent.
Not a saccharine, fluffy love. A mighty, homed, clear-seeing love that can stand against armies if needed.
And it will be needed, from time to time.
Because no one is EVER going to give us permission to be this alive and free.
Light burns, as well as illuminates. If anything peoples instinct can be to criticise or try to shut it down, both in themselves and others. “How dare you…?”
If we want to radiate the true force that we are – the authentic fullness of ourselves – there’s a fierce dark-light needed to underpin it. A black, firm love, that says – “I choose this, for me. Nothing will stop me being all that I am.”
We are called, to give ourselves permission to shine, in many seemingly small moments, and some big ones.
We are called to claim ourselves. Deeply, truly, unapologetically.
Our connection to all the parts of ourselves is our connection to light, to god, to potency, to authentic power. It is deep living and from that alignment and balance – all impulses and guidance, joy and aliveness follow. We can trust the impulses that arise from this place.
It’s more than okay to have hard days. It’s more than okay to have hard years.
We bend, we break, we rise. We are all the same.
This isn’t failure, this is sacred process.
Rather than abandoning our real self to create an idealised one – a light filled one – we can aim to reveal, accept and nurture what is truly here – who we truly are – in our entirety. We find we are already light.
Reveal it… and then revel in it.
Not because someone has deemed us okay. Not because we’ve been granted permission or wholeness from outside or reached some spiritual or cultural peak – simply because we have decided to stop walking the rigid lines created for us, and by us, and let ourselves dance – fully, deeply, unapologetically.
We place, and draw our power from within.
In this place we cannot help but alight ever more deeply.
We stop knowing if we are even the dancers of our lives, or simply being deeply, deeply danced.