Charge of the Light Brigade!

Frequently, intense and somewhat heated exchanges occur in discussion forums focusing on spirituality. Usually, this is handled with civility, however, often it tends to create bad feelings amongst individuals and, although, this may rise up occasionally, most tend to seek out greater civility and make apologies as necessary.

But this is life, boys and girls! These discussions are microcosmic representations of life itself, merely abridged and abbreviated.

Yet, lo and behold, we have the charge of the Light Brigade! Because they refuse to enter into the often dark depths of engagement, and often are disengaged from most conflicts of life, the lightworkers come to our "emotional rescue." They seek to spread peace and light in the hopes of redirecting hostilities, but merely make the participants feel even more guilty for their conflictual engagement.

Who could not feel guilty when the interaction they recently engaged in was anything but "peace and light"?

Thank god for the lightworkers and their clichés of love and godliness; with their comfortable pithy quotes from the master teachers of light.

Sometimes I want to ask, are you real? But that would be too controversial and so, It would go unanswered.

I sense their presence always, out there in the margins, rarely engaging except to post a quote from the venerable in the hopes of saving the discussion from death by negativity. Disagree with their means and you instantly indict yourself as in league with the positivity sucking devils of darkness.

Conflict is anathema to the lightworkers who define life as merely the spreading of positive "vibrations." We must remain positive at all times. Philosophical negativity is shunned because, as their creed demands, negativity in all its forms can never have any value and can only lead to more negativity. Negative interactions can have no cathartic effect in aiding individuals in seeing more clearly the views they hold. Life is chock full of conflict and most is of our own doing, individually and collectively. Yet, we tend to grow through spasms of pain and suffering. We watch others struggle to make sense of anger and depression and we identify with them, because their struggle is ours.

Most of us, that is, but not the lightworkers. They seem unusually immune to the conflicts the rest of us poor folk plod through. But if only we would just seek the light, all our troubles would be gone, "come into the light, Caroleanne, come into the light!"

But we are!

For the lightworkers, dirty laundry stinks and so we must quickly wash away our issues and problems with lots of soap and water. Remember when you mother washed out your fowl mouth with soap? You continued to use the ‘F' word even more ferociously! ( well, maybe that was just me)

No, dear friends, we must always shed our light upon the world, because darkness has no value. Ahh... but without darkness to define your seeking the light, how would you define your "self" and the very project you are engaged in?

Forget the deep-seated ancient issues and the wounds crying out to be healed. Just pour pink paint over them and everything will be all better. I avoid lightworkers like the plague, since they deny us our struggle, and merely provide 'lip-service' the aphorisms of the ancient lightworkers.

They deny LIFE.

These frightened folks tend to rile me more than the complex exchanges between ideological opponents seeking common ground. It's almost as if there are no problems that their positive thinking can't solve.

I meet these individuals in my work on a daily basis and have come to see this as a feint, a delusion, a foil, because under all their peace and light is a boiling cauldron of emotion just waiting to come to the surface and murder everyone in their path.

They scare me...

"Don't you dare," they seem to say, in their desperate need to hide from their own emotional self.

Here ye, oh, lightworkers of the world:

You are not saving the world by spreading your light. The light comes from intimately understanding one another within our depths, not from deflecting that understanding through platitudes that seek to offset negativity. Face your fears through another. Intimacy demands discomfort in vacating all our pretty ideological boxes and packages. Your "light" merely prolongs the inevitable intimacy that our conflict has the potential to bring.

Throw away your pithy quotes and your scripts from the "masters."

I ask... WHAT SAY YOU! Will you give me honesty or just more of your "light."

Mature conflict is encouraged in the often painful search for the truth that is discovered by all differently. Even immature conflict is warranted as long as adults can apologize for their mistakes of the mouth. If you are afraid of conflict, you are asked to risk you plastic sense of peace and seek the intimacy that true depth of engagement brings. Real peace is not born of new age platitudes and clichés, but of engagement. Swim in my depths and I will join with yours in our own Intimate Awakening.

Spreading of light allowed, but only through depth of engagement.