If you're reading this, it's your sign to spread light

This is your responsibility. The world needs your light more than ever.

We are living in a time where the world is speaking in shadows. You can feel darkness and density shapeshifting every day into yet another new story or headline. In a way, it’s a really big opportunity for you to understand the collective unconscious and what lurks within it. The things that used to stay hidden, buried beneath systems, identities, and distractions, are rising into your view. What do you see? It’s all so loud and disorienting: the news, your feed, in conversations that feel heavier than they used to. It’s not normal for us to hold this much tension in our psyches and bodies. Sitting in meetings, answering emails, making plans while knowing that somewhere, someone is unsafe. That families are being separated. The people you love could be called into situations you can’t control.

Too much pain, too much struggle, too much heartache!

Do you know what’s happening to the world? Does anyone, really?

Carl Jung (1968) wrote in Psychology and Alchemy:

“We have even forgotten that the psyche is by no means of our design, but is for the most part autonomous and unconscious. Consequently, the approach of the unconscious induces a panic fear in civilized people, not least on account of the menacing analogy with insanity.”

— (C.G Jung, p. 52)

What we’re witnessing right now feels like this quote’s explanation of how it feels to interact with the collective unconscious. This is the panic fear spreading among civilized people.

And this means you are not just observing and feeling the chaos. You are inside of it, influencing it, whether you are aware of it or not.

So here’s an honest question: how do you live well, and consciously, in the middle of this?

When awareness alone doesn’t feel like enough, what can you do?

At least this is what I have been asking myself, without self-guilt or shame. Just honesty.

What is our social responsibility right now?

I think the answer nods to what C.G Jung explored on psychological alchemy. Alchemy is about engaging with the unconscious in a way that changes its form. To be an alchemist is to be someone who understands how to conduct this transformation.

Alchemists use heat to melt, distill, and mold.

When something psychological and emotional is alchemized, the fragments unite, and the psyche is whole and healed.

Right now, you can alchemize through your craft through what you make or do in life, what you imagine, and how you bring the spirit of light and heat within you into external form.

So picture this: the world is tainted in heavy lead. Dense, tense, hard to move through like molasses. Some of us are caught in it, not by choice but by circumstance. Then there are others in the middle of it, confused too, but choosing to move differently. They bring in light through their words, their presence, and the way they respond. They use their imagination to envision a healed world. They share their positive ideas with those around them. They leverage their talents and craft to serve others in humility.

The lead begins to soften and warm. It becomes something workable, something closer to gold.

You see it in small, real ways. Someone leaves a conversation a little more open. Someone chooses curiosity over defensiveness. You share art from another part of the world, expanding your lens. You pause during a tense moment and stay grounded rather than reacting.

YOUR LIGHT IS YOUR ENERGY. YOU CAN CHANNEL IT IN THE WAY YOU SHOW UP, THE WORDS YOU CHOOSE TO RESPOND WITH, THE LOVE YOU CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE TO SHARE.

In a time where so much unconscious material is circulating: fear, division, projection, reactivity, there is a real impact in choosing to move with awareness instead of contributing more of the same, endless echo chamber of darkness.

The world doesn’t just need more information or more opinions right now. There is enough of it. It needs people who are grounded enough not to amplify chaos, who can stay present in uncomfortable conversations, and who can take responsibility for their own emotional state rather than pass it along. Who can share a powerful statement of affirmation and hope when it’s needed. Who can take actions that contribute positively to humanity.

Unprocessed pain spreads quickly, often without being recognized for what it is. It is poison.

The same is true for clarity, care, and love. It is medicine.

LIGHT was never meant to erase the darkness entirely. Light was meant to help us orient ourselves amongst the darkness. We need to learn how to move through complexity without losing our center.

— Keila Shaheen, The Light Work Journal

If you’re reading this, it’s your sign to start spreading light.

Begin by asking yourself these questions:

• Where am I being pulled into reactivity instead of staying aware?

• What would it look like for me to share my light in the world?

• What strengths and gifts do I have that I can use to contribute positively to my community?

• Who around me might need more support than they’re expressing?

A moment of presence and an act of loving service can change how someone behaves and how they perceive the rest of their day.

You don’t have to fix the world to participate in changing it. You participate by becoming more conscious within it.

I created The Light Work Journal for this exact mission. So you can learn how to master your most precious inner resource: your energy (your light), and use it to transform yourself and the world around you. In the Light Work Journal, you’ll find more educational resources on working with your light, exercises, prompts, and worksheets to put this into practice. We need this now more than ever.

If you’ve been feeling more reactive lately, more emotionally charged, more sensitive to things you thought you had already worked through, know that the external world has a way of activating what is unresolved internally. This is where shadow work becomes helpful. It gives you a way to understand what’s being stirred up within you instead of letting it spill out into more unconscious muck. If you need a place to start, you can explore that through The Shadow Work Journal.

With light,

Keila Shaheen