Intro/Outro Music: 0:13

Aloha and welcome to your Heart Magic, an illuminating space where psychology, spirituality and heart wisdom meet. Here's your host, dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright. Author, psychologist and spiritual educator.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 0:32

Aloha everybody, welcome to your Heart Magic. This is Dr Bethann Kapansky-Wright, and today we are talking about the concept of what it means to own our light and work our light and understand what is our light. What does that actually mean? And when we use phrases like go be a light or go shine your light or radiate with light, how can we apply that and understand that on our individual paths, understand that on our individual paths? So we are looking at all things on the matter of light today and I actually have a passage to share in just a bit called on the matter of light, and this episode was inspired by the idea, right now, that we live in a very challenging world and you don't need me to make a list of everything that's wrong in the world.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 1:28

Sometimes I've pulled up the news this week and been like, oh my gosh, this is absolutely overwhelming right now. I feel overwhelmed Most empaths that I've been talking to feel absolutely overwhelmed right now and just overwhelmed by the sheer need and the sheer velocity and sheer quantity of things. And so, for me, I've often found it helpful that when I'm seeing things happen in our world and it just feels like it's tilting sideways and it would be so easy to spin into hopelessness and helplessness and these feeling states where we become very ineffective and we start to go down these rabbit holes of self-pity and does any of it matter? And feeling very meaningless and the scope of things. That is something that is very human to think about. There's nothing wrong with having those feelings. There's nothing wrong with doing some journaling and raw process work with those feelings. But there's no life there if we stay there. They are an absolute dead-end street. They will not help us find the resilience we need to grow through challenge and to work the alchemy of ourself and work constructively with some of the darkness and destruction that we're seeing right now and the challenges that we're seeing. We will not be able to work with that constructively when we stay in that place.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 2:58

So I'm a big advocate of our raw process work and I always want to be really clear on that. We're not bad when we dip into those low states. It's a very human thing to do. There's value in exploring what it feels like to muck around in the muddy grays and to get in touch with some of those challenges and feeling states that we all go through on the human journey. But I'm also an advocate that staying there is what takes us into a space of continuing to focus on all that's wrong, focusing on negativity, and then, instead of investing in the creation of light or working to come back to a place of grounding so we can reconnect with the light within, we start to become apathetic and detached and numbed out and disconnected and oftentimes we don't really like what we start turning into.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 3:52

So for myself, I've often found it helpful that when I find myself going there and I can tell that I'm heading down that one way dead end street to try and bring myself back to a space of how can I create light right now? How can I be a light? How am I feeling called to shine my light in the world? And it's kind of interesting, like, what do we mean by light? I didn't look it up or see what Webster's Dictionary has to say about light. It's probably a scientific explanation and I'm not sure if there's like a spiritual dictionary out there that has a definition of that. But I was tuning into this idea of what is light as I was setting my intentions for this podcast and some of what came through.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 4:37

For me it's any time that we move our energy from a space of love, from an open-hearted space, or we choose to do something or work with something in a way that brings some kind of illumination or warmth or compassion or acceptance to it. And when we create from a place of love and we act in love, we are investing in the creation of the light, the creation of love. The light is love. And when we choose to do the right thing not for a performative reason, not because we think we're going to get a gain from it or we're going to get in trouble if we don't Maybe we don't feel like doing the right thing, maybe we don't feel like being kind one day, but we make a choice to try and still move our energy in a way that's neutral or as kind as possible, and so we make that choice, and we do it for the reason that we want to try and be a contribution of the light, as opposed to somebody who is contributing to the creation of more chaos or strife or darkness. When we make those choices, we are creating light, and so there's not this one linear definition of the light that's so narrow. Anyways, I think the light itself, and if we think of the light, is love and think of that as connected to the numinous, to the mysteries, to spirit and to the energy and life force running through everything, to the greater cosmic flow and the things that move all of us along to want to love and stay open to one another. When we make an investment in that, we are participating in the creation of light. We are participating in the light and you can't pin down exactly what that is, because the light keeps evolving and love keeps evolving. We keep evolving on our journey and our authenticity and our transformation and how we feel called to show up in the world. So it's really hard to put it into a singular definition. But if you are thinking in terms of what can I do to bring some illumination to the space, then you are in the ballpark. So I want to share a passage from Small Pearls, big Wisdom and this is called on the matter of light and then talk about a few of the points that are in this particular passage. Talk about a few of the points that are in this particular passage.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 7:09

It's easy to minimize the power of our intentions and actions. It's easy to think that our deeds and works only hold value if recognized by many. It's easy to disregard the impact of our empathy, heartfelt intentions. Empathy, heartfelt intentions, quiet demonstrations of care, and how we keep showing up for love. It's easy to get caught up in producing, achieving and results.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 7:36

Sometimes we think our contributions don't hold value if they're not being validated or acknowledged. We forget that what is most important isn't what happens when we shine our light, but that we shine it in the first place. We forget that all creation has innate value and belonging, no matter how small the creation may be. We disregard our efforts and feel that our art, poetry, small acts of service, doing the right thing, sincerities, smiles, kindnesses to nature and animals and efforts of change are pointless. We forget that changing the energy inside of ourselves can impact the spaces we touch. We forget that when we create and act from a place of light, there is innate value, because the act of owning and working our light is the point.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 8:31

Our light matters. We've each been given truths and dreams and unique ways to contribute and shine. We've been given a heart to love and the conviction to keep working on making our heart a peaceful place. At times this might not be readily validated and seem very small in the scope of how big life can be, and yet they are our truths, dreams and heart contributions, and we are the only ones who can find the courage to dream them and see them into being. It can be challenging to have faith in your visions for your life, believe in your gifts and dreams and feel what you do matters and makes a difference. We are inundated with so much noise that it is easy to feel small and insignificant. Yet one little pen prick of light makes all the difference in a darkened room and inspires others to turn their lights on as well. Our light matters, your light matters. Please, keep finding the courage to shine. This world needs your light and you need your light and I need your light and humanity needs your light, now more than ever.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 9:49

There's a line in that passage that says something along the lines of what is important isn't what happens when we shine our light, but that we shine it in the first place, of valuing productivity and activity over receptivity and sensitivity and empathy and being. That wound is really rampant in our world in so many cultures that wound of this emphasis on productivity and feeling valued by what we do and by what we produce and what yields results that are measurable, tangible and measurable, and we can quantify them and have evidence that it's working. There is a wound there and that's not all bad. There's nothing that's black and white or all bad or all good. It's more that, when it's out of balance, it devalues many of the principles of more feminine type energy and the value of something that cannot be measured, the value of things that are more experiential in nature, like creativity and imagination, and experiencing something that absolutely changes how we are and fills us up and thus changes how we show up in the world later on down the line. There is an experiential receptivity that has a different kind of emphasis and a different kind of energy that can potentially happen when we are working and owning our light.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 11:36

And so I think sometimes we get caught up feeling that we're not making an impact and that our efforts are too small, when I think the truth of the light, the truth of love, is that no effort's too small, no movement of creating light is too small, if you think about the impact that each of us might have if we woke up and said I'm going to move through the day with a little bit more joy and I'm going to try and do some things that spark joy inside of myself and set the intention that I can perhaps bless others with that joy as well and do something for others that comes from a space of joy. We might feel more inspired to do something because we're feeling joyful. Usually, when we're in a good mood, we are more likely to smile at strangers, to be a more open self, to be a kinder self, to be a brighter self. Can you imagine if there was like a national joy day and everybody decided to like be a little bit more joyful? This sometimes happens, I think, around major holidays and times that it's almost like grace descends, and I think it's because people connect with their better nature and so they can be a little bit more kinder to each other, a little bit more charitable, a little bit more giving. How might we change the world through that simple, simple kindness?

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 13:01

And so it's so important not to underestimate the impact of doing small things. It is the act of choosing to shine our light in the first place that holds more value than what actually happens when we shine our light. And so when we get caught up in impact, it's so important to recognize that, the intention and that the idea of just saying I am going to find ways to be a light today and I am going to hold space for the light by holding space for love inside of me or, if I'm feeling really conflicted, working on smoothing out and gentling that conflict and not letting it get the best of me, where it's directing my actions, but trying to get into a more grounded space, a calmer space, a space where I feel like I turn the volume down on some of the conflict and turn up the volume on peace, grappling with that inner conflict, grappling with the things that are hard for us, and doing so with the intention of figuring out what's so sticky about this for me and finding ways to compassionately observe, compassionately detach, to heal something in us that might feel really wounded. That grappling right there is one of the ways that we work our light and it's how we change who we are, it's how we change our heart, energy and our energetic field, and when we do that we hold more space for peace, we hold more space for love, we expand our energy field and expand the spaces that we might touch. And that leads me to something else that I wanted to talk about from that piece of writing, and that's the idea that changing the energy inside ourselves can impact the spaces that we touch and it's easy to think when somebody has bad, negative energy, a lot of times we'll pick up on it.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 15:06

There's just something about somebody who's in a terrible mood. Sometimes it's really visible. Maybe you're in a grocery store or something like that and you can just tell that somebody over there in a terrible mood. Sometimes it's really visible. Maybe you're in a grocery store or something like that and you can just tell that somebody over there had a bad day and you have this sense of oh my gosh, I better steer clear from them. They look like a thunderstorm about to explode. Or maybe you get really brave and decide to approach them if you're in a good space and lend a smile or say a kindness and hope that that brings some brightness to them. They might receive it. But let's just pretend for the sake of imagination on this podcast that they don't and they snap back at you and now you are tasked with finding a way to kind of energetically shake that off and brush it off and come back to a more peaceful place inside of yourself and not attached to their anger.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 15:57

Or sometimes there's people that are just feeling really soured out on life in general and they just don't feel good to be around. There's a heaviness about them or a negativity or something that just doesn't feel very uplifting and we want to steer clear of that because we pick up on it. Especially energy sensitives and empaths and highly sensitive people and those that might identify as lightworkers and many of you who are listening to this podcast. You're going to pick up on it and you just feel it and can feel that, oh, I don't want to be around that. And so we can pick up on somebody's energy. And we pick up on people's energy when there's something about them that feels bright or uplifting or feels really calm, or maybe they feel like aloe or they feel kind or there's something that innately makes us draw a little bit closer and they have good energy.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 16:49

And then there's the people who really know how to command presence. And it's not from power or being in a position of any kind of authority or any presence that has been put on them by some kind of title or something that has come from the stuff that humans make up to categorize and create hierarchies and do things like awards and acknowledge and recognitions. It's not that kind of power. There's a presence to them and there's no particular reason for it. You just feel them. And there are stories sometimes of saints and real spiritual figures who had the energy to walk into a room and absolutely change that space, and people would report feeling more healed or feeling connected or having some sort of collective vision or something like that and some really miraculous things when you start to study some of the history of the mystics and individuals who held that ability. And so our energy does hold the power to change a space, and I love the idea of taking responsibility for the energy that we're bringing to a space and that the more we work on what's inside of us and work on finding our peace and working with the things that feel divided inside of us, finding a way to bridge them, finding a way to make peace and gentleness for conflict exist, the more we do that, the more we travel through the world holding space for the light and holding space as a more peaceful presence.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 18:22

And again, a caveat here that you don't have to do this perfectly all the time. You're allowed to have a bad day. We are human on this journey. We are prone to error. We are doing the best we can, so it's not about doing this 100% of the time. It is about striving and aspiring to own our light and work our light in such a way that more often than not, we feel like we are moving in the world in a way where it's peaceful and part of taking responsibility for the energy that we bring to a space.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 18:56

If we're having some reflection time and we realize that we missed an opportunity and maybe we snapped at somebody earlier in the day or did something and we don't feel particularly good about it, you can work with that retroactively. Particularly good about it? You can work with that retroactively. You can send a blessing or a grace to anybody that might have been impacted by that. You can take a moment and do a little meditation of peace. You can do a forgiveness meditation. There's many ways to work with that and to neutralize our energy if we feel like we put something out there that we need to make energetic amends for in some shape or form. So it's all malleable, it's all workable. It's all things that we can use to keep working and owning our light and growing in the process.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 19:47

And then the last thing that I wanted to talk about that was a point that was brought up in that passage was that we each have a unique light to shine, and this is what I love so much about the idea of working our light and owning our light is that it's such a fluid concept. There is no one way to shine a light. There are so many ways that we're called to show up in this world and to work with ourselves and work with our passions and our talents, and to create and be and dream and put the intention that we do these things as a love letter to the universe itself, that we are pouring love into the universe, which is sentient the universe needs love too and that we are living in a way that we recognize there's not a right or wrong way to do this, but that when we are investing in moving our energy to create something that opens space, that brings compassion or love or peace or joy or acceptance or sensitivity or empathy or art or something to a space that helps bring some illumination to it, then that is us working our light and it's us owning our light. I was thinking earlier when I wrote down this talking point to share today that there's so many different sources of actual light in this world. There's the sun itself and there's lamp lights and candlelight and flashlights and different kinds of colored lights and little white string lights. I love little strings of fairy type lights. I've got purple, pink ones up right now for Valentine's Day and I've got green waiting in the wings for St Paddy's Day, and then I'll probably switch some of that out and maybe try and find some little white ones that have flowers or something on them going into April and May.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 21:50

I love strings of light and all the lights that I mentioned. They serve a different purpose and some of them feel more right in certain settings. Let's not forget the moonlight. There's a time and there's a place for each of them, there's value to each of them and they don't run around having a competition about whose light is better because it has more followers on social media, or it sold more copies of something, or it earns a certain salary and so it's the most successful light. I mean that's absolutely ludicrous, right, and thinking in that terms is absolutely ludicrous, and people do it all the time.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 22:28

We look at somebody else or something else and it seems like they're shining brightly or they're more gifted, or they're more this or they're more that, and we minimize the light that we've been given to shine. We minimize the ingredients, the essence that makes us ourselves. We minimize our gifts and our talents. We minimize our flaws and the opportunity there to grow in self-love when we learn to love and accept and work with the areas inside of ourself that are still wounded and that are still healing. We compare and we somehow contrast and think that there's this better way of being and that somebody else's light is better, and the truth is is that we each have our own unique light to shine and there is no better than there is no worse than there's different ways we feel called to show up and there's value in all of it, and so this comparison wound that we've been talking about is so detrimental to feeling empowered to own our light, because there's not a right or wrong way to do it.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 23:36

There's a sure way, and it might be really fun to sit down and in your journal, write like 50 ways I can create light this next month. If that feels like too many, write down 20 or come up with 10, five ways I can create light today and really think about how can I lend more peace, more kindness, more gentleness, how can I make art, how can I take something hard or dark that I'm working with and can I transform that somehow. Can I say a kind word to somebody else who looks discouraged? If I'm struggling with an issue, is there some way that I can support another who might be on that issue? If I'm not in a place to support them because I don't feel like I have a lot to give, then can I just spend some time meditating on the light and meditating on seeing myself be a peaceful place and filling back up and just drawing on spirit and drawing on like good, cosmic, flowy energy.

Dr. BethAnne Kapansky Wright: 24:35

There's always something that we can do, we can always work with the spaces that we're at and again, there's no better than there's no worse than there's no pinnacle point in a comparative sense. There is just us continuing to grow and to shine in the ways that we feel called. With that we will wrap up here for today. I will absolutely be back next week with a new podcast where we will be talking about a new topic on psychology, spirituality and heart wisdom. In the meantime, have a beautiful week, go, shine your light in all the ways that you feel called and, as always, be well, be love, be you and be magic.

Intro/Outro Music: 25:27

You've been listening to your Heart Magic with Dr Bethann Kopansky-Wright. You've been listening to your Heart Magic with Dr Bethann Kopansky-Wright. Tune in next week for a new episode to support and empower your light.