By David Spangler
Editor's Note: The following post is an excerpt from the Winter issue of David Spangler's quarterly journal, Views from the Borderland, which will be released on December 21. If you would like to learn more about this annual subscription program, you may do so by clicking here.
For me, all subtle work begins with attunement to our generative nature. This is one of the key insights of Incarnational Spirituality. Each of us is a generative source of Light. It’s as if we are a power plant or, in my favorite metaphor, a star. A star generates light and heat because of the nuclear fusion going on within it; there is a process at work that makes a star radiant.
There is a process going on within us as well, an incarnational process, which makes us radiant, too. Just as a star has its own spectrographic signature, so each of us generates and radiates Light in a unique way. I call this our “Self-Light.” I call it this not simply because it is part of who we are but because it is an expression of the processes that make us who we are. It is the Light that emerges from the incarnational act of “self-making” or “Selfing.”
This Self-Light is not simply a by-product, though. It is an objective, a purpose, a design feature of the incarnational act which, whatever else it may produce, is intended to create a generative source of Light and spiritual presence within the incarnate realm.
We are that source.
We are used to thinking of Light as something we invoke, something we draw down upon ourselves from higher realms of Spirit. There is Light or spiritual energy and presence that can be drawn into our lives, into our world, from a variety of spiritual sources. But Self-Light comes from us, from the act of being here in the world. We don’t have to access any other source to have it.
The reality of Self-Light means that we have to think of ourselves in new ways. We are not just consumers; we are producers. We are not simply deliverers of the gifts of spiritual Light from other sources, like traders and merchants importing wonders from distant shores; we are craftspersons who offer wares of our own making, our own creation. We are generative sources of Light: of spiritual blessing and vital energies of life.
Acknowledging this is an important step into accepting and developing the innate spiritual power of who we are. Another such step is acknowledging our Sovereignty.
In Incarnational Spirituality, Sovereignty is my word for the will-to be and the resultant clarity and strength of our spiritual Identity. It is our ability to be self-governing and to hold the processes of self-making that generate our Self-Light. In a way, Sovereignty is like the mass of the star that triggers and maintains the nuclear fusion that in turn produces energy in the form of light and heat. It is the sanctity of being who we are in a way that enables our incarnational identity to unfold its generative nature. It is an expression of the will of the Soul that makes incarnation possible and defines its nature.
Whatever is happening in the world, both positively and negatively, it cannot take our Sovereignty and Self-Light from us or diminish them unless we condescend to that loss and diminishment. We are an inner star, and from this star-ness comes our ability to serve and help in the subtle dimensions and in the physical world as well.