Are you a Lantern Bearer?
Are you one of those people even strangers want to tell their problems to? Does it seem like you have a sign above your head, some signal broadcasting out into the world?
You’ve heard the term lightworker, but this archetype is something much more specific...
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TRANSCRIPT
Are you a Lantern Bearer?
Are you one of those people total strangers want to tell their problems to?
Does it seem like you have a sign above your head? Some signal broadcasting out into the world?
You’ve heard the term light worker, but there is a specific archetype and terminology I've observed in the Automatic Intuition community.
There’s an archetype that shows up a lot in guided meditations with emerging intuitives, psychics and healers — they call him by different names, but the description is very consistent — what most Tarot decks call The Hermit.
Sometimes people say he's Gandalf-like or they directly identify him as Merlin. Or they just describe someone who is clearly that entity.
In Tarot the spiritual journey of a lifetime is the archetypal progress of acquiring wisdom. It begins with the Fool > evolves to the Magician > and matures in the Hermit.
This culmination of a spiritual life path of magic is the life of Merlin.
The Hermit, as a word, as a term, conjures a lot of negatives in our modern mindset. We also tend to disconnect from it. It’s not an easy thing for contemporary light workers to identify with this word, this image, The Hermit.
We disparage ourselves with it, use it to describe an impulse to withdraw from the world, to cocoon ourselves in our safe space and not engage. I can’t tell you how many people have used the term this week in describing their winter hibernation practices. “I’ve been such a hermit lately. I just want to stay home with the pets and watch Netflix.”
That sounds like the greatest peace in the world to me, an ideal scenario, and yet when we say this to each other, it’s always with a note of apology, isn’t it?
There is an alternate term for the Hermit archetype (and for the term light worker) that I find so much more appealing.
The Lantern Bearer.
Years ago I ran across a Tarot deck somewhere or a book on the work of Dr. Carl Jung where the term Lantern Bearer was used in place of the Hermit.
The Hermit just makes us think of someone alone, an introvert, an older person no longer connected to society, living as an outcast, either by choice or circumstance.
The Lantern Bearer better describes what it is this person, this archetype, is doing.
I often tell the people I mentor who want to develop their intuition and to use it in service to others… Be prepared to be in the trenches. The people who come to you for readings for assistance or advice (as it often manifests in normal everyday Muggle life) come with darkness.
They’re bringing anxiety, fear, pain, uncertainty, worry.
By the time they’re speaking to you about their worries, decisions, issues — they’ve spent hundreds — maybe thousands — of hours overthinking it. They’ve turned themselves around until they are dizzy. They’re stumbling around in the darkness looking for a light to lead them back.
The light doesn’t need your light. Those who are truly in the light are all together in a big bright super nova humming together in harmony.
The darkness is where your light is needed.
The Hermit — the Lantern Bearer — lives at the edge of civilization not only because he is some outcast, he is there to do his work. To carry his lantern into the night so that those lost in the dark woods can find their way back.
If you are a Lantern Bearer, you’re a human lighthouse. And you’re likely placed a bit away from the center of culture and society. You’re on the edge because that is where you are needed. You are isolated because we have been dispersed throughout the population so that we may serve and reach more people.
Sure, it would be great if you could gather up all the like-minded spiritual souls and put them in one place. That would be an amazing place to live. But the rest of the world would go to hell and a lot of souls would remain lost there.
If you are a Lantern Bearer, you already know it.
It’s like you have a neon sigh floating over your head — a light — that invites people to ask you for help. To tell you their problems. To seek your perspective.
People at work bring you their problems. Your family members call you. Total strangers confide surprising amounts of personal information. You’re everybody’s untrained psychotherapist and counselor, even when your actual job has nothing to do with it. You will always be found inhabiting that role.
This is what we talk about when we say a life purpose is not necessarily a job. It could be in alignment with your job, but it is the thing you will end up doing no matter where we put you.
I remember about 18 years ago, still a good five or six years before I would create a career that more closely embodied my purpose — this thing for which you know me. I was in a convenience store with a friend of mine, Seth. (Seth listens to the show, so Hey Seth! I don’t know if you remember this incident the way I do. I think it was at the BP on Dayton Boulevard.)
Anyway. We were waiting in a long line. The cashier was one of those bitter creatures who can ring you up without ever once acknowledging your existence. Something I despised when I was in a supervisory position over cashiers, by the way. I would eat you alive for doing this when I Manage on Duty. I did my part to ensure there is at least a small population of cashiers trained and released on the public who make eye contact and speak to the customers they interact with.
So. We watched this woman ring up person after person, without so much as a hello or thank you, and when we got to the counter, in the course of ringing up a couple of drinks — we’re talking seconds, here — she managed to tell me all about the divorce she was currently going through. And in that moment, of course I tried to think of something quick and brief but hopefully helpful to say. To leave her with some fortune cookie wisdom that might make a positive impact.
Walking out to Seth’s truck, I remember he was sort of smiling and shaking his head at me. And I asked him, pointblank “What? Does that not happen to everyone?”
I will never forget, he said “It happens to you.”
Well, it happens to a lot of us. Because it’s about who we are. And when we know it, we can use it with intention.
If you are a Lantern Bearer, you have the ability to change lives. Maybe to save a life. With as little as a smile or a nod. To let someone know that in your light, they are seen. They are visible. They matter. They count.
Everybody you pity, everyone you love, those with whom you empathize or despise… They all need to be acknowledged. Noticed. Heard.
We all need a witness.
To recognize the spark in the eyes of another is our most eminently worthy gesture of humanity. To withhold such a small instance of focus from any living person seems lazy, at best; at worst, it’s cruel.
We focus so much on gaining acknowledgement for ourselves, we miss the easiest act of grace and power — to look into the eyes of another and simply allow ourselves to see a flash of mirrors there.
As always, there's an Oracle Message at the end of the audio show...