As I took a deep dive into the spiritual community, I took an even deeper dive within myself. What I found is that my heart is a battlefield. Love and Light? Yes. Love it until it lights? No. Sometimes we need to light that b*tch up.

I believe in balance—that we need our darkness to make love to our light, in us as well as around us. It’s this cosmic balance that holds the true meaning of spirituality. We are souls here on Earth having a human experience and we should be embracing that.

 What the f*ck does that mean?

There’s a balance to everything: night and day, male and female, the chaos before the change– without one, the other could not exist. This same principle holds true within each one of us. There’s no way we can have a human experience without experiencing human emotion. I thought the trick was to learn to ride the waves and find our balance in the emotions. I thought I had mastered this, but I was wrong.

For months I’ve been questioning what it means to be an empath.  What is the purpose? Why do I feel the way I feel? Why do I see and feel what others cannot?  I joined several groups in the online community pertaining to spiritual awakenings and other empathic people. This didn’t make me feel very good about myself. I found myself arguing with people on the internet.

I’m not a stranger to words like healer or light worker. I started working with energy and using Reiki over a decade ago. What I am a stranger to, however, is being an empath. It’s quite a bit different working with a person’s energy one-on-one, as opposed to everyone’s all at once. It’s been said that as an empath—it’s our “job” to transmute the darkness of others, that a badass empath can do this without absorbing the emotions and energies we take on.

I think this is bullsh*t.

I agree that we should reach a state of being where we don’t absorb the energy or emotions from those around us; what I disagree with is that as an empath, we’re “supposed” to transmute it… just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. A badass empath—or anybody for that matter– didn’t get that way because someone else did the work for them—they got that way because they did the work themselves, which includes asking for help if needed. From what I’ve gathered in the spiritual community, people believe that being an empath and a light worker are one in the same. They are not, though most of the time, they do go hand in hand. You can be a light worker and not be an empath, you could be an empath but not a light worker, or you could be both.

My views did not go over well.

I didn’t want to be arguing, but there I was—squabbling with a perfect stranger.  No matter how hard I tried to conform to this ideal, I could not—nor could I keep my mouth shut. This sparked even more guilt and anger within me.   I couldn’t understand why I am drawn to the darkness; the darkness within myself, the darkness within others, and the darkness within society. It made me feel broken—like my soul itself was dark and that I wasn’t “spiritual” enough…that I wasn’t “good” enough. After all, isn’t being “spiritual” about being “peace, love and light”?

None of us can do this alone. We’re all in this together—we just need to understand and accept our differences: empaths are more about energy and emotions while lightworkers are more about spirit and purpose. Empaths sense energy, while lightworkers have the urge to uplift the energy and vibration of the planet.

Nothing changes the fact that I am an empath. I can still see, feel, and understand things that others do not, and my very human emotions do not make me any less spiritual. I’m spiritual as f*ck. What I’ve come to realize is that the reason I’m so attracted to the dark is that I’m a fighter—I always have been and I always will be.

Both the light worker and the light warrior use the same tools and weapons: truth, love, compassion, understanding, hope, faith, ect. The difference is in the way we bring light to the world: light workers help shelter others from fear and darkness, while light warriors help people to fight the fear and engage the dark.

The trick isn’t just balancing your emotions—the trick is knowing who you are and how to use them. We cannot help anyone else until we help ourselves first.

Maybe putting myself first and blocking your emotions is selfish… Maybe that makes me a bad empath. Using the darker energies and emotions to fight? Well, that just makes me a badass warrior of light.

Maybe you’re a warrior, too?