For as far as I can look back standing in my own light has seldom happened.
I needed to first become aware that I am a light that can actually shine.
Others regularly out-shone me.
It was as if everybody else was aware that shining ones own light was advertising oneself to the universe, – except myself.
Somehow, perhaps early circumstances affecting that aspect, I was not a shiner. I understood the principle that if I don’t shine my own light then I am under the radar so to speak. What I didn’t understand was that for anything to happen in my life I have to switch on my light and keep on shining it.
Being boldly visible like a super-star is another thing, but shining my own light, not just a candle, but a real light, is a requirement to life, – or so I would like to think now.

It is easy to stand in the rays of someone else’s light.
My husband this…, my wife that…, my company…, my friends…, they all shine a light and I can find comfort gathering myself under their umbrella of light.
Long before I ignited my own light I had found others’ light. I would ask, “Why can’t I be like them?”
Little did I know that no one can be like another. Unbelievably so each and everyone’s light is also different, – very different, even if they are your own offspring. It is an utter mystery to me how there can be so many of us and we all shine a different light. Man has become such an expert at cloning stuff and yet the universe is all about diversity. Even when it all looks the same, it isn’t.
Another thing I find a paradox is that when I shine I emit something and yet I actually attract something. I give something, and yet that very process of shining(giving off), that radiation I emit, actually attracts stuff and doesn’t affect my shine at all, it might just make it brighter. It has a principle of action and reaction built in. Shining, more than anything, seems to attract stuff which has a basic consistency of what I shone out there. If I have a dull light it is impossible to attract sunny, resonant, interesting stuff.
This observation leads me to say that:
“What I am I attract.”
Truthfully, I didn’t know that for a large part of my life, and even when I got the message I actually still didn’t get the gist of it until much later. Whatever was shining was a side product of whatever I was doing, but not a deliberate attempt. Sometimes one can shine and don’t even know it. That is cool, but when the light goes out then it becomes a problem, because when darkness takes over in your head you are exposed to such an onslaught of negativity and misfortune that ones only hope is to find that light again.

But, how do I find that light of mine so I can shine it?
I love fantasy, I even write it. I love to think about an ethereal world, the metaphysical, the spiritual, the magical. I love to dream.
When I get down to doing stuff however I become a realist, pragmatist. I need concrete stuff that works.
However intangible this might be, I have absolutely learned about the power of thought. Thought is the essence of my light. Because I can dial in any thought, and I can really go overboard here because my thoughts are private and so I can think whatever I want, I can change my light with such variability and speed, like a tuning knob on one of those old radios, that my light becomes like a discotheque kaleidoscope or a rave club shadow world. Surfing up and down the spectrum of light causes my thoughts to race inconsistently and so I never get to the point of actually emitting anything long enough to evoke a desired reaction, except getting back some garbled snippets of everything but really nothing coherent and usable.
Once I got to this realisation I knew there was only one cure. I had to sit down for half-an-hour and meditate on being light: pure, glorious, radiating, warm, embracing, shining light.
I am light. I shine. I am.