How Can We Reclaim Love and Light?

by | May 31, 2021 | Uncategorized

Essential Deep-Dive Into Reclaiming Love and Light for Pandemic Recovery

What does it mean to reclaim true love and light?

Do you cringe a little when you hear that phrase – love and light? Are you wondering how it pertains to embodied healing?

In today’s episode, we’re talking about this highly charged term and uncovering its true meaning. 

Love and light are powerful energies that help us to heal and to heal our world. But there’s no avoiding the way phrases like “love and light” or “choose love over fear” have been abused over the years.

It’s time we reclaimed “love and light.” Not just the term, but the Love and Light that are available to us out in the world. 

 

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Darkness has been clouding our lives for over a year. Not just in our local cities and towns, but in our worldwide community. Uncertainty and fear are our daily companions. It’s easy to feel stuck and confused about what our next steps should be.

That’s why we must choose this moment to intentionally recalibrate our personal lives and communities toward more light. Love and light can heal even deep, generational wounds. If our world ever needed a push toward healing, it is now.

For my part, I’ve decided to reboot the #IShineYouShine challenge on Friday, June 11. 

The goal is to show you how to release the dark in your own life and provide you with some embodied tools and practices to help. We’ll also provide you with a pop-up community in which to do the work.

Are you ready to invite more love and light into your life and take the next step in embodied healing and self-liberation? 

Join me in today’s episode to explore what it means to reclaim love and light. 

I’ll also share more details about the #IShineYouShine challenge that you won’t want to miss.

Listen to episode 349 now!

In episode 349 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:

  • [5:45] What inspired the focus on Love and Light for Elizabeth
  • [8:16] What spiritual bypassing is and why it is harmful to our growth and healing
  • [11:24] The role of prayer and the part it plays in adding energy to the side of light
  • [15:58] How to find validity in “Love and Light” even knowing how people have weaponized it
  • [18:10] How the #IShineYouShine challenge can help you reclaim love and light for your life
  • [20:43] What a container is and the role it plays in transformation and growth

Resources mentioned by Elizabeth in the episode:

Quotes from this Week’s Episode of the Embodied Podcast

  • “We can acknowledge that people weaponize the term love and light to create spiritual superiority and bypass. But it’s also valid, and we don’t need to ditch it just because we don’t like how some people use it.”
  • “We’re not saviors. We’re not going to individually release all of the darkness in the world. But we can release the dark within ourselves. We can heal the trauma and the effects the dark has had on us individually, in our own communities, and as a larger collective human family.”

How was this episode for you?

Was this episode helpful for you today? I’d love to know what quote or lesson touched your soul. Let me know in the comments below OR share the episode on Instagram, tag me your stories @elizabethdialto, or send me a DM!

 

About the Embodied Podcast with Elizabeth DiAlto

Since 2013 I’ve been developing a body of work that helps women embody self-love, healing, and wholeness. We do this by focusing on the four levels of consciousness – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

In practical terms, this looks like exploring tools and practices to help you tune into the deep wisdom of the body and the knowing of the heart, which I believe are gateways to our souls. Then we cultivate a new relationship with our minds that allows the mind to serve this wisdom and knowledge and soul connection, rather than override it, which is what many of us were taught.

If you’ve been doing self-help or spiritual development work for a while, these are the types of foundational things that often people overlook in pursuit of fancier concepts that often aren’t practical or sustainable. Here, we will focus on building these strong foundations so you can honestly and thoroughly embody self-love. If you’re feeling it, subscribe to the show, and leave us a review wherever you listen from. You can also keep up with show updates and community discussion on Instagram here.

Transcripts for Episode 349:

Hello, everybody. Welcome to episode number 349 of the podcast. Today, we are talking about, “Reclaiming True Love and Light.” And if you’re watching on YouTube, if you’re new to this show, I would just like to remind people that I keep notes here, so if it looks like I’m reading off of something, I 100% am because I am the queen of tangents, and so this is how I keep myself on track. And I’m super excited to dive into this topic today. Before I do though, I have some heads up, and acknowledgements to make, and I’m going full mystic in this episode.

And I offer that not as a warning, not as an apology or anything like that, but to give me a chance to remind you that I am never out here, proselytizing, or trying to convert you to my beliefs, or way of being or way of thinking. Anything I share here comes from my heart, and it’s an offering and if any, or all of it resonates for you or helps you to connect some dots on something that you’ve been thinking about, or moving through or working through in your own life, great, and if not, no worries. Just skip it and move on with your life.

One of the things I love so much about our audience and our community here, is how receptive our people tend to be, for at least considering things. Even if you have resistance to it, or even if it makes you uncomfortable. So I also wanna note for anyone who practices a more traditional religion, that often when I mention religion, I’m speaking about the shadows and the effects of it, but I’m not anti-religion. When it comes to spirituality, I am pro whatever makes you feel more connected to God, and yourself and makes you feel supported or less alone, and reminds you of the great mysteries, that are always surrounding us.

So that’s really how I approach all embodied healing and self liberation practices. We are all built so differently, and our lived experiences are unique. So what works for one person may not work for another and we each need to explore, experiment, and learn to discern what works best for us. It’s also helpful to remember that, something can work for us for a long time, and still run its course after a while and no longer be effective.

That’s how growth and transformation work. It’s always about resonance and alignment. So if or when anything I offer here on this show, in the Embodied Living Center, or in any other workshops, or experiences I create, like really hit the spot for you, I’m always so elated to hear that. And if instead you just receive maybe just a little seedling that sends you off in curiosity to discover more for yourself, or if it gives you the contrast of disagreement that you needed, so that you can ask yourself, “well if that’s not true for me, or if that doesn’t for me, what does, or what is?” I’m also delighted when that happens because I’m always gonna be as me as possible, to encourage you to be as you as possible. And that does not require that you agree with everything I say.

And if you’ve known me for a while you know that I don’t do this guru bullshit, that some people do. Our forever wild soul mantra is, everything you’ve ever needed has always been inside of you. So I’m just here to give you maps and pathways to rediscovering, reclaiming, and then embodying, the things that are true for you, that work for you, that are aligned for you, and that resonate for you. Cool? So now that the scaffolding is complete, let’s get into this episode. Love and light have been on my mind lately as I have been steeped in two things right now. One is returning to one of my favorite books, not one to some of my favorite books about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, and the true translations of their teachings. And the books in case you’re interested are “The Magdalene Line Trilogy,” by Kathleen McGowan. There’s three books, “The Expected One,” “The Book of Love,” and “The Poet Prince.” Then she has another book called “The Source of Miracles,” and then as well the Gnostic gospels, specifically the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, and the Gospel of Philip.

And the translations, the versions that I have are the Jean-Yves Leloup versions. So that’s been on my mind lately. And then the other thing I’ve been steeped in, which I’ll talk a little bit more about later, is I’m rebooting the “I shine you shine” challenge, which is something that I started back in 2014, when I was first introducing Wild Soul Movement to the world. And so between those two things, love and light like what they really mean, what are true love and light, and how do we reclaim true love and light in our lives? Because there’s so much love, and so much light in the world and available to us, that come from our source, creator, God, the universe, whatever name you prefer for the unnameable animating force, that we can only hope to partially grasp, because it’s so far beyond the comprehension of the human mind and our lifetime.

Some of the names that I love for it are, Great Beloved, or Divine Beloved, Mother, Father, God. I also use God as a universal gender neutral term. Sometimes I’ll just say mama or Heavenly Father, if I’m specifically praying to just one aspect of the divine. I also just the other day remembered, this cracked me up, this meme I saw sometime last year, that referred to God as, sky daddy. I could not stop laughing at that. And one of the reasons I couldn’t stop laughing at it, I was raised Catholic. I don’t know if any of you grew up in the Catholic church, but I was just imagining at like a Catholic mass, the priest, instead of saying like, you know, Heavenly father, or Holy God, or dear Lord, being like, “Dear Sky Daddy”. That really cracked me up. So anyway, this phrase love and light, along with other phrases, or sayings, or adages, or platitudes, like choose love over fear. These things have become really charged over the years. They rub a lot of people the wrong way. And by charged, I mean, triggering and controversial. And the reason for that is that, these things can be big time tools, phrases, weapons, for spiritual bypassing.

Now spiritual bypassing is something we’ve been talking about on the podcast for years, but in case you’re new to the term, I pulled a formal description of it to review from an article at verywellmind.com. We will link to that in the show notes. The show notes for this episode will be at untameyourself.com/349. And the author of that article, Kendra cherry, sites John Welwood, who is the person who coined the term spiritual bypass. Here’s the definition. “Spiritual bypassing describes a tendency to use “spiritual explanations to avoid “complex psychological issues. “The term was first coined during the early 1980s “by a transpersonal psychotherapist named John Welwood, “in his book Toward a Psychology of Awakening. “And according to Welwood spiritual bypassing “can be defined as, a tendency to use spiritual ideas “and practices to sidestep or avoid facing “unresolved, emotional issues, psychological wounds, “and unfinished developmental tasks.” I’m gonna put a little asteriks on that.

It also, one of the reasons why it’s such an issue in our current climate, is often people will use it as well, to sidestep or bypass social issues or systemic issues. So back to what was written in the article here, “As a therapist and Buddhist teacher, “Welwood began to notice that people including himself, “often wielded spirituality as a shield, “or a type of defense mechanism. “Rather than working through hard emotions “or confronting unresolved issues, “people would simply dismiss them “with spiritual explanations. “While it can be a way to protect the self from harm, “or promote harmony between people, “it doesn’t actually resolve the issue. “Instead it merely glosses over a problem, “leaving it to fester without any true resolution.”

Now, this, this can be, spiritual bypassing is something that happens across the board from, in different types of religions to more kind of air quotes. I’m putting new age in air quotes, spiritual type circles. And, but what, what it seems to have in common, regardless of the community that’s doing it, or the individual that’s doing it, is it’s rooted in dominant culture and toxic positivity. And that is specific to the term love and light especially, because people will use that term very dismissively, in the face of issues that cannot just be prayed away.

But I do wanna say something about prayer as well. I wrote this on Facebook at the time I’m recording this. I just wrote this on Facebook yesterday. If you are a person who prays, never stop doing that. If you have doubted the power of your prayers, because people diminish the power of prayer, and dismiss it as valid action, in the face of pressing global and systemic issues, add those people to your prayers too. We live in an energetic universe comprised of light and dark in everything. Prayer is a way of adding more energy to the light side of things.

We also live in a universe where humans have free will, and we are responsible for cleaning up our own messes. God can’t do that for us. That would be bad parenting, right? So for example, you know if you have kids or if you have nieces and nephews, or if you’ve ever been around little kids, one of the things the parents do is they teach kids to clean up their messes. So they don’t just go around, you know leaving their shit all over the place thinking that they own the place wherever they are. And you know, this translates into broader scale, bigger global issues, right?

Things like racism, white supremacy, global warming, environmental issues, capitalism, these things that really harm us. You know, God didn’t make those things. Those things were created out of human freewill choices. So basically there’s all kinds of actions we need to take, to heal and liberate ourselves from these things. And prayer alone will never resolve everything, but it can and does amplify and accelerate all of our actions and efforts. So it is an integral and important spiritual tool. Hello everybody. I wanted to take quick break in the show to give you a, save the date Friday, June 11th, I am rebooting the “I shine you shine” challenge.

This is something I started in 2014 and 2015, inspired by both that famous Marianne Williamson quote, “When we shine our own light, unconsciously we give “other people permission to do the same.” as well as many hip hop songs over the course of my life, where you hear that hook, I shine you shine, shine. This is about coming together as a community to get our shine back. And that’s actually the theme, for this summer’s “I shine you shine” challenge.

After over a year in the pandemic, I was thinking about what I could create to help everyone tap back in, to their fullest selves, their truest selves, their most vibrant and radiant, and loving and juicy most amazing selves. So we are gonna spend 11 days together, in a special pop up Mighty Network, where I’m gonna give you a free Wild Soul Movement practice, a free erotic body practice, a free healing meditation. And we’re gonna do a summer solstice ceremony together.

All these things will be recorded. So if you can’t make them live, you’ll be able to tap into them throughout the course of the 11 days. And I’m really hoping this is gonna be a super beautiful, intentional, and much needed experience for those who are feeling their energy start to return to them. And also who are wanting to transition out of the pandemic, which I know we’re not there yet, but we are starting this transition.

People who are wanting to do that with a lot of grace, with a lot of integrity and with full presence to everything honoring everything that we’ve been through, not bypassing any of it but also finding the light in the dark, which is something we’re really good at around here. So mark your calendar, go to untameyourself.com/ELC-waitlist, so you could be the first to know, and I will see you on June 11th. So the focus of reclaiming love and light, which again is what this episode is really about, is about how to hold both. We can acknowledge that people weaponize the term love and light to create spiritual superiority and bypass, but it’s also valid.

And we don’t need to ditch it just because we don’t like how some people use it. Just because it’s being misused and abused doesn’t mean, it’s not helpful ever. But what I, what I have found is, it is helpful if we’re gonna use something that’s currently a really charged term in any context, to just be clear and specific that you’re being genuine and give your context for it. So for example, I mentioned earlier that I’m getting ready to reboot the “I shine you shine” challenge in June, coming up in June, and this episode is going live at the end of may. And I’m rebooting it and revamping it because I am so different now than I was in 2014 and 2015 when I used to run it.

My work has evolved so much in the last six or seven years. So the experience is gonna be quite different. And one of those difference is that instead of I shine you shine, which by the way, that term comes from two different things, the Marianne Williamson quote, the famous Marianne Williamson quote, that “When we shine our own light, “unconsciously we give other people “permission to do the same.” As well as, I know it’s been used in many hip hop songs, but the one I always hear in my head is the Mary J Blige song “I love you.” There’s that hook in the beginning where someone is singing I shine you shine, shine.

So that’s, that’s where it always was in my mind, and I love that because I love this concept, of being a walking permission slip for other people to shine. So I shine you shine is the core concept of the challenge. But the theme in June, since it’ll be happening around the summer solstice, is get your shine back. Kind of like get your sexy back, but way better and with a Wild Soul twist. And the reason that’s the theme is because there has been you know, after over a year, almost a year and a half now, in a global pandemic, which I’ve really enjoyed lately.

I saw people doing this on Twitter. Instead of saying pandemic, because we’re all so effing sick of hearing the word, any word that starts with P, PAN, panini, Panorama, panoramic I love this. So if you hear me call it the panini, that’s what I’m talking about. And after over a year, almost a year and a half of this, there has been so much dark, so much dark. And it’s not just the dark of the Panorama, it’s what Myisha T Hill of Check Your Privilege. I like how she calls it, the three interlocking pandemics. There is of course COVID-19, there’s mental health, and there are, she calls it interlocking systems of domination.

Which is much more specific, than trying to like list out, racism white supremacy, homophobia, like all the things that go against, non-dominant aspects of culture, right? So there’s been so much dark in the last year, year and a half, and so much focus on it. And so to me it feels very important, to intentionally recalibrate things in our personal lives and as a community towards more light, to just bring more light in. And why this is so important is because, I mentioned this earlier, but we live in an energetic universe. There’s light and dark in everything.

And what’s similar to the, with the universe to the human body is both of those things will always seek harmony and homeostasis where it doesn’t exist. And of course, as active participants in the universe, in our lives, in our bodies, there are things that we can do by our human freewill choice, to contribute to creating, as much harmony and homeostasis as possible. And the way we do things here in my world is we can bring and be and embody lights without bypassing the dark. In fact, not only do we not bypass the dark or pretend it didn’t happen, we acknowledge it, so that we can use our light to heal and release it.

That’s how embodied healing and self liberation work. And we’re not saviors, right? We’re not gonna individually release the whole dark, but we can release the dark within ourselves. We can heal the trauma and the effects the dark has had on us individually in our own communities, and as a larger collective human family. And, you know, we each can really contribute to that which is a beautiful thing to know, and to remember and to think about.

And this is one I’m rebooting the “I shine you shine” challenge to show you how to do this in your own life, and provide you with some embody tools and practices, as well as a pop-up community, in which to do that. Because reclaiming true love and lights is an alchemical process. Alchemy requires three things. Something to be transformed, an object that needs to be transformed, or an object that you’re wanting to transform. You need the energy to transform it.

And in my case, the embodiment tools and practices that I provide for people, that’s the energy, that’s where the energy comes from. And then the container is the third thing, In alchemy you need a container, for the transformation to happen inside of. And that for us, for the “I shine you shine” challenge, will be our Mighty Networks portal. And I’ll say more about containers, because I get questions about it whenever I say it. The challenge itself, so for example, which will run from June 11th to the 21st, it’s a healing container.

That experience is a healing container in and of itself. It’s a container in which you can engage with your light in a variety of embodied ways. Wild Soul some movement classes, erotic body class, healing meditation, various reflection prompts, a summer solstice gathering and a few other things, that I’ve got up my sleeve for you. So if you join the challenge, you won’t have to use all the tools. It’s meant to be a jumpstart for you for what I’m gonna call your pandemic recovery, right? It’s kind of like someone used, I forget who this was the other day a friend of mine, oh Jen Kim, she was saying this challenge is like a recovery shake after a hard workout. It’s a, it’s like, we’ve all been in a hard ass endurance workout for the last year to year and a half.

And now it’s really time to start recovering. Even if we can’t recover completely, we can start the recovery process. And you need a container for that. And a container holds space too, which was something I love about it energetically. If you do alter work, you get this alters are also containers. And so containers for healing are physical or energetic structures, set up to hold and conduct both the object, and the transformational energy. So we don’t have to use our bodies as the containers, which is helpful because you know, it’s so intangible but when we’re running a lot of energy, when we’re doing healing work, when we’re processing feelings and emotions, that is like a workout.

But it’s a workout for the energetic body and the emotional body which of course affects the physical body. So healing without a container is of course possible, but it’s much easier to burn out that way. So we like to try to do things in containers to help, to aid in the healing process. And even if the process is intense, having a container makes it gentler, because the container holds some of that intensity, so that you personally, or as a community we do not have to hold all the energy, and conduct all the energy ourselves.

So the other purpose of the “I shine you shine” challenge and how it relates to reclaiming true love and light is, you know, for so long we were in uncertainty around the panini. We had no idea how long it was gonna go on for. And even though we still have some of that uncertainty, right? Because depending on where you live or your specific town or province, or where you’re located in the world, it’s certainly going different in different places.

But it does seem that largely due to vaccines, regardless of how you feel about them, we have now begun to transition out of it, out of the pandemic. And God only knows how long that transition’s gonna take, but it certainly has begun. So that’s it y’all a little bit of a shorter episode today. I hope you’ve enjoyed that little deep dive into reclaiming true love and light, and all the various aspects that go into it, from an embodied healing and self liberation perspective which is always gonna be where I’m coming from.

And for those who are interested in joining the challenge let me wrap up here by giving you some more details. So the challenge doesn’t start till June 11th, but you’ll be able to sign up for it as soon as June 1st. And there will be a little incentive for you to do so. Cause there’s also a really epic giveaway. I won’t give you all the details for that right now. It’ll be on the, I shine you shine page, when it goes live on June 1st.

There’s a really epic giveaway, because there’s also a celebration that’s happening, during the challenge which is the one year anniversary of the Embodied Living Center. So you’ll be able to sign up for the challenge ahead of time. It’s totally free. You’ll get access to a portal and Mighty Networks for the 11 days. And immediately when you sign up for the challenge on June 1st, we’ll also send you two links. You’ll get a link to a healing meditation, to help you embody your love and light.

And also a link to an I shine you shine playlist that my community manager Sam is putting together. So if you don’t wanna miss out on any of that, put yourself on the Embodied Living Center wait list @untameyourself.com/ELC, like Embodied Living Center, dash waitlist. All right y’all. As always, thank you so, so much for listening and I will be back next week.