As people are awakening around the world, I'm receiving versions of this question every week. My reflection on Awakening: What a Lightworker can and cannot do about darkness continues to be my most popular post.

Here are some of the hallmarks of awakening to your Lightworker gifts.

My hands get hot and my palms tingle like electrical shocks.

My mother tells me I calm her with just my presence...others have told me this too. The other day I gave a complete stranger a hug in the elevator because she was crying... she was stunned and felt better afterward... no awkwardness.

I’ve just been feeling “pushed”  - I guess that's what I would call it. My dreams are very vivid. I can feel things around me and get intuitive feelings of things I have to do. Sometimes I see myself doing them without realizing I was going to...like the elevator hug... most people would look away but I HAD to give some sort of comfort...

People say they feel peaceful and calm around me. 

Animals follow me - they surround me, snuggling close as they can get. Deer, rabbits, birds. A butterfly landed on my chest the other day and just rested there. 

Just being in your presence, people say, they feel uplifted - lighter. That's a powerful gift and there's nothing more you need to do. Unless, and this is entirely up to you, you WANT TO deepen and ground your natural gifts with some training.

Lightworkers bring their gifts wherever they are. In fact, that's the definition of a Lightworker. You show up - and the energy shifts.  You don't have to become a healing practitioner. You don't have to work with crystals or do Reiki. You are already shifting energy, just by being present.

You don't have to know how this works. Still, you may feel more stable if you study a little - and learn to ground the energy that moves to you and through you.

Try different things. You may begin with crystals and wind up working as a holistic nutritionist. Let yourself  be guided. Don't be afraid to change course when guidance calls you in a new direction. Every teaching leads to the next.

Follow your intuition. You'll know a path is blessed if it feels (or appears) to you as alive, vibrant, light-filled. As a LightWorker, you'll know what I mean - things just feel bright and light or they feel heavy. Trust this sensitivity. Know that when something feels heavy, you're being guided to shift away. When you follow that guidance, your life feels and flows better.

When in doubt: choose toward love. Turn toward the light. Know that each step is a chance to make a new choice. Ask or Pray: Love, show me what to do. Then, listen fo the guidance. It may come as an inner ping of recognition. It may come as a sign, symbol, dream - or direction from another person. You'll recognize it when it comes. Know this: if you ask for guidance, it ALWAYS comes.

Grounding will help you feel less discomfort when energy moves through your hands - and body. This will help you feel more confident and ground your emotions and you'll feel more safe and stable as you allow your gifts to emerge.

Find an embodiment practice: yoga, meditation, a drumming circle, singing with a choir in church, any steady practice that combines breath, movement and rhythm. It's best if its done in a group - this amplifies the energy and power of your own connection and experience. It also helps you feel less isolated - and much less weird.

Yes, Lightworkers often feel weird - and sometimes, we feel isolated and lonely. Because we see and sense patterns and emotions more vividly than other people, we can have trouble explaining what we see - what we just know.

And we do 'just know' certain things but often, we find it hard to articulate what we see and sense.

Lightworkers can often diagnose and fix complex systems like computers, cars, and other mechanical systems. We can easily suss out what's really going on in politics and we may be the one who softens tangled family dynamics.

Sometimes,though, we don't really understand what we're seeing. That's when training, study and practice can help. Follow guidance.  Learn about energy. Learn what healing is and what it is not.

As a Lightworker,  you can be overwhelmed with guilt and responsibility. Its important to learn - and to remind yourself often - that you are the vessel through which the light flows but you are not the light. Knowing this helps release attachment to controlling how things work out. It takes the pressure off of you to 'heal' or 'fix' anything or anyone.

This is not your way. Your way is often, literally, to do nothing. Light flows. You allow it. You are the space through which healing moves into the world - and you will be that no matter what job you do, no matter where you work. There are healers and lightworkers in every field.

Healing is NOT a way of being special. Your gifts don't make you different from other people. Everyone is special - and gifted in his or her own way. All of us are guided by intuition - even the least 'spiritual' people you know.

Finally, you don't have to open a wellness center to be a healer. There are LightWorkers in all professions - lawyers, doctors, health care workers, systems analysts. Parents, teachers, Uber drivers. Lightworkers are everywhere.

Healing, in all of its forms, is blessed work. There are countless ways to work with your gifts. Do the things that, when you're doing them, make you feel most joyful, engaged and alive. This will keep your Light flowing.

Support, community, discussion and resources for you as a Lightworker:

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