The Feathered Seer hovers above the stones. Photo Credit: Sue Vincent
Note: I started writing this post and then came across the #writephoto prompt post by Sue Vincent and opened it up to this image. Therefore, the blog post has now become my response to her weekly photo prompt.
In April of 2017 I played the role of “The Feathered Seer” during the Silent Eye School of Consciousness’s annual ritual workshop weekend. Although acting is not my element, this role that I was asked to undertake did not feel like acting. It felt like home. Yesterday, I wrote about the concept of home and how I feel most aligned with that state of being when I am in England, walking the ancient lands. I have no doubt I have walked these lands, perhaps many times, in former lives. It’s a knowing so deep it goes beyond the visceral and straight to the heart of the soul.
The Feathered Seer is a part of me, woven into my being. She is my guide, but she is also me. Through the ancient lands she follows me, and I follow her. She takes my hand and leads me so I will remember. And, I believe, so that others will remember too.
In physical form, she adopts the form of the pileated woodpecker. That other-worldly creature who flies through the woods with her red head, calling the soul home to the roots of being, and drumming the language of the ancients back into the heart.
Last night she came to me during dreamtime as I stood atop a sacred Native American hillside. Flying her feathers of darkness before my face to peer into my eyes. Weeks prior, she had arrived in physical form. Flying before my path before the Silent Eye group gathered at Castlerigg.
It was approximately 9:30pm, my husband and I seated on the sofa downstairs watching Victoria and Abdul, a bowl of popped buttered corn between us. Our son upstairs behind shut doors, our daughter and her friend taking a night dip in the pool after their evening run. The door dividing the screened porch open to the elements but screened from the bugs. Or so we thought.
“How did it get in here,” my daughter later asked.
“Maybe it was following a moth. They eat moths, don’t they?” someone offered in reply.
We can’t say for sure what drew it in. It had never entered our house before, nor had any of its kind. It seemed to be in a hurry though, its beautiful, silent body flying soundlessly through the opened doors of the porch, past the mesh screen to dance a circle around our heads in pursuit of an unidentified prey.
“There’s a bat in our house.” I don’t know who said it first. More husband or I. We were both equally startled. We’ve had uninvited visitors before, mostly courtesy of the cats, but no cat had invited the bat in. Nor had the dogs, which remained, somehow, blissfully unaware of our visitor for the 30-45 minutes it was with us.
And so began the pursuit of our graceful guest. How does one catch a bat? I am not sure. I got a net from the pool box used for retrieving frogs and the unfortunate rodents who have ventured over the edge. My husband, a pair of leather gloves from the basement. Thinking that the net might not be enough, I grabbed a thick cotton blanket from the closet and began to search the rooms with my husband.
Here’s the thing about bats. They are not only silent and swift, most of them, like this nocturnal flyer, rely upon echolocation for their sight. They are much better at navigating space than we are. It was a comical chase, to be sure, but we really didn’t think so at the time, well not all of us. Bats have a way of opening our fears, as well as our sense of wonder. I realized in those 45 minutes what our unexpected visitors was triggering in each of us.
My daughter and her friend found amusement, laughing when they discovered what we were dealing with. They were also safely outside. My son seemed satisfied enough to stay behind the closed doors to keep the bat out of the room. Those of us tasked with the challenge of leading the bat back out to where it came from, were not as stable with our emotions. I was fine until it flew by, my husband less so. “I’ve been bitten by animals before,” he reminded me when I told him that our panicking would likely only increase the bat’s panicking.
When we stop to observe and watch ourselves in these moments when our fears are triggered, we can learn a lot about ourselves. Having had more practice in this than my husband, because of my studies with the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, and yoga, I was able to step into that role of observer.
What if you get bit? I asked myself. I thought of rabies and decided I didn’t like that option, but I also thought about the bat as a teacher and as a guest who was there for a purpose that might not be entirely obvious at first. Here before me was this magnificent animal, a mammal like me, but with the ability to fly at will. We were, I realized, both night-flyers. While I released the weight of gravity while I dreamt, this night-flyer was showing me the beautiful blind dance of trust in my waking state. And, I realized, when I took the time to be still and let go my fear of being bit, that before me was a gift.
How remarkably beautiful you are I thought as the bat flew a millimeter in front of me in search of an exit. There were moments, many of them, when I had no idea where our visitor was until it soared past on its silent wings. There was even one moment when I was hunched in the hallway as it flew around me when I thought it had landed on me. It wasn’t, I discovered, an unwelcome thought. I had this crazy notion that if I remained calm and still, it would land on me if it chose to, and we would both be okay.
Or was it so crazy? When we choose to dance beyond our fears into that state of stillness and peace, the world has a way of responding in kind. Those zen-like moments you read or hear about, and maybe even have experienced for yourself, are just that. The letting go of what binds us to our bodies and minds and allowing our cells to dance in unity with all that is around us. It is, in essence, like flying without effort. This bat, I realized while it was with us, had been a welcome visitor after all. I was almost sorry when my husband declared after our second attempt at releasing it (we had at one point thought it had exited an open door only to discover after we had settled back onto the couch and our movie that it had not), that he had, in fact, watched it exit the same porch door from which it came from. It’s job here, it seems, was done.
It was a strange series of dreams, on the surface, but then again dreams are often strange…on the surface. I was in school, a large brick building that seemed nearly endless. My classroom on the upper floor and down labyrinthian corridors filled with turns and shadows. One could easily get lost there.
The labyrinthian school in my dream reminded me of this labyrinth from my new book.
I was studying art. The assignment I was given was to fashion a multilayered piece that appeared one-dimensional until you turned it, allowing the light to reveal the inner layers that appear shadowed by the surface. The finished piece had been created, somehow, by my hands, hands that I did not believe could create a painting, much less a rather magical one that. A painting that when turned to the light at just the right angle revealed beautiful, hidden layers beneath. Like a hologram, but there were so many layers to this painting I had somehow created, I could not count.
We were to take our paintings outside, to catch the sunlight so that their depths could be revealed. That is when I started to fly, with my two dogs. Normally, in my dreams, I fly alone…
The two dogs in my dream, pictured here on one of our walks together.
During the day, I had been thinking about density. How we create our own density in our bodies and in our physical environment. We fashion energy into dense forms, like the car I was riding in while I was thinking these thoughts. Cars to drive in, homes to house our bodies, furniture to rest upon, toys to play with…the list is endless. I had also been thinking about how the density inside of me lifts when I visit ancient landscapes where my inner child burst forth into a state of pure joy and sometimes it is as though my feet are so light they hover above the ground…
My feet “hover” above the rocks at Merrivale in Dartmoor as I walk in the pure joy of being. Photo Credit: Lara Wilson
I had also been thinking about rocks, nature’s way of creating density to store the memories of Time. These rocks that draw people like me to listen to their stories, and have the ability to somehow make us feel less dense and confined to the worlds we create.
This bird drew my eye to the heart in stone on top of a New Hampshire mountain years ago.
The day had not been particularly “light.” I had allowed myself to be bothered by others behavior and the nuances of life we can attach so much importance to but are in reality merely passing moments that we can either grasp or let go of. I was, you could say, feeling weighed down by the time I laid my head upon my pillow to go to sleep.
This image popped up on my screen this morning when I opened my computer. Sometimes there are no accidents in life.
I am not, therefore, surprised my dreams brought me into a school, where I was given the opportunity to learn and grow. It was a gift. An opportunity and I had a choice to hold onto the density within me or to examine the art of my creation and allow the layers of light to reveal themselves.
In The Labyrinth, the character Sula, and her five fellow teen protagonists must face their trapped fears and release their density in order to open the gifts of their light bodies. It is essential not only to their individual journeys but also to their collective, as they realize they are each a strand of light in the network of light that connects all life. As warriors of this light, they come to understand they must embrace their true selves and learn to fly above their fears to carry out their mission of repairing the broken lines of light within Earth.
And they are not alone…None of us are. Sometimes we forget we are all connected. That the same fears and light reside within all of us, and we can either create more density together or reveal the light of our creation.
When I left the confines of the brick school building and walked out into the classroom of Nature in my dream, I found myself walking with my two dogs. As my feet lifted off the ground, so did theirs. I lifted first, but they followed my lead. Their leashes weightless ribbons joining us together in a trinity as though we were one-self. I felt rather felt like Santa Claus (yes, I actually had this thought while I was flying with the dogs in my dream), with my companions Rosy and Zelda flying ahead of me over the landscape below. A landscape filled not with mortored walls, but with the classrooms of the ancients. It was glorious to be flying over these places that draw my soul, and allowing myself to notice, but not stop and linger, where I felt the density of fear. I was there to discover and learn. I will remember this, I told myself, so that I can share it with others.
When I woke, I felt much lighter than I did the day before. That is the gift of these sorts of “dreams.”
I am climbing the walls of an old church. There is only the outer fortification of stone, smoothed into mortared slabs. Each slab is chiseled with symbols, hieroglyphics of an ancient language my cells remember, but my mind has forgotten how to read. My hands grasp the hollowed frames of windows, climbing through the inside through levels until I know I have reached the 3rd floor. Here my hands let go of their grasp and I find I am hovering weightlessly. My body prone, I look down to the depths below. And then I begin to turn, like a clock. My body the hands of the hours going backward.
I had this dream about a week ago, and it has lingered with me since then. It has been more than a month since my return from England. My third trip there in as many years. I go to this land to turn back time.
After we descended from Brentor, and I paid my respects to the guardian stone, Sue graciously offered to take us along in her car to the next site, and Larissa and I accepted without negotiation. I was more than happy to take a break from driving on the wrong left side of the road down the winding narrow lanes of rural England, and I knew Larissa shared my fear that there was a good chance we would get lost following Sue who drives with the skill and ease of a professional racecar driver.
I drove down this lane and many like it.
So to The Hurlers we went, with Stuart navigating using a traditional paper map as Sue manipulated the stickshift gears on her race compact car. Larissa and I were impressed, to say the least, and kept breathing large sighs of relief that we were not in the front seats and could enjoy the views that flew passed by. And, we never got lost. Well, that is until we got there and I started to wander…
A ewe leads the way to The Hurlers
To be honest, I rather wanted to get lost, but at that critical moment the brain won over the longings of the heart, and I turned around. But, I am getting ahead of myself…
It’s difficult to describe just how vast and complex the landscape of Dartmoor is, which covers 368 square miles of moorland filled with the evidence of ancient civilizations. Pure heaven for someone like me.
The Hurlers is the remains of three large stone circles in the wild moorland landscape of Dartmoor, which just happens to be aligned with the star cluster Orion and sits on the Michael ley line. To say it is a place of magic is an understatement. I knew I was home before I stepped out of the car.
The Hurlers are larger than they appear, and are perfectly aligned with the stars…
As tends to happen in these ancient lands, my feet began to move as though driven by some deep cellular memory, responding to the forces of the land. Find the seer’s stone, the command kept entering my conscious mind as it whirled with the energies of the land.
The seer’s stone sits in the center of the Hurlers
The land was damp from rain, and a puddle had formed within the well around the central stone. I could not comfortably sit here, as I had at Bratha’s stone in the Peak last April, so my visit within the circle was brief. After paying my respects, I walked the perimeter stones in two of the circle, while my eye caught upon the portal stones, briefly. I will return after, I promised myself.
Portal through time.
I could not ignore the intense pull to the land beyond. The hill with the balanced stones of giants felt like a magnet drawing me ever-closer to its energy. The land, as I have learned, beyond stone circles is filled with secrets of the past. Stones litter these ancient landscapes and each has a story to tell. There were too many to linger beside here, and my feet did not want to go slowly.
One can imagine a gathering place here, where the stones do the talking.
The vegetation of the landscape of these sites is always worth noting. How it grows along the ancient tracts…when it is interrupted, swirled or corse…
An uneven landscape that seems to have been modeled by deliberate hands.
There are many ditches around the Hurlers, as well as deep circular depressions. As Sue noted, it could be from mining the lands for ore, or for some other, perhaps ritualistic reason. There is the sensation of falling inward to another realm near some of them, and the grass often swirls in imposing tufts which speak of disruption.
Several depressions threaten to tumble the unsteady.
My feet, though, kept racing toward the hill beyond, where the Cheesewring sits like a giant stone bird. Was I following the Michael line to some sort of apex of energy? It felt like a force beyond logical reason. Yet, I stopped at the edge of the stone settlement, just where the land starts to dip before it climbs. I looked at the imposing hill just beyond with longing, before I turned around. I was far, quite far, from the other three I had come with and logic told me it would not be fair to follow my heart into the mist. And so the climb would have to wait for some other day, perhaps in the future.
I got tantalizingly close before I turned away.
Something told me, though, that if I had stood long enough between those to standing stones, I would have gotten there sooner.
The red-winged blackbirds started appearing in my neighborhood about a week ago. In the eleven years I have lived here I have never seen red-winged blackbirds near my home. Now they seem to follow me everywhere. The pair flies across the crossroads of intersections and alights from trees at the edge of the forest. The female looks ordinary and unassuming. She wears the colors of camouflage, like a cloak of decaying earth.
It was the male who appeared in my dream many months ago. Opening his wing of night to reveal the power of red blended with yellow, which he formed into a ball of flame and threw for me to catch.
And now he is here again, with me in physical form. Over the last two days, he has left me three broken wings. Not his own, but those of moths. Night butterflies. Remnants of a feast left behind.
The first wing appeared in the field where I will soon be teaching summer yoga classes. The hindwing of a Cecropia Silk Moth. I heard the song in my head written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney before I saw the blackbird.
The fire-rimmed eye of the hindwing of a Cecropia Silk Moth
Yesterday, a wing from the same moth appeared. A forewing banged up perhaps from traveling the fifty yards or so from the location where I found the hindwing. A little distance away, a nearly invisible white wing of what may have been a Fall Webworm lay like a fairy’s wing on the pavement.
The Three Broken Wings of Moths
Last night was a fitful night of sleep. The left side of my head was congested as though all the turmoiled thoughts in my mind had settled there to block rest.
“Blackbird fly into the light of the dark, dark night.” (lyrics from “Blackbird” by Lennon/McCartney)
We all have our broken wings. Life has a way of breaking them, and the breaks can deepen through past-life wounds we may not even remember. Wings that were, perhaps, meant to be broken so that we may find the true, free soul. The light in the dark, dark night.
I have realized, these last few days, that I have let myself stray from the path of the true self. I have allowed myself to be disempowered and voiceless at the expense of another’s ambitions that do not feel in alignment with my true self. The blackbird has appeared as a reminder of the strength of the soul aligned with Truth. He has left me the wings to fly into the Light.
I dreamt last night of a world I did not want to leave. “Hold me back,” I told my companions, lest I fly up into the wonderous sky above. At that moment I was watching the dance of clouds as they morphed into fairytale forms, yet what was below was as magical as what was above. A child’s playhouse of wonderment and joy. I have dreamed these landscapes before. I have even traveled them in visions only to return to the density of a reality that seems, on the surface, false and formed through the deliberate hands of ego-driven might. By hands shaped by the individual quest for greed.
My soul has not forgotten the true magic of Life. Of untempered Joy. Every so often, it returns me to that state to bring back hope and also Truth. I have walked the broken lands that still hold magic for those who wish to see and feel it. Through the deepest depths of a despair that is not just mine, I have felt the ever-present stirring of Light.
We all walk the landscape of magic, whether we are aware of it or not. At each moment we can choose whether to become the trapped victim of fear fed by that greedy hand lusting for power and dominance, or we can find that ever-present state where the river of Life flows to the frequency of Light.
Here is where the inner-child resides, waiting to dance to Truth. We call her the inner-child because she holds the key to Life. She never forgets the “child-like” state of wonder that is the magic of all existence. The embodiment of true Joy, she resides in all of us. Tuned to her frequency, the world around her shifts to match the rhythm of her dance.
For so many of us, including those who are not yet adults, the inner-child is already lost in a long-forgotten place. We may know she is there. Sometimes we may even feel her inner core of light, but we have forgotten who to get to her. It is as though we reside in a labyrinth that takes on a maze-like form because the light within us is filled with broken lines created by pain and fear. These shadow lands impede the natural flow of light, which is that magical life force energy that vibrates to Truth. To Joy. To Love.
As one well-intended individual has pointed out, the labyrinth that appears in my first book in the Warriors of Light series does not resemble the labyrinths seen throughout ancient cultures, and which is now used in “New-Age” healing modalities. The labyrinth I chose, or rather chose me, is a maze of lines that unite the above with the below. Those who are familiar with esoteric teachings will recognize it as the mystical hexagram, the Star of David, or the Merkabah . Its origin predates religion and division. Two triangles overlapping in union, connecting the above with the below in perfect harmony. The true self, that “inner-child,” can be found always at the center. The seat of the soul. Of Truth. Of Light. Un-changing. There can be many individual journeys to get there, but we all, eventually arrive at the same place.
The book will be out soon…I had a minor glitch in formatting, a glitch which is turning into a gift to allow a more beautiful expression of the book and the vision that is being held to assist and support children young and old reconnect with the inner-child of Truth.
Last night I dreamt I was flying. I was in a sporting good’s store, and on my way to the check-out register, but let me back up a bit. Before I started flying, I had been with Ann and Margo, two characters from my memoir, A Girl Named Truth. Briefly, I was fourteen again, and I could overhear my two former friends gossiping about me. Instead of keeping silent, though, and internalizing my hurt, I spoke up. “I know what you’re saying,” I told them, “and I really don’t care.” And, truthfully, I didn’t. Something inside of me had changed. I had become detached from the weight of their words, realizing they did not define me.
As I walked away, my feet began to lift off the ground and I began to fly. Effortlessly, and with a joy that defies gravity, I navigated my way to the front of the store where I found a queue of individuals who were waiting to “check-out.”
“It is not difficult,” I told them as they looked up at me with awe and doubt. “You can learn to do it too.”
In my forthcoming book, The Labyrinth, there is a thirteen-year-old character named Dell. She is one of the six “warriors of light” protagonists who must overcome their inner fears and challenges to use their gifts for a larger purpose. Like me, Dell was once bullied by her two former best friends.
Playful by nature, Dell is filled with an inner joy that is difficult to destroy. It is almost as though that very joy, that light, is what her former friends are afraid of and seek to diminish. Perhaps they do not realize that same light resides within them too.
We all have a Dell aspect of ourselves. The inner child who represents our true selves resides in each of us. I don’t believe there is anyone on the planet who has not faced adversity, causing their inner light to be overshadowed in some way.
Adversity rises to test the light. It throws a deliberate shroud over its source, and sometimes those who find themselves inside of its darkness lose hope of connecting to that inner joy again. Many of these people are still children themselves, like Dell, on the cusp of adulthood who have already forgotten they have that innate gift to soar.
They may feel broken, lost, and alone. In a world that chooses to reflect more darkness than light, that hopeless can spread throughout the channels of light that reside in all of us, leading to the despair of disconnection.
If you look at the cover of The Labyrinth, you will see the network of light leading to the center. If you look closely, you will notice that light has been cut off by darkness in many places. Dell and her five friends stand at the edges, each carrying the light of their individual selves. A pillar of unwavering light rises from the center. Each warrior, each individual who stands on the edge of the darkness, has the power to reach that inner beam of light. And, as these six discover, we never have to walk that path alone.
Gayatri: The feminine form of the divine, and therefore one may extrapolate that Gaia, or Mother Earth, is an aspect of her. (Note some associate the Gayatri mantra with the solar god, Savitr, as I mentioned in a previous post. As I work further with this mantra, I find myself returning to what I felt years ago when I first heard it, that it is an awakening to the divine feminine energy that resides in all of us. An energy that balances the fiery sun).
I wore her turquoise in the form of a teardrop in the well of my throat each day. The chip of stone the same shade of blue as her waters, which turned from tranquil to a fierce sea that I knew could pull me back to her womb in an instant. On the tiny sliver of an island called Bermuda, I was acutely aware of the power of water and the great womb of life. Water that in one moment held stillness, and in the next turbulence.
A sea of tranquility?
The first day mirrored calm. There were hardly any ripples dividing the liquid element from air, and my eyes could see an unobstructed bottom through several feet of depth. Often, I found myself looking for life in the great womb, but found only a few colorful fish one day in the deeper, darker blues.
Along the shoreline, the inorganic waste of humanity collected the memory of greed in forgotten areas. Finding this depressing, I focused the lens on beauty.
Abandoned vacation huts over tranquil water. Behind the veil of pine, garbage accumulates.
Until it was unavoidable.
By day three her breath, which blew in a soft caress upon my arrival, had turned into a gale force that permeated all the pores in my body. It was not an icy wind, but a penetrating one meant to awaken that which we tend to keep still not because of peace, but because of a choice to ignore.
The photograph cannot capture the magnitude of Her strength
So I welcomed her air and felt the exhilaration of life stirring through time. Nights turned restless and I woke often to hear her constant cry as she tried to rip the shudders of my the house where I was staying open.
What do you want from me? What are you trying to tell me? I found myself asking the divine mother, knowing the answers were held in the mirror of my dreams. They showed me the walls that needed to be brought down, and the shadows held through fear opened to the raw, untamed element of air. The spiral like a hurricane bringing me ever inward to the eye to examine and release.
The key, held in the open hands of surrender.
I will stir up your life, but you must examine what I bring forth.
The tide draws in and releases
Bhargo devasya dhimahi
Diyo yonah prachodayat
Often, I found my mind returning to the Gayatri Mantra, in particular, these last two lines. Seeking the cleansing through the goddess. Igniting the light more deeply within, while feeling Her womb enclosed around me. Wrapping me fiercely, but not consuming, while I stayed on her strip of land called Bermuda. The place some say is at the tip of a sacred triangle that points “up” toward the ever-present Light.
My journey with the mantra Aham Prema, “I Am Divine Love,” continues, pulling me deeper within to examine the origins of fears that hold back the full light of the divine self. Love’s opposite is not hate, but fear. Hate and all its friends are byproducts of fear.
In the first post I wrote about working with the Aham Prema mantra, I talked about the constriction I felt in my throat. The journey through this pathway to the voice of inner truth continues. Almost every night I note in my journal some point of evidence about my throat being worked like a muscle. I also make note of the sensations felt in my heart and third eye chakras. The heart feels as though it wants to be free of another barrier, while the brow seeks the expansion of the inner light.
In my Silent Eye School of Consciousness studies, I am working with the energy of the inner fugitive, an aspect of the self that can reside in a habitual state of fear and hiding. The mantra Aham Prema adds to the intensity of the work, pulling me into depths I have, I realize, avoided exploring. I will call this place terror: that aspect of extreme fear that holds the tightest binds around the true-self. Irrational terror, if one considers only this lifetime, but I cannot.
The signs are too many. They appear everywhere. One day, while I walk, I see the number 6, where the inner fugitive likes to reside on the Enneagram, in a murder of crows. Another day, it appears as a bevy of doves. My dreams at night bring me deeper, pulling me to places of extremes to test the reins of fear binding the fugitive-self. One night, while I am on a ship being pulled underwater, I realize I am no longer afraid of “drowning.” Yet, in the same night, I find myself cowering away from an archway of the gods filling the sky with its awesome presence. One glance tells me I haven’t reached faith without doubt of the divine.
Aham Prema. “I Am Divine Love.” To open the light within, one must also surrender to the light without, knowing that when the reins of fear are broken there is no division.
When I go to sleep after day 7 of working with the mantra, I dream of artichokes in muffins presented by Sue Vincent, my mentor. Later, Eagle appears. Eagle has been a faithful and revelatory guide for many years. Years ago, Eagle brought me the vision of a past life that is significant to this journey.
By day 10 I start to succumb to a cold virus which, it will be no surprise, begins with a sore throat before it works its way to the sinuses, causing pain from the pressure built up in my temples and forehead. From here it travels down the channel of the throat into the heart chakra where the lungs start to fill with fluid residue.
Later in the day, I see 6 crows in the sky, circling and calling out.
In the evening, I go into a meditation and find I am pulled into the forest nearby my house, to a place I have not walked in years. It is a path lined with evergreens. Years ago, when I first walked the path with my late dog Daisy, my mind brought me to a recurring nightmare from childhood. The dream was of sheer terror, and each night it would wake me at the same moment when the voice of fear tried to escape from my throat. It was a dream of fleeing through a forest of pines which, I later discovered through meditation and healing work, held the imprint of terror from a past life when I tried to flee from the Nazis through an evergreen woods. During my meditation, waves of healing pass through me as my body begins to release the binds of its terror.
When I later fall into sleep , Daisy visits me in a dream. My beloved companion who taught me that forests are places of magic and elemental love, and not to be feared, has returned for a night.
On day 11 I cannot practice the 54 repetitions I have been chanting every night. My throat is too sore, and my body is beyond fatigued. I need to rest.
And so I find myself at the edge of faith with my soul asking me, Will you release the residue of fear that remains to open fully to the Light? Will you stand naked to Love in the arms of Faith?
The Light Behind the Story 