What is a Lightworker?

Someone called me a Lightworker a few days ago.  It was very flattering, even though I don't really know what it means.  It just sounds nice:  Lightworker.  I get an image of someone who takes light and uses it to create something new ... kind of like a woodworker, but with light.

When I hear the word, Lightworker, I conjure up images of Leo the Whitelighter in Charmed.  Whitelighters can orb, which is a way of travelling instantly from one place to another in a sparkly white light.  They also have tremendous healing powers.  If I were to choose superpowers, these would be two very cool superpowers to have.  But I'm pretty sure when that person called me a Lightworker, this is not what they had in mind.

I Googled Lightworker, and came up with an article that seems to explain it.  The article seems to be a message channeled by someone named Jeshua.  I don't know anything about Jeshua, or about the group of people responsible for this article, and so I don't know if they have some secret agenda I should be concerned with.  I have no way to judge the accuracy of these facts.  I offer them here anyway as a clue.  We can decide together how we feel about it. 


It's a fairly long article, so here's the Cliff Notes version.

Lightworkers are souls who carry the strong inner desire to spread Light – knowledge, freedom and self-love – on earth. They sense this as their mission. They are often attracted to spirituality and to therapeutic work of some kind.
Because of their deeply felt mission, lightworkers often feel different from other people. By experiencing different kinds of obstacles on their way, life provokes them to find their own unique path. Lightworkers are nearly always solitary individuals, not fitting into fixed societal structures.

OK, so far I identify with this.  Let's read on (many words have been omitted):

Psychological Characteristics of Lightworkers:

From early on in their life, they feel they are different. More often than not they feel isolated from others, lonely and misunderstood. They will often become individualists who will have to find their own unique ways in life.

They have trouble feeling at home within traditional jobs and/or organization structures.

Lightworkers feel drawn to helping people as a therapist or as a teacher. They may be psychologists, healers, teachers, nurses, etc. Even if their profession is not about helping people in a direct manner, the intent to contribute to the higher good of humanity is clearly present.

Their vision of life is colored by a spiritual sense of how all things are related together.

They deeply honor and respect life which often manifests as a fondness for animals and a concern for the environment.

They are kind-hearted, sensitive and empathic. They may have trouble dealing with aggressive behavior and they generally experience difficulties in standing up for themselves. They can be dreamy, naive or highly idealistic, as well as insufficiently grounded, i.e. down-to-earth. Because they easily pick up negative feelings and moods of people around them, it is important for them to spend time alone on a regular basis. This enables them to distinguish between their own feelings and those of others. They need solitary time to touch base with themselves and with mother earth.

They have lived many lives on earth in which they were deeply involved with spirituality and/or religion. They were present in overwhelming numbers in the old religious orders of your past as monks, nuns, hermits, psychics, witches, shamans, priests, priestesses, etc. They were the ones providing a bridge between the visible and the invisible, between the daily context of earth life and the mysterious realms of the afterlife, realms of God and the spirits of good and evil. For fulfilling this role, they were often rejected and persecuted. Many of you were sentenced to the stake for the gifts you possessed. The traumas of persecution left deep traces within your soul’s memory. This may presently manifest as a fear of being fully grounded, i.e. a fear to be really present, because you remember being brutally attacked for who you were. 

 I have always had a memory of being burned at the stake for being a witch.  It was in the northwest region of France, and I was an herbalist and healer living alone on the outskirts of town.  The men of the village were afraid of what they saw as my "power" over their women and children.  I've always assumed that those "memories" were simply the result of the overactive imagination of a teenage girl. 
Could they be actual memories? 

According to Jeshua, Lightworkers carry a heavy karmic burden, because back in the beginning of time, when humans were first created, Lightworkers were responsible for making a very bad choice concerning humans.  What that choice was is unclear to me ... maybe some of you know.  Lightworkers must work off this karmic burden by now leading humans to the light.  How can any of us validate a fact like this one?  I'll reserve judgment for now.  Meanwhile, let's read some more: 

When lightworkers have made their way through the karmic burden, which means to release the need for power in any way, they will realize that they are essentially beings of light. This will enable them to help others in finding their own true selves. But first they have to go through that process themselves. This generally demands great determination and perseverance on the inner level. Because society feeds them values and judgments which often go against their own natural impulses, many lightworkers have gotten lost, ending up in states of self-doubt, self-denial and even depression and hopelessness. This is because they cannot fit into the established order of things and they conclude there must be something terribly wrong with them.
What lightworkers have to do at this point is to stop looking for validation from the outside – from parents, friends or society. At some point in time, you who are reading this will have to take the momentous leap to true empowerment, which means to really believe in yourself and to truly honor and act upon your natural inclinations and your inner knowing.

What I get from all that is that Lightworkers eventually find their own way into the light by first going through a period of hellish darkness and despair.  Well, I certainly qualify on that front.

For now, though, I am posing this question to you, my faithful readers.  What exactly is a Lightworker?  If I could remember who called me a Lightworker, I would just ask them what they meant by that.  Instead, I'll ask all of you.  I'm suspecting that if you are here reading this blog you are most likely a Lightworker yourself, and can give me some kind of clue.

It's something I'll have to ponder further.