Making up a statistic, about 80% of the people I've seen posting about lightworkers and darkworkers since Steve introduced the word have lumped the terms in with "good" and "evil", "angels" and "demons", "saints" and "sinners", and so on and so forth.
Generally speaking, while the analogies may indeed hold, the implied moral judgments are wrong. So, I want to make it clear here that I'm making an effort to explain what Steve meant, near as I've personally interpreted. (And I've always considered my default copyright to be Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike.)
So, the
first point is simple: It is impossible to determine with certainty the proportion someone is a lightworker or darkworker. It is probably not easy to figure out on which side of the spectrum
you yourself are. And if you cannot figure out where you are, how do you honestly expect to figure out where others are?
Second Point: polarization is a scale. Placing an arbitrary threshold at 10%, let's say a lightworker is someone who is 90%+ love and 10%- fear. Most people are more likely 50% love and 50% fear; that is to say, unpolarized. Which means they are neither lightworkers, nor are they darkworkers. This said, fame does not polarize you, thus there is no indication that famous people are any more polarized than your average Joe.
Initially, I thought the terms were problematic, because there are moral connotations to "light" and "dark". I still think they're problematic, but now moreseo because people to refer to them as binary, a mistake common in just about every spectrum-based system I have ever seen, from MBTI types to grades (you very quickly see people determine a particular grade is "good" or "bad"; they never think about it as a percentage).
Third Point: lightworkers and darkworkers, having reached Enlightenment, are indistinguishable.
Corollary: they are extremely obvious at lower
levels of consciousness. Consider the lowest, Shame. The lightworker description that Steve provides is, "Just a step above death. You’re probably contemplating suicide at this level."
Rewritten for darkworkers, it would read: "Just a step above death. You’re probably contemplating largescale destruction at this level."
The most obviously questionable one is Fear: "Seeing the world as dangerous and unsafe. Paranoia."
The state, for darkworkers, would be the same. Their response, however, is immediately more proactive than a lightworker: they attempt to control the world, to master it somehow and bring it to heel. Why? Because they can.
That brings us back to Steve's analogy to Star Wars. Sith are generally seen as far more powerful than Jedi, because their potential begins to be expressed at a much lower state. Steve's description of Shame, for instance, points out serial killers. Why? Because serial killers remain capable of goal-directed action even at the lowest state of consciousness. That's pretty powerful. A newly admitted Jedi is working on understanding flow; a fresh Sith is being beaten to a pulp and being asked to survive by fighting back as hard as he can.
On the other hand, enlightened Force adepts generally appear to have the same general goals. Darth Traya, Revan, Vader, and even Sidious all had goals intended for the good of the universe, especially as they reached the end of their lives. It is interesting to note that the former three are, canonically, opposed to the Jedi primarily because the Jedi got in the way of their quest to save the universe.
Why, ultimately, is an Enlightened darkworker the same as an Enlightened lightworker?
To answer this, take a look at what
Steve says about polarity. It's the direction in which energy flows between the universe and yourself.
For an Enlightened person, what would really be the difference between the universe and themself? Hardly any. Are they important? Certainly, says the darkworker: who else is there, in their subjective reality. Certainly, says the lightworker: everything and everyone in my reality is worthwhile.
But until you make this connection, energy flows in some direction.
Fourth Point: There's nothing wrong with being a darkworker.
Selfishness has a very, very old stigma. And it's understandable: people unconcerned about the good of society harm it, at worst, and fail to contribute, at least. In my
definition of love, I intentionally address this point because selfishness is a powerful motivator in most people. (I do, in fact, disagree with Steve's usage of "fear-based" and "love-based" polarizations, btw. Well, it's not that we disagree; we're merely talking about different things.)
There is absolutely nothing wrong with selfishness when your "self" includes someone else. Take a second to mull that over, since it's a non-intuitive concept. Think about the Biblical expression of marriage: cleaving to another and becoming one with them; that's the general idea. You think of your self as more than just you. It's selfish for me to help my brother, because
he is me, too.
That's something that isn't available at lower levels of consciousness. I'd peg "Acceptance" as the lowest level of consciousness where you can intentionally achieve it, lightworker or darkworker.
And note that I reiterate the point I made in Point Three: a darkworker, rising in levels of consciousness, will begin to envelop others' identities and eventually, at Enlightenment, become the Universe in an all-encompassing Self, which they continue to serve.
Finally,
Fifth Point is a point of dispute with Steve that impaul99 brought up.
Lightworker Syndrome is, in short, the "lack of acceptance of one’s power" (
link). However, if you start connecting dots, Steve also says, "The peak emotion of polarized fear energy is that of feeling unstoppably powerful." (
link)
Darkworker Syndrome, on the other hand, is the ignorance of others' pain as a consequence of your actions. Thus, I would argue that what Steve describes as love energy ("Love seeks expression through giving and creativity. It wants to connect, to heal, to unite, to inspire. ") is precisely the solution to darkworker syndrome.
Thus, while polarization may be a very good thing, I think that when you run into either syndrome, countering it with the reverse polarization is the most effective measure. That probably won't occur all the time, of course, which is why polarization is, ultimately a good thing. But I don't think that it's the run and don't look back that Steve seems to suggest it is.
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Whoo. That was long. That's what happens when I don't write an essay for over a few weeks, and then suddenly find something I want to write about immediately.
Sorry for the long-windedness; I'll get better at that someday.