"Lean Into Your Light" • Lecture by Brian David George

Sunday, April 12th, 2026

We welcome you to read the lecture transcript below, watch the video, and/or share your thoughts in the comments!

About the Lecturer

Brian David George grew up as a queer catholic kid in Newport News, and didn’t understand until much later in life that he perceived the world through heightened sensitivity. After moving to Spain in 1998, he found the space and place to uncover his light. A seeker, lifelong learner and playful soul, Brian works mainly in intercultural and diverse environments in international education. He is certified in Intuitive Energy Healing, has studied meditation and coaching, and is trained as an actor. He completed the Inner MBA program, designed to bring consciousness into the workplace. He is passionate about intergenerational healing and hugs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vIGZ-q1mJk

Lean Into the Light

A Message from Brian David George

Thank you, Winterflower. Hello, everyone. I am not going to lie, I'm a little bit nervous. It's kind of funny to have been there very recently in person and to do this by Zoom. So I wish I were there to give those hugs that I'm so passionate about to anybody who wants one in the chapel.

As I was preparing for today's talk, I was thinking a little bit about what is it at this time of year that wants to come forth? What is it that is maybe something that we're ready to hear now, or ready to talk about now, or ready to reflect on right now?

And the thing that came up to me — in fact, okay, I'm not gonna lie, I used AI. I decided to ask AI to help. I asked two different AIs. I'm like, if you look across major spiritual traditions, what would be a powerful topic for this time of year? AI is fantastic in this way — it can give us really quick research. And so it turns out that across Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Indigenous cosmologies, Stoicism, Neoplatonism, and many others, there's one thing that rises powerfully at this time of year for us in the Northern Hemisphere, and that is the death and rebirth of light.

And I thought, ooh, that's fantastic. And we all love talking about light and our light within, you know? So sure, let me go to that topic. So I thought, well, what is — what's coming up for me when I think about the light within, our light, our inner light?

And something came to me, you know, beyond the obvious — it's springtime, so the days are getting longer. In fact, we recently celebrated the spring equinox. And so that's literally the time when the daylight is now longer than the darkness during the day. So every day there's more and more light coming in. Something that I thought was also interesting about that is the reason behind this — the earth is tilting, at least the Northern Hemisphere is tilting, toward the sun. So in a way we are leaning more into the light at this time of year, which I thought was also a beautiful kind of metaphor.

And then a text came to me that I remember I had received a few years ago from a friend and I was like, oh my gosh, that's it. This is kind of what I feel like I'm going to be sharing and talking about. So I'd like to read this text. It's often mistakenly credited to Nelson Mandela, though it was actually written by Marianne Williamson in her book, Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles. And the text goes as follows:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us — it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

This part always gets me.

You know, when I reflected on my own life and started to think about it, I was like, wow, it's actually really true. You know, we all have darkness inside us, we all have shadows. It's just part of being human, something that we all navigate as human beings on this planet. It's actually when we start to see just how much light we have inside of us that it can sometimes feel overwhelming. It can sometimes feel like I don't know how to handle so much of that light.

Some of the things that resonated so much for me in Williamson's text — we ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant? Who am I to be gorgeous? Who am I to be talented and fabulous? And I have to say, I love the fabulous part, just because that was fun for me. But really, why is it that we make ourselves so small? And I will speak in first person here: why have I made myself so small? Why have I shrunk so many times in my life — to not offend others, to not shine my light?

And I think this is something that probably a lot of people have experienced. I remember another quote that's kind of related to this — it's also a very good one, I think. This is one that Bob Proctor would often quote:

God's gift to you is more talent and ability than you could ever use in one lifetime. And your gift to God is to develop and utilize as much of that talent and ability as you can in this lifetime.

Stories of Hidden Light

So, you know, I think stories are a great way of sharing. So I wanted to tell a few stories about how this has been my own case — how I was covering up or hiding my own light — and maybe certain ways that I have realized that it's something that a lot of us do. And I would dare to say probably all of us do at some point. And maybe by hearing some of these stories, it might help other people see that it's really just not worth it. It's not worth it to keep our light hidden, because that's why we're here — is to share it.

Something else I remember hearing from a spiritual teacher: the best thing that we can do to change the world is to become as much of ourselves as we possibly can in this lifetime. Which is very similar to the other quote.

So I wanted to start off maybe telling you all about a story of me when I was a little boy. I really loved the show Wonder Woman. I'm sure that anybody who is old enough to remember the OG Wonder Woman — with Linda Carter as Wonder Woman — will remember that. And she used to do this fantastic thing.

She would — I see some people like, yes, I know — she was wearing her hair up in a bun, and she worked for, I think the first season was like World War II, and she was working for the military, and she had her hair up in a bun and was wearing these glasses and this tube skirt and was all neatly pulled together and she was very good at her job. And then, you know, when somebody really needed her, she would go and hide somewhere, take those glasses off, reach her arms out, spin around — and this burst of light would show up and then she would turn into Wonder Woman.

She was, for me, like this — I wanted to be her. In so many ways, I wanted to be like Wonder Woman.

And I knew that it wasn't okay at home to want to be like Wonder Woman. I knew that that was frowned upon, because I was a boy, and boys don't want to be Wonder Woman. Boys want to be Batman or Superman. But I wanted to be Wonder Woman, d*mn*t!

So I remember I had to wait until I was alone in the living room when it was on. And then I would get up — and I had this little plastic glasses that I'd popped the lenses out of — and I would get up and I would put the glasses on my nose. And as soon as she would reach her hands out, I would reach my hands out and I would spin around until I got dizzy, rip off the glasses, imagine myself — I'd make up whatever villain, or maybe I'd even play along with what was on the TV — but I would become Wonder Woman. Because that was part of my light. That joy. That playful little boy who wanted to be — for lack of a better word — like a sassy queen, or whatever it was that he wanted to be. He wanted to be that strong goddess that he saw in that woman.

And there was nothing about my body that I was unhappy with. I love my body. It's not like I wanted to be a woman. It's just that I wanted to be this little boy who could turn into Wonder Woman.

And that for me speaks so much to this idea of hiding our light. It made me feel so much joy to do that. And yet that was something that was a reason for shame. It was something I had to hide.

And it wasn't just that. I mean, there were many other things throughout my childhood — and it's not just my family and my parents. It was also something that I realized: I grew up in Newport News, I was born in Newport News, and it was not a cool place to be queer back when I grew up there. You know, it just wasn't something that people did. There was nobody in school, there were no people around, there was nobody on television even. And when there were people that kind of showed up like that, they were laughed at, they were the laughingstock, they were the ones who were criticized. I remember the tension whenever there was a gay character on a TV show — the tension in the living room at home, you could cut the air it was so thick.

And, you know, that kind of makes me think about — that was my light. That was me just wanting to be me, not understanding why being me was such a problem.

Light and Shadow: The Dance Within

And you know, I think our light is also tied to our shadows. Because I had to hide that part of myself — not only for that and other reasons throughout my childhood — I kind of leaned into my shadow, and I was a horrible bully to my little brother. He was a little overweight and I made fun of him and I made all kinds of jokes about him and I was cruel to him. It's something that throughout the years I've tried to apologize for, and I have. We've had very long conversations. I think we're at a good place with that right now. I've asked for forgiveness. I've forgiven myself for that, because I was a little kid and didn't know better. I couldn't understand what was going on. I couldn't understand why I was leaning into my shadows and not into my light.

And to this day, even though he has forgiven me and I've forgiven myself, it still comes up, and he'll call me out on it. And I'm like, I can see why it still comes up.

Because we are human, and we do have to balance our light and our darkness. There's a part of our darkness that's not also who we are — it's not a bad part of us. It's just those parts of us that we work through. Little by little, just like in the springtime the light overcomes the darkness, that also happens within us.

The Moment I Knew God Was Real

There's one other thing that I think would be meaningful to share. When I was consciously having mystical experiences — when I was consciously understanding that there was something else to being human than what I had learned all throughout my life — I specifically remember one day when I was very connected and suddenly I could feel life force flowing through me, and I could feel the light within me dancing, just for lack of a better word.

And I remember at that moment, something clicked in my head. Because for me, this concept of God or the Source or the divine had always been a very theoretical kind of thing. I remember specifically, you know, being a kid growing up in the Catholic church — it was like, God's this thing, this abstract concept. And this one day, it suddenly just hit me. And I literally think I said out loud, "Holy s**, God is real!" Because it just felt so incredible to feel this light within me, knowing that it is our divine being. It is our true nature. It is our birthright as humans. We all have that seed planted within us.

Just like in the springtime the seeds begin to flourish and grow, when that started to flourish and grow within me, I was like, what is going on here? Of course, many people who have experienced this — when we first discover that part of ourselves, we want to tell everybody about it. We can't shut up about it. It's the only thing we ever want to talk about. We can't tolerate small talk or anything like that. And then as time goes by, we kind of come to a place where it's up and down, and then we learn to balance it out.

I have these conversations happily with anybody who wants to talk about them. And I'm not pushing anyone anymore, because I feel like we all are divine. We have all been given this gift of the light that we are. And when it's our divine time, then maybe we wake up to it. And if we don't, it's also okay. There's a part of us that maybe just doesn't want to do that, or is not ready.

The Invitation: Lean In

So in this springtime, thinking about this light that's within all of us — that can be so powerful that it can scare us — what I hope to invite us all to do is to lean in. Just like the earth is tilted a little bit more toward the sunlight right now, I hope that I can invite us all to lean in a little bit more to our light, to our light within, to that part of us that makes us us — so that we can become the maximum expression of who we were born to be in this lifetime, so that we can change ourselves, and that part of us that is changing can be the change that we hope to bring to the world.

And it happens in small ways. I remember having these huge dreams — I want to heal the world. And then as time goes by, I see that it's the small things. It's in how I speak to my neighbor, or to my husband, or to the people that I work with. It's particularly in those moments when I feel anger that I realize how important it is to be the light — to lean into it, to take a breath, to lean back away from the shadow, to see where I can bring more of who I came here in this world to be.

And that's kind of my hope and invitation for all of you. As we're here in this especially appropriate time in the spring: how can I bring more of myself into the world?

This Little Light of Mine

And I think there's nothing more fantastic to kind of remind us of this than the song that I'm sure everybody knows from when we were younger, and it's very popular— This Little Light of Mine. It's a great reminder.

There are specifically three verses that I think are very appropriate.

The first one — this little light of mine— I'm going to sing it. I don't know how it's going to sound over Zoom, but I'm going to sing it anyway.

"This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine." 

Just that part right there is such a great reminder. It's like a little mantra. You know, we can be out in the world, somebody does something that kind of dims our light a little bit, and we might just sing to ourselves, this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

The other one that's very relevant: hide it under a bushel — no! I'm gonna let it shine. 

Letting ourselves be who we are here to be. Not letting someone make us small and try to fit us into a little box.

And the last one, which I think is a fantastic verse: Everywhere I go, I'm gonna let it shine.

I'm going to invite us — I don't know how this is going to work on Zoom, but just to sing these three little verses just a little bit to raise our vibration, to be ourselves, to bring more of our light into the world. And then I'll give you like one little closing thing as we finish.

So on three, two, one—

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine.

This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel, no, I'm gonna let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel, no, I'm gonna let it shine.

Hide it under a bushel, no, I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

And everywhere I go. I'm gonna let it shine!

Everywhere I go. I'm gonna let it shine!

Everywhere I go, I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

I think that we always have the choice between love and fear, between letting our light shine and hiding it from the world. And that's not why we're here.

So please — when in doubt, let your light come out.

It's a blessing. I'm so happy that I am able to share this with everybody. And I really appreciate the cameras being turned to the chapel, because I love seeing you all. The hugs are virtual today, but I'm excited for next time they can be real and in person.