Learn about Therapeutic Value of Gray Light, Left/Right Brain and Psychical Balancing with Gray Light, Gray Agate, Gray Agate Gemstone Essence, and Frankincense Essential Oil
In this article:
- The Nature and Therapeutic Properties of Gray Light
- Gray Light to help Assuage a Sense of Ambiguous Loss
- Gray light, Creation and Creativity
- Gray Light and Left Brain/Right Brain Imbalance
- Gray Agate’s Therapeutic Properties
- Spiritual PhytoEssencing Gray Agate Gemstone Essence
- Frankincense Oil: Gray Agate Association and Psychospiritual Healing Properties relevant to Gray Light
The Nature and Therapeutic Properties of Gray Light
Gray is an achromatic color (i.e., a color without a color). According to physics, gray light exists independent of any wavelength. Gray light emerges from the interface of black and white, and is neither full darkness nor entirely light. This characteristic associates it with the harmonious blending of opposing forces into a unified whole. Thus, it is often associated with neutrality, balance, and compromise.
Gray light can help one bridge different states, amplifying the potential for transformation and new beginnings. In the same way that a gray sky precedes dawn or an approaching storm, gray light therapy can provide psychospiritual support during times of transition and the emergence of a more evolved state of being.
On a psychospiritual level, gray is linked to wisdom, maturity, and introspection. Gray light encourages self-inquiry, reflection upon thoughts, emotions, life experiences, and the exploration of deeper, eternal truths. Gray light can lead to valuable insights and a heightened sense of Self-awareness (i.e., consciousness directed by one’s higher Self).
The color gray symbolizes unpretentious simplicity, and directs one’s focus to the essentials of one’s life-path. It downregulates material desires, thus, making more room for higher consciousness.
In some cultures, gray is associated with loss and grief, the passage between life and afterlife. It can evoke feelings of solemnity and reverence and serve as a reminder of mortal life’s impermanence and the need for spiritual unfolding.
On an emotional level, the color gray is associated with emotional detachment or the need for establishing emotional distance and boundaries for self-preservation. Gray also builds the capacity for objectivity and impartiality. Gray is the color of maturity, experience and acquired wisdom.
Gray is one of the colors of transition or transformation in life useful therapeutically when one is a navigating through a transitional phase ─ a time of particularly large shifts in consciousness or a personal and/or spiritual growth process that requires that old patterns and beliefs have become a hindrance toward operating from one’s real self. Thus, gray light can aid one in becoming, what the great psychotherapist Dr. Carl Rogers referred to as, a “fully functioning person.” Gray is also associated with a sense of tranquility and peacefulness. Gray light promotes a sense of calmness, balance and stability. I experience this every year. By late August, after months of yang, bright, sunny weather, I begin to look forward to the embracing, yin, gray skies and rain-laden clouds of fall in the Pacific Northwest. On these days, the boundaries of my consciousness draw inward and are less permeable to invasive, dark energies from the outer world. A soothing, somewhat nurturing calm descends upon me rooted in higher consciousness.
Gray Light to Help Assuage a Sense of Ambiguous Loss

Gray, representing the unknowable point at the precise interface of black and white, is also associated with the themes of ambiguity and uncertainty. This makes gray light therapy an important therapeutic option when addressing a deeply ingrained sense of ambiguous loss. On a psychospiritual level, gray light enhances the capacity to accept ambiguity and uncertainty as givens in life, and to navigate through life’s endless series of complex challenges with openness and adaptability.
While the loss of a loved one elicits sometimes unbearable grief, not knowing with certainty where and how a loved one died elaborates a type of grief that is more nebulous and open-ended. Dr. Pauline Boss, the principle theorist regarding the concept of ambiguous loss, fully describes its contours in her book Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief.1
Ambiguous loss, sometimes referred to alternatively as frozen grief, is associated with a lack of closure or clear understanding of the circumstances of a person’s death or disappearance. Instead of the familiar form of grief which is characterized by the concrete certainty of loss and its ensuing consequences, ambiguous loss leaves family and friends perpetually searching for answers.
The phenomenon of ambiguous loss is not restricted to the aftermath of disappearance and/or mysterious death. In fact, the experience of ambiguous loss is nearly universal. Some examples of other situations or events that activate the potentiality of ambiguous loss are: infertility; abortion or miscarriage; disappearance of a family member; desertion by, or long term incarceration, of a parent; adoption with the child wondering about her biological parents or, on the other hand, a biological parent unable to stop thinking about the child; death of a family member with whom one was once close but became estranged from many years before; death of a young sibling who passed away before her siblings were born or were too young to remember her; a spouse or parent, who though still alive, has disappeared into the dark vortex of Alzheimer’s disease or mental illness; two teen lovers, who, due to circumstances beyond their control (e.g., one moved away with his family to a different part of the country) rather than discord, separated and, even after marriage to others, each of the lovers wonders what became of the other, and, grieves for their lost romance. The challenge for those who must live in the perpetual fog of frozen grief is to restore their resiliency of emotion and will despite this on-going ambiguity.
It was once believed that a child does not experience a sense of loss regarding separation from a birth family he or she had never known. It is now an accepted fact that adopted children often grieve over the loss of relationship with their birth families. It has been found that adopted children who are able to discuss their conflicted feelings about the “whys” concerning their birth parents with their adoptive parents present with less, or milder, symptoms of ambiguous loss than do those children whose adoptive families are resistant to discussion of the birth parents and circumstances that led to the child being put up for adoption.2 According to Dr. Boss: “The greater the ambiguity surrounding one’s loss, the more difficult it is to master [the loss] and the greater one’s depression, anxiety, and family conflict”
Ambiguous loss may overlap with trauma and symptoms may be similar to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). A person experiencing ambiguous loss may: have difficulty with transition or change; be trapped in a state of paralytic decisionlessness wherein they feel nearly overwhelmed when having to make important choices that will affect the course of their lives; demonstrate decreased capacity to cope with routine childhood or adolescent losses; exist in a state of stuckness wherein he is unable to accept disappointment or loss and move on; experience chronic feelings of: helplessness, hopelessness, depression, anxiety, guilt.
Factors associated with the activation of the archetypal theme of ambiguous loss include: inability to resolve grief because of uncertainty regarding whether the loss is transient or permanent; uncertainty about the loss inhibits reorganization of roles and relationships within the family structure and society in general; lack of clear symbolic ritual such as a funeral; the loss is often hidden from, rather than shared with, others.
Ambiguous loss not only delays the process of grieving, but often results in an unresolved, somewhat intangible grief that is transmitted from one generation to the next. This potential to be an inter-generational theme lends ambiguous loss an archetypal quality.
Gray Light and Creativity

The Creation story presented in Genesis (Bereshith in Hebrew) 1-5 reads: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth. Now the Earth was unformed and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters. And God said: ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light. And God saw the light, and that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.”3
Gray light flashed at this precise point of transition from darkness to light, and the division of day and night. Accordingly, gray can be viewed as the original medium from which light unfolded from the dark at the moment of Creation, and from which all the colors of the spectrum subsequently developed.
This helps explain the view that the color gray helps facilitate the harmonious blending of opposing forces into a unified whole. As noted above, gray light can help one bridge different states, amplifying the potential for transformation and new beginnings, and gray light therapy can provide psychospiritual support during times of transition and the emergence of a more evolved state of being.
Gray light and gray agate (a carrier of gray light) support personal creativity in general, both on mental, and creative soul, levels. Creativity allows unfettered ideas to emerge and evolve. On the material plane, it can manifest as a creative work, such as a painting or writing. Creativity is actually a tangible manifestation of one’s unique soul-nature.
Creativity relates directly to spirituality because the latter inspires and directs the former. A creative person is connected to the inner domain of the soul, outwardly projecting spiritual connection through imagination and the products of it.
Creative thought is the offspring of spiritual intelligence, an all-encompassing intelligence that includes rational thought consciousness, feeling, sensing and connection to the spiritual realm.
Gray Light and Left Brain/Right Brain Imbalance

The human brain is constructed of two distinct cerebral hemispheres, connected by a nerve tract called the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum bridges the left and right brains and enables information-sharing between them. Interestingly, in cases where the corpus callosum has been removed (most commonly to control epileptic seizure activity), the brain can reorganize to perform functions normally occurring on one side instead of the other. In some of these cases, the person develops the ability to use brain regions of both hemispheres for the same task, allowing, for example, that person’s brain to read two different texts simultaneously.
The brain has neuroplasticity (i.e., it has the ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life in response to learning, experience, or injury). In cases of damage to a part of the brain, it will compensate by recruiting other of its regions, including regions within the opposite hemisphere.4
The two cerebral hemispheres differ in both structure and functions. Brain lateralization refers to the concept that certain brain functions are specialized to either the left, or the right, brain, with certain capacities or characteristics predominantly localized in one or the other hemisphere. Lateralization facilitates more efficient processing of information within the brain.
The left hemisphere controls the right-hand side of the body, receives information from the right visual field, and controls speech, language, word recognition, and mathematical calculations. The left side of the brain mainly controls logic-related tasks, including science, mathematics, language-processing (e.g., grammar and vocabulary), and fact-based thinking. It’s also involved in analytical abilities and sequential processing.
The right hemisphere controls the left-hand side of the body, receives information from the left visual field, and controls creativity, context, and recognition of faces, places, and objects. The right side of the brain primarily controls spatial abilities, face recognition, visual imagery, music awareness, and artistic skills, and is linked to creativity, imagination, and intuition.
Brain lateralization is sustained in part by the autonomic nervous systems (ANS).5 While the left brain largely receives connections from the parasympathetic system (PNS), the right brain largely receives connections from the sympathetic system (SNS).6 In concert, the two brain hemispheres work with the ANS to maintain a homeostatic balance.
The motor cortex of the brain initiates motions for the opposite side of the body. In right-handed people, the left motor cortex is usually larger than the right motor cortex. In contrast, left-handed people, often have right-brain dominance.
While the concept of left-brain versus right-brain dominance has some basis, brain function is highly complex, involves collaboration between the two hemispheres, with many mental functions requiring that both sides of the brain work in unison, rather than having separate domains of function and influence.7
Each brain is unique, having different patterns of lateralization, and the location of certain lateralized functions can even develop during the course of one’s life.
In the practice of Esogetics (aka Colorpuncture), a system of natural medicine developed by German naturopath Peter Mandel that is largely built around color light therapy, gray light frequencies are used to help correct hemispheric laterality disturbances.
In Energy Psychology Using Light and Color, psychotherapist and teacher of Esogetics, Manohar Croke writes: “In Esogetics, gray light helps reconnect a dysregulated physical structure to its original healthy holographic pattern of information, [including] reconnecting the brain to the information pattern of a healthy corpus callosum.”8
There are a wide variety of reasons that a person may have brain laterality disturbances. This issue can be a transient one linked to contemporaneous stresses or may be an unresolved issue that is the product of a past trauma or impactful emotional stresses that occurred as early as in utero.
Altered brain asymmetries (left brain/right brain imbalances) have been observed in a number of neurological, neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders.9
Gray Agate’s Therapeutic Properties

Gray agate, a member of the chalcedony family, is volcanic in origin and has a hardness on the Mohs scale of 6.5 to 7. It is a semi-translucent, gray stone that contains microscopic crystals of quartz (SiO2). Gray Agate is most well-known for its grounding and soothing properties.
Properties and Actions of Agate, in general:
- A grounding stone
- Harmonizes yin and yang energies
- A strengthening stone that brings out inherent strengths
- Raises consciousness and strengthens link to collective consciousness
- Aids in seeking hidden truths
- Useful for any kind of emotional trauma
- Fosters love and the courage required for new beginnings. Helps build the courage required to move forward after a traumatic emotional experience.
- Encourages emotional, physical and intellectual balance
- Transmutes negative energies and vibrations into positive ones
- Supportive, nurturing, and comforting; calms and soothes the mind
- Helps center and stabilize physical energy, the aura (via the purging or transformation of negative energies), and the body’s electromagnetic fields
- Helps stabilize relationships and counters the trend of emotional disharmony
- Encourages the speaking of one’s own truth, and discussion of unresolved issues
- Helps facilitate self-acceptance, thus, builds self-confidence
- Assists self-inquiry and perception of underlying circumstances
- Creates a sense of safety and security by decreasing psychical tension
- Encourages acceptance and understanding — the quiet contemplation and assimilation of life experiences that leads to spiritual growth and inner stability
- Enhances mental function by improving concentration, perception, and analytical abilities
- Promotes self-acceptance and self-confidence
- Enhances mental clarity and the perception, concentration and analytical function that leads to practical solutions
- Helps dissolve negativity, bitterness, anger and resentment
- Promotes composure, and maturity
- May prove of value for the following symptoms or conditions: trauma; poor concentration; deficient mental clarity; insecurity; low self-confidence; post-partum depression; unrealistic; impractical; ungrounded; negativity; nervousness; agitation; bitterness; anger; resentment; discontentment; epilepsy; somnambulism (sleepwalking); pain; headache including migraine; weakness of the eyes, heart and circulatory system and hollow organs such as the stomach, bladder and uterus; cardiac weakness; deficient lactation; digestive weakness and pain; gastritis; skin disorders; itching due to insect bites
Gray agate, a stone of grounding and patience, resonates with the true “common sense” that seems to be on the decline in the modern world. The stone supports sensible, reality-based thought and action rather than delusional idealism.
Gray agate has a very calm, gentle and earthy energy. It encourages one to be more conscious of one’s thoughts and feelings, stabilizes the aura, and balances our yin and yang energies. It helps one to observe the positive and negative forces extant in the world, and to develop an accurate assessment of one’s potentials and limitations regarding them. It helps us to walk through “between the raindrops” in this difficult life without sinking into despair or trying to sustain wholeness by being blithely oblivious.
Gray agate helps one embrace a more evolved spiritual path that limits fear to within constructive, defensive limits rather than being an uncontrolled, driving force in one’s life.
Gray agate can aid in connection with prenatal memories, dissolution of inner tension and turmoil, release of anger, fear, and bitterness, amplification of feelings of emotional safety and security, and increasing emotional intelligence and maturity.
The stone encourages analytical thinking and a love of truth, caution regarding instinctive emotional reactions overpowering one’s sense of reason, and seeing “the shades of gray” in an issue rather than just landing on black or white. Gray Agate aids mental concentration and encourages calmness under pressure. This stone encourages quiet contemplation and an openness to adjusting one’s beliefs based on new knowledge and experiences.
Above it was stated that brain lateralization issues sometimes stem back to emotional stresses experienced in utero. Notably, Gray Agate is believed to support the uterus, and thus, considered to be a valuable pregnancy stone that can protect and encourage the healthy development of the infant in utero. It is also said to encourage a normal delivery and to help the mother recover swiftly after childbirth.
A thin, translucent slice of gray agate is used as part of my Natural Health Science System/Spiritual PhytoEssencing (NHSS/SPE) brain laterality balancing protocol. The slice is held up against three energy points immediately anterior to each ear. A small, flashlight with a narrow, yet very bright beam, is held up to the outward-facing side of the stone and the beam of gray light waves which emerge from the inward-facing side, that is in contact with the energy points anterior to the ear, penetrates through these points into the organism’s bioenergy circulation networks that vitalize the brain.
Spiritual PhytoEssencing (SPE) Gray Agate Gemstone Essence
Gemstone essences are a crucial part of the art of Spiritual PhytoEssencing (SPE).
Gray Agate gemstone essence is a very powerful balancing and grounding remedy which also connects one more intimately with spirit and spirit guidance. It is one of the primary SPE gemstone essences for addressing brain lateralization issues. As part of the NHSS/SPE brain laterality balancing protocol, Gray Agate gemstone essence is not only administered internally, but rubbed into the aforementioned three energy points located immediately anterior to each ear.
I began preparing gemstone essences in the mid-1980’s. I use carefully and personally selected gemstones and have developed a sophisticated method for mother essence preparation that begins with purification of the stones via placement among wild plants and trees on my mountain acreage, followed by the burying of the stones within an energy vortex by a forest creek and various other techniques that utilize the purifying and strengthening elements of the natural world including sun, rain, wind, patches of wildflowers or wild berry bushes buzzing with bees, etc.
Gemstones store energy within their crystal matrices. The purification of the stones eliminates extraneous energies picked up during their mining, storage and transport. This allows their natural, vibratory characters to once again radiate without foreign wave form interference.
By “clearing the memory” of the stone, the purification process creates a vacated space for new vibratory impressions to be received and stored. In this regard, the stones are placed in a protected open area surrounded by woods. Throughout the gemstone mother essence development process the stones, while immersed in their distilled, mountain rainwater medium are receiving and storing the energies of sunlight, surrounding wild plants, wild animals, birdsong, wind, passing clouds, rain (some of the mother essences experienced rain showers during their development), moonlight and starlight.
Thus, all of the gemstone mother essences feature the energies indigenous to that specific gemstone and its original habitat as well as those native to the natural world of the Pacific Northwest.
After purification and recharging, the gemstone mother essences are then prepared by exposure of the stone (e.g., gray agate), placed in a bowl of distilled, mountain rain water for an entire cycle of sun and moon (and stars) and then again early morning sun. I construct a vibratory field around the bowl using highly vibratory stones. In the case of Gray Agate essence, I placed 3 pieces of gray agate around the bowl mimicking the 3 angles of a triangle.
The gemstone essences are prepared over a full day/night cycle for two reasons. First, this facilitates the inclusion of the night energies derived from starlight, moonlight, the nocturnal creatures and the plants in their state of nighttime consciousness.
Secondly, I believe that, while during the sunlight exposure phase of the process, the immersed gemstone is more in a receiving phase, during the cool of the night, it is more in an imparting phase. Accordingly, the stone more actively draws in energies during the sunlight exposure phase and more actively at night releases its energy and the natural energies it has absorbed and transduced into the water it is immersed in.
I leave the developing gemstone mother essence outside in sunlight, moonlight and starlight for 24 hours. Then, I bring it back into my plant room and expose the bowl first to a powerful full-spectrum Tesla induction grow-light (immersing the bowl in the equivalent of strong sunlight).
While exposed to the full spectrum induction light, I introduce specific frequencies of pulsed electromagnetic fields that fall within the range of those produced by the Earth’s magnetic field (either from the Earth’s core or from its upper atmosphere). I select different frequencies based upon the energetics of the specific stones within the bowl of mother essence. Gray Agate essence was prepared using a frequency of 7.8 Hz. These pulsed electromagnetic fields not only enhance the extraction of the stone’s essence into the water but are also perceived and recorded by those stones, and their wave forms become an integral part of the mother essence.
In SPE, each of the different gemstone essences are associated with a specific set of essential oils. Frankincense is the primary essential oil associated with Gray Agate. Accordingly, I diffuse (using an ultrasonic mist diffuser) frankincense over the bowl for about 1 hour.
The stones in the bowl do not pick up the scent of the oils. Rather, they record the wave form of the oils and transfer that information to the mother essence. As a result of the molecules of the essential oil landing directly on the gemstone-infused water in the bowl via the diffused mist, the essential oil (in this case frankincense) is incorporated into the mother essence in homeopathic form.
The Gray Agate essence was one of those that I have produced where I also employ a scalar light wave field along with the full-spectrum induction light, pulsed electromagnetic fields and essential oil diffusion. The molecular pattern of the gemstone and/or the essential oil or oils that were earlier in the process diffused over the bowl are projected into this scalar field.
This renders the mother essence much more potent and dynamic. This is not to say that the other gemstone essences are less valuable. They are equally valuable but are used differently.
Scalar energy imprints on water, it tends to transform it from unstructured to structured, nano-clustered water. Not only does that scalar light wave field imprint upon the mother essence (which at this time in the process is (in a material sense) 100% distilled rainwater) but its wave passes through, and it energetic imprint recorded, by the stones within the water. The stones then transduce and transfer that wave-imprint into the water of the mother essence as an active soul-level healing force.
After a couple hours of these exposures, I turn off the light, diffuser and pulsed electromagnetic field device, and then, bring the bowl of completed mother essence into my lab, where I filter, bottle and label it. This mother essence is now mixed with energetically purified brandy to help preserve its energetic vibrancy.
A certain amount of this mother essence is then added to a 30 ml bottle containing a mixture of pure distilled rainwater and brandy. This stock bottle is the dilution of the mother essence used for both internal and external administration. The mother essence itself is only used rarely for direct therapeutic applications as it is best to use gemstone essences in proper dilution.
Frankincense Essential Oil


As noted above, in SPE, each of the SPE gemstone essences are associated with a specific essential oil. Frankincense is the primary oil associated with Gray Agate.
The English name frankincense derives from the medieval French word franc, meaning pure or free, and the Latin word incensium, meaning to smoke. Frankincense was so highly esteemed in ancient cultures that virtually all the peoples of the Mediterranean region and the Middle East considered it vital to their religious rituals. They used the fragrant smoke from smoldering incense, such as frankincense, to both communicate with their gods and soothe them when they were angry. Frankincense was one of the ingredients of the holy incense (qetoret in Hebrew) burned by the Jewish priests in the ancient temple of Jerusalem.
To this day, frankincense is burned in the places of worship (including many Christian churches) of many different cultures for it is widely believed that this is the fragrance that best attracts the attention of deities. Of course, incense smoke is grayish in color.
On an emotional level, frankincense oil may prove useful for: anxiety; nervous tension; stress-related disorders; fear of failure; irritability; restlessness; insomnia; obsessional states linked to past occurrences; depression; nervous depression; indecision; nightmares.
Psycho-spiritually, this essential oil: helps purify the aura; slows the breath and calms the mind; strengthens faith; opens the crown chakra; aids prayer and meditation; elevates the mind and connects it to the wavelength of higher consciousness, transcendent awareness and spiritual self-discipline; centers the mind and clarifies the intellect; encourages acceptance and understanding; stills the mind and inhibits repetitive thoughts and mental over-activity.
Frankincense’s history and properties reflect a profound synergy with the qualities and actions of both gray light and gray agate. Frankincense oil is used in a number of ways when combined in a protocol with gray agate and SPE Gray Agate gemstone essence. For instance, regarding the brain laterality balancing protocol alluded to above, frankincense oil is applied in proper dilution to the three energy points anterior to the ears, after these points have been treated with gray agate/gray light and the SPE Gray Agate gemstone essence.
SPE Gray Agate gemstone essence is available in the Member Zone to those enrolled in the NHSS/SPE Membership Program at a discounted price. If you are not a member, but are a professional practitioner of the natural healing arts, you can purchase the essence by directly contacting me.
References
1. Boss, Pauline. Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief. Boston: Harvard University Press. 1999.
2. Powell, K. A., & Afifi, T. D. Uncertainty management and adoptees’ ambiguous loss of their birth parents. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 22, 129–151. 2005.
3. JPS Tanach 1917 English translation of the Hebrew Bible.
4. Pulsifer, M. B., et al. The Cognitive Outcome of Hemispherectomy in 71 Children. Epilepsia, 45 (3), 243–254. 2004.
5. Craig, A. D. B. Forebrain emotional asymmetry: a neuroanatomical basis? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9 (12), 566–571. 2005.
6. Conesa, J. Electrodermal Palmar Asymmetry and Nostril Dominance. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 80 (1), 211–216. 1995.
7. Halpern, M. E. Lateralization of the Vertebrate Brain: Taking the Side of Model Systems. Journal of Neuroscience, 25 (45), 10351–10357. 2005.
8. Croke, Manohar. Energy Psychology Using Light and Color. Boulder, CO:Points of Light Press. 2016.
9. Ocklenburg, S., et al. Clinical implications of Brain Asymmetries. Nature Reviews Neurology. Volume 20, pages 383–394. 2024.
Bibliography
Berkowsky, B. Berkowsky’s Spiritual PhytoEssencing Gemstone Essences Reference Guide and Repertory. Mount Vernon, WA: Joseph Ben Hil-Meyer Research, Inc. (scheduled for 2025 publication).
Berkowsky, B. Berkowsky’s Synthesis Materia Medica/Spiritualis of Essential Oils. Mount Vernon, WA: Joseph Ben Hil-Meyer Research, Inc. 1997-2024.