So when I feel like I’m saying the same things again and again, I guess that's the sign to write a post about it!
And I think at the time we are in now, ideas of Power and Freedom are deeply important. People are being denied power across the globe, people are taking power from the vulnerable, people are seeking power over others as a way to increase their own…
The word power has a funny vibration- and the gentle, sensitive souls amongst us will tend to shy away from it…I used to see it almost as a dirty word. A wise friend sadly no longer with us highlighted this for me at some point on my spiritual journey…
“Why are you afraid of Power?” “What would it look like for you to be able to embrace your power?” And most importantly “What happens to your power if you don’t recognise it and claim it?” (spoiler alert: OTHERS WILL TAKE IT!)
The truth as I see it is that we are all born equally powerful in terms of our energy- we are a fractal of the divine universe with endless possibility and equal importance in the world to shine our unique light in the growth of consciousness. We could call this internal or intrinsic power.
The problem is that we are born into a world with deeply unjust power structures already imposed that totally unlevel the playing field, handing excessive power to a few and denying many the power they need to even access their basic needs. Your place of birth, race, gender, economic status, educational access, parental situation (and many other factors) all affect this. Let's call this external or extrinsic power.
And the main way the external power systems work is by making sure that people forget or never realise their intrinsic power, because they’re too busy surviving and being fed false narratives about their weakness and lack of power.
Underpinning a lot of this injustice is fear and lack mentality- the false belief that in order for me to have, I have to take from others (what underpins our interest based currency system for example). Or the idea that there are not enough resources in the world to support the population…both of these are lies. There is abundance in the world, and we are self regulating as a species. OK, so maybe there is not enough to have excess- we can’t all have a private jet and a pool- but we also wouldn’t have to all live in mud huts either in order for there to be equality and for us all to live above the poverty line. Particularly if we embrace a community-based way of living which will also improve our mental health and general happiness. (To read more about this and have it backed by hard evidence please read Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman).
But before I get into too many topics and begin an opus, let me get back to power!
I just came from tour in Mozambique where the people are marching on the capital to take back power from the ruling party who have rigged the elections and are denying democratic rule, assassinating opposition leaders and refusing to step down. This is the party who was instrumental in bringing independence to the country, and (like all over Africa) were the ‘good guys’ who freed the nation and are now the new despots refusing to let go of Power…
I’ve always said it and i'll say it again- POWER CORRUPTS!
I don’t think any one person or one group of people can ever hold huge power without it becoming an insidious disease that begins to eat away at your collective connection. You begin to drink your own cool-aid and believe that you are more important than those ‘beneath you’, that in fact if you don’t laud your power over others the world will be unsafe, and that it is your duty to ‘keep things under control’...
And many people are born into this understanding- royalty, dynasties, multi-nationals truly believe that if they don’t hold the power roles they have inherited, the world would collapse into chaos…but I don’t believe this to be true.
In fact the world IS in chaos, and I believe this is because we are handing our power away to others (consciously or not) and that when people have excessive amounts of power then they get drunk on it, impose unreal hierarchies, stop seeing those ‘below’ them as human or feeling-beings and stop acting from our natural state as Humankind (another brilliant Bregman book!).
“How do we hand our power away?” you may ask “Who would do such a thing?” But we are doing it all the time. We have been born into these patriarchal hierarchies that constantly tell us we are stupid, know nothing, and are inherently bad people who need to be schooled and ruled. And god-forbid if we are not, for our feral natures will take over and we’ll rip each other limb from limb!
I remember my daughter coming home from school aged 5 and the police had been to visit the class. Her homework was to draw a picture of what would happen in the world if we didn't have laws. “What would happen?” I asked her…”Well there would be people killing each other and robbing each other and being bad everywhere” she regurgitated the dogma (and fear) that had been stuffed into her that day. “Really?” I asked “So if it wasn’t illegal to kill someone tomorrow- you’d go out and do that would you?”
“No! Of course not” she realised…
We are fed from so so young this idea that our power is dangerous and needs controlling…
Some of my earliest memories are of nightmares- they terrified me. Endless nights of being attacked by snakes. I was unable to sleep a whole night without crawling into my mum's bed. 35 years later I had one of the most profound mushroom ceremonies of my life which took me back to these terrifying visuals. Now I was able to understand their meaning. It was showing me how afraid I am still of my own power- specifically my sexual power- one of our most deep and distorted power sources in today's world (especially as women). This is another way we have allowed ourselves to be controlled as we are steeped in shame and terror around our capacity to transmute energy through our bodies with each other.
The truth is that we have been so programmed to fear our own power that we will happily give it away. We give our power away to the patriarchal God in the sky who judges us; to the men in government who tell us what to do; to the judicial and criminal justice system that decide what we can and can’t do based on objective rules that don’t take individual circumstances into account; to the doctors and surgeons that dissect our body as a scientific experiment to fix and fill, not able to see us as a complex organism with interconnected systems and individual needs; to the teachers and preachers that see us as a workforce to be tamed and trained to be able to uphold the societal machine of growth and extraction, working for the vestiges of Empire and the landed gentry- the elite who have mined our power for millenia…
And yet we give it to them!
It may be a broken system we were born into and like the fish in water- we know no other reality- and yet I also believe that nothing is going wrong and as long as we were in need of being ‘fathered’, controlled and unempowered, that was what existed. Or to see it another way- as long as you are willing to give your power away, there will always be someone or something willing to take it.
I encounter many people in the work I do that want me to ‘heal them’. They want me to tell them what's wrong, what to do and then to fix them. How lovely that would be, but the truth is that I am no better placed to do that than the next person. We can ONLY heal ourselves in deep relationship with the Universe, Self and Other. This is where things have got out of balance. This is why we have the despotic leaders of the world, because radical self-responsibility is hard work. There's no one to blame, the buck stops with us…
That's why I always say we have to move out of the paradigm of ‘healer and healed’ and into the understanding of all being on a self-healing journey held in enriching community settings.
It is daunting, it is scary, but ultimately it is so liberating to know that you have all the power you need within yourself to create the better world we all know is possible. You just have to claim it!
The time is NOW. The place is HERE. We ALL have the capacity to collapse the hierarchies and reclaim our personal power. There is no one that knows better what you need than yourself. And that's not to say that we must all be working in isolation. We are communal beings. We all have different roles to play. It’s great to have the ones who can serve plant medicine, the ones who know bones & facia, the ones who understand human relationships, the ones who are good at listening and reflecting back, the ones who see blockages etc etc but as soon as we believe that these ones have more power than us in our own journey of self-knowing then we are in dangerous waters.
Listen to the wisdom of others and then alchemise it through your own higher self.
FInd spaces of communal support and listen to if and how you feel held within them.
Explore the modalities that you are drawn to and observe how they are serving you.
Try different techniques of healing and tune into what they do or mean to you.
RECLAIM YOUR PERSONAL POWER.
We need to remember that power over other is distortion, but personal power is our magic and only we can reclaim it.
Bring your attention to all that is within you.
Bring your attention to where you are giving your power away.
Bring your attention to the energy drains in your life that are leaking your power…
Listen to your higher self, your gut, your heart-
Believe that you are your greatest teacher and you hold all the wisdom of the universe within you.
As much as we can look at the global political landscape and despair at the injustice we see, there is so much we can do about it within our own lives. If everyone stopped looking outside of themselves for the solutions- blaming government and leadership for corruption and distortion- and found where they are giving their personal power away and worked with that- it would all shift organically- without another revolution or excess blood shed.
We just need to wake up to the incredible levels of magic and power we each hold in our centre. Not as greater than anyone else's but gloriously unique and balanced with all others in the mystical dance of the universe.
And it is our duty to recognise our own power and to take full responsibility for it. There’s nothing more dangerous than a person who does not know their own power. Some of the most broken people, with low self worth in this world wreak havoc as they act without considering the impact they have on others- believing themselves insignificant. And yet we are all interconnected, we are all valued by someone or something however small, we all matter and we all have power whether we see it or not. Think of the absent father who sees his poor behaviour as an abomination, not believing his children will want to see him, not realising that they will ALWAYS desire his love regardless of what's happened in the past.
So wake up to your power, acknowledge your power, we all have divine agency out here- we were none of us born by accident and the power we have is enormous.
Once we reclaim it with humility and compassion for the self that had it hidden for so long, I am deeply excited about the possibilities.
So let us rise up in our own energy bodies, in our own manifesting powers, in our own magical co-creation of the universe. And especially those of us that are not having to fight on the front lines simply to stay alive. We are the ones who need to lead the way in demonstrating our sovereignty- our capacity to be the masters of our lives- to live in integrity with our power- as a beacon of hope for all.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE.
