WoW

Words of Wisdom

I AM Power

Personal power is the ability to hold on to your core spirit regardless of the circumstances around you. It is not the ability to control others or the environment around you. It is your ability to go into any world, any relationship, any situation and not lose your energy; to be able to stand still no matter what type of energy is coming toward you and realize you don't feel frightened, enraged, competitive, jealous or hurt, but are able to hold your center. Great leaders possess this ability, as do great parents and others who seem to be able to maintain their calm in stressful situations.

People who have personal power understand that one of the major responsibilities of their life is to hold on to that spiritual center by managing their energy. They release their survival instincts of fight or flight, and when they go to bed at the end of the day, they align the power of their core being to be at one with what is. They trust the process, and know life is unfolding as it is and not always as they think it should be. Tomorrow is another day. It will be what it will be.

Easier said than done? Indeed. To live a life of spiritual awareness fully owning one's power takes willingness, practice and above all, discipline. But if you are interested in growing and learning, here are some questions you need to ask yourself:

1. What am I attracted to that draws power from me? When and how do I give my power away? For one week, write a list of all the things you got upset about, made you mad, frustrated you, hurt your feelings, etc. You will probably be embarrassed by much of what you allowed to control you. How quickly do we get upset at: a wine opener that doesn't work, driving behind a slow driver when we're in a hurry, AT&T customer "service", spilling coffee on ourselves? Last week, in addition to all of those, I also gave my power away to a bunch of tangled wire coat hangers!
2.  How do I separate myself from sources that are draining my energy? i.e. my childhood, my history, a particular person or a situation at home or at work, etc.

With your history for example:

• Recognize how attached you are to that memory.
• Identify the behavior it triggers in your life today.
• Realize the amount of personal power you give to "the story" you have fabricated around this memory.
• Realize your "story" (your interpretation of your history), your beliefs, actions, reactions and inactions have chosen every single thing in your life, every single minute of every single day - the way you have arranged your furniture, the jobs you have, the block you have chosen to live on, your friends, the movies you see, the music you listen to, the food you eat, down to the minutest detail - the condiments in your cupboard.

How do you cut the cord of attachment to the people and things that drain your power? First of all, don't ask, "Why did that happen in my life?" Looking for the answer to this question will cause you nothing but suffering and as long as you need the answer, you'll never get it.

Instead, ask, "Why haven't I healed? Why can't I hold on to my power?" It costs you daily to hold on to things from the past and it cuts off your energy. You will get your energy back through completion, letting it go, forgiveness, trust and love, but first you have to ask yourself two questions:

1. "How willing am I to let go of being right about my story?"
2. "How willing am I to relinquish external control to have internal control?"

If you can't keep yourself from yelling at your spouse for forgetting to call you when your spirit knows it will cause nothing but more distance and separation, then how can you expect to heal? You must build discipline.

Forgiveness is simply a letting go by suspending judgment for one moment in time. It is an act of the will and we all struggle with this. You'll never want to forgive. You may want to want to, but you'll never really want to. Why? Because it's always with a difficult person or over a difficult situation. You are not being asked to forgive Santa Clause.

Get the person out of the picture entirely and see what is going on. Know there is a reason for why it is happening, a lesson you need to learn, a fear you need to face. Ask, "Why am I in this drama? What is here for me to learn? How will this help me evolve to a higher spiritual power?"

Perhaps you are a person who is afraid to confront difficult issues and you need to muster the confidence to stand up for yourself. Perhaps someone took advantage of you financially and you need to learn to be more accountable for the ways you blindly trust. Or maybe you are angry at a parent and you need to learn understanding and acceptance that he/she did the best they knew how at the time.

There are some circumstances, however, where forgiveness and acceptance are phenomenally difficult, like the loss of a child, violent child abuse or atrocities of war. Perhaps with these tragedies, one can eventually move on from the past by realizing that it was so horrible, it is better to forgive and let go than to carry the anguish into two lifetimes.

You will go in and out of forgiveness. It's a cycle from mind to heart, mind to heart. Intellectually you may want to forgive, but the heart won't. Be gentle with yourself. It is a process and sometimes it takes time.

If you have a particularly traumatic past event you have been stuffing or repressing, it can be very helpful to talk about it, to release it from your body and mind. Go to a therapist and say, "I want to talk about this for six months and then I'm done and ready to move on!" And do exactly that. Otherwise, learn not to speak about your past wounds, hurts and angers. Don't grant them space in your head. Don't look back. Don't re-tell them over and over.

Ask yourself, "Why would I repeat the story?" To be right? To be vindicated? Let that go. It does not create healing and you stay stuck. The more you rehash it, the longer it will stick around.

Today is when life is happening. This moment can be anything I choose it to be. I must be careful to not poison it by dragging in stuff from the past. To reconnect with the power I AM, I need to complete with the past . . . let it go . . . forgive . . . and those wire coat hangers? I had to stop . . . take a deep breath . . . remind myself I was bigger than they were . . . and calmly untangle them. Then I threw them out and got plastic ones!

 Seneca 

What do YOU think?

Share your thoughts here