Power

Some people avoid the word power.  They love the experience of it, but not the word, or any reference to the personal acquisition of it.  They prefer to say ‘individuation’ or ‘autonomy,’ words that make my molars grind.  Many people, when they say ‘power’ or ‘authority,’ add caveats about what they mean and don’t mean, often in a somewhat apologetic tone. 

This is the result of wrong religious education and also social engineering to prevent us having that delicious sense of visceral power that reaches into the realm of spirit, and from which we can see and hear and know, in which we are no longer timid, and defensiveness isn’t necessary.  We know this intuitively, but often flounder in the territory of poor substitutes – rebellion and contrariness, coupled with just the tiniest whine.  When we are caught in the latter, we can be madly frustrated, because we know there is more to the spirit of being human.
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​When we finally find the sensual foundation of power, that sense aligned with the divine, or “the upper rooms,” we object less, and gain certainty; not stubbornness, that impoverished cousin, not willfulness, but a place anchored on the planet that is not confined to one dimension.  After a certain age, this might be the role of sensuality, the base on which rests the heart and mind, not in images or thought,  or ideas but as experienced in the body and also beyond.  There is power in this, and discernment.  People who have made this discovery are visible to others like them.  Big medicine. 

There is no need to see a therapist about the origins of our negativity towards power, or the accompanying sense of loss.  In this bigger territory therapy is a waste of one’s possibilities, the dragging of the larger into the territory of the small.  Instead, reclaim the word, locate the experience.  Revel in the rediscovery of being divinely human.  Sacred books talk about this.  Many indigenous cultures take it for granted. 

If you hear laughter that originates in the belly, in the unapologetic way someone stands to speak, the authority they bring to who they are, it is time to listen because wisdom is present.  Maybe you see it in the eyes, at the edge of the lips, the stillness of the spirit. 
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But, if you think these people value ‘niceness,’ you could be mistaken.  Watch and listen, learn, but do not become a child.