Coming Into Our Power, Part One

I’m back for Round Two of column writing on-line, with my usual mix of eagerness and angst about a new challenge. Although I’ve been uncertain of what I want to say for days, the eagerness wins out as I begin. When things feel right, they usually are. As I said in my inaugural column, “The Art of Living” feels about as right as anything recently has. In that trusting spirit, which I touted last time, I’m confident I can find much to share with you that matters. But you tell me, okay?  

Dan, the SpiritSite man who invited me here, spurred me on by supplying a list of topics he’d be “excited to hear about.” Glancing through it minutes ago, one of his questions popped out and drew me in. “Realizing that you had something powerful to offer the world – how did that happen?” Dan asks.  

At first blush, I haven’t a clue, which is probably why I like the question. It’s not interesting to write about things I’ve already figured out. I prefer to plunge in and learn as I go. Call it making up the answer. But I wonder how Dan knew I think I have “something powerful to offer.” Did I tell him that? Or does he just think I do and assume I know it too, which I didn’t always, but (as you may gather from what I said above) I now do? How is what we hope to discover.

  I find it ironic that I did the most overtly powerful things in my life (so far) before I had enough self-awareness to see myself at all, let alone as “powerful”. Into my early 30’s, I just did stuff I was attracted to doing. I did it by luck and by pluck. Teaching French in the Himalayas and writing an education column for a major daily paper come to mind. Not to mention managing a sizable government agency staff, when I’d never properly supervised a soul, including my own sweet self.  

I had no right to be doing those jobs. I wasn’t particularly qualified for them. The seasoned reporters from the paper – and the life-long government employees who’d applied for the director’s job I landed off the street – would have been the first to tell you that. But I enjoyed and was good at them all. And I connected with people.  

So something occurs to me. I was biting off more than I could comfortably chew. I was somehow swallowing it. I must have partly digested and taken nourishment from it, letting these different opportunities to serve people help me grow in both competence and confidence. That was how I began to learn I could work my power muscle in the world and make a difference. Fortunately, it didn’t stop there.  

For Dan’s question goes deeper. I imagine he’s curious about the origins of whatever spiritual power I’m in touch with. (This is SpiritSite.com, after all!) But since we humans find ourselves ensconced in (often busy) bodies, our spirit finds much of its expression by doing things, like jobs, in the “outside” world. We are body/mind, and we are soul. We’re of a piece. One part of our being can speak eloquently about and to another, informing the whole of us in surprising ways. How I am in the world affects, and may enrich or diminish how I am with myself, alone, and vice versa.  

So, while I didn’t quite know it at the time, I was beginning to unleash and share my inner, “spiritual” power by taking risks to show up BIG in the world. My life as I saw it then was all about being – or more accurately, doing – “out there.” I had no discernable inner life. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help noticing that there was about me a force to be reckoned with. I was “doing well,” and somehow touching others.  

But it took a major inner upheaval for me to get the full picture of my power – our power, as people with hearts, minds and souls. That came at 32, when the body/mind part of me erupted for six months, following my friend Lucy’s hideous death by cancer. This was not a clearly spiritual experience, of seeing the light, or of hearing spirit guides gently whisper in my ear. No siree-bob.  

This was about going as crazy as I’d ever gone, but once (and that’s another story). It was about being riddled with heart and gut-rending terror by day, and, during those few hours a night when I could sleep, with grievous nightmares of Lucy slowly expiring again. I was feeling power all right – overpowered. I was losing my old mind, and I didn’t like it one bit. And the sheer intensity of my feelings nearly killed me.

I call my emotional unraveling “spiritual” because it woke me up to how much I didn’t know, about myself, and life. It made me need to find out. Even in the midst of much ignorance and pain, I somehow “got” that I was not crazy, that something important was afoot from within, and that it was my new job to discover what. If I was not who I had thought I was, then who the hell was I? And who were you?

So began a spiritual journey, still underway more than two decades later. The practice, quickly followed by the teaching, of Kripalu Yoga taught me about energy and the spiritual principles that work to keep it flowing. I learned, for instance, that if I was to keep growing, I had to begin sharing what I was learning with others.  In the next column, I’d like to continue uncovering the answer to Dan’s great question: “Realizing that you had something powerful to offer the world – how did that happen?” That’s because I know that we all have “something powerful to offer,” and what’s been true for me about that, dear reader, may also be of use to you.