Elemental Power

Let’s start by not kidding ourselves. Most of us use and abuse power. When we feel rejected or otherwise hurt, and we react with aggression. When we cover the heart and lash out with angry words. When we hold a vengeful sense of judgment against person who makes us feel small…in ways like this we take refuge in power. But this kind of thing is a crappy little petty shadow of true elemental power. The ordinary world offers the opportunity to elevate your sense of grandeur by stripping status from others: taking from, judging, insulting, wishing ill fortune. Even if only in the privacy of your own mind. It’s another trip entirely to begin using power as part of one’s deep nature for the benefit of others.

So much of the work here involves cracking open one’s inner energies and beliefs - like Russian nesting dolls. Here the outermost doll is the petty expression of power: the sneering insult, the opinion that you are more spiritual, prettier, thinner, smarter than someone else. That doll cracks open and what’s beneath? Something more humbling at first. Maybe the truth that you feel deeply hurt. Maybe the awkward acknowledgement that you feel ugly after a rejection, as if the rejection itself damaged your sense of self-worth.  Another doll cracks open. Another another another.

It seems for some, spiritual awakening involves integrating the energies of power. The lower energy centers may activate in a way where it's clear their nature is to act with a kind of forceful potency. And that doesn't always feel - especially at first - in line with the images we have for how a proper spiritual figure behaves.

Of course, power is neutral. The nature of its expression depends on what is most active within us - especially in the often unacknowledged depths of our inner world. When we have rage, resentment or any number of other emotions cooking away deep beneath the surface, it becomes tempting - even reflexive - to infuse power with negative, destructive expression. Even if the personality functioning above ground is loving or ethical in the ways we judge such things. The misuse of power in predatory or needlessly aggressive tendencies...it feels good. In an unsavory, petty way. Leaning this way, there may be a momentary sense of triumphant strength. And that triumph can feel especially good when we carry a heavy load of trauma, rejection, victimhood, fear. For a moment, we feel less powerless in the reality of our suffering. The only cost for this sense of triumphant power is the way it may become a destructive influence on ourselves and everyone around us.

How can power be applied as a creative, positive force? The pivot point for this question is the clarity and depth of commitment we hold for what we truly value and devote our attention to. If we superfically honor Jesus on Sundays, but more fully devote ourselves to the surge of strength we feel in bitter fantasies of revenge against those who've wronged us...we can't be surprised if whatever power we hold doesn't express in a Christ-like manner.

Finding out what we most deeply value isn't something that happens overnight. Its an inquiry: to be workshopped in experience - tested against self-knowing - so that it fits the uniqueness of you are. You can't ask a wolf to act like a sheep. You can't ask a priest to act like he has no sexual impulse. When we choose an ideal that is divorced from the deep reality of who we are...it so easily becomes repression and distorted, perverse flairs of behaviour.

We tend to think of acts of compassion or altruism as expressions of the heart. And at first, it seems power has nowhere to flow in this orientation of acting for the benefit of others. But a second look reveals much more depth and nuance to the situation. In Chinese Daoist terms, the lower dan tien fills with energy. In Japanese Zen terms, the gut awakens to create an internal sense of <em>Mountain</em>. These aren't God's mistakes. Nor are they the work of the Devil. It's all awakening and maturing that needs to be handled with incredible care.

So the lamp we carry into the underworld is a strong, heartfelt commitment to some higher truth you value above all other things. When that commitment aligns to some sense of the Divine…when it’s thought, and felt emotionally, sensed kinaesthetically, and hard-wired into oneself as a priority without compromise…this helps provide the ability to productively and creatively work with the primordial energies within. It helps provide a space of openness where elegant ways of behaviour can present themselves. So that some way of responding to a challenge appears that is not based in old habits - something that carries the feeling of a certain kind of heartful clarity or divine grace.

Feeling the thunder of primordial energy...while also holding a firm commitment to - and grounding - in some aspect of Divine Reality...you may discover many ways that power can express positively without breaking from its essential nature. You might find power functioning as a kind of blessing: an energy field that invites others out of taking refuge in coping mechanisms meant to manage the uncomfortable echos of the past. Or put another way, Power may offer support and foundation for stepping into the raw immediacy of Now - to meet life directly with clear-eyed, innocent vitality. You might discover how power moves reflexively with a clean, warm-hearted sense of strength to protect those who are threatened. Or maybe you find in your particular uniqueness, a sense of power which offers an atmosphere of safety and compassion in which others can feel a sense of divine forgiveness and begin a journey of redemption. Or you may discover within a grandeur of power which offers others a sense of protected refuge where they can set down their tensions and come to a deep sense of rest.

We have agency in our application of power. The challenge and opportunity is understanding, feeling, and embodying that agency.