Power and Powerlessness
We all want to feel more power in our lives! It's an awful feeling to feel powerless isn't it? We seek to feel power in our bodies through physical strength, our minds through clarity and insight, and our spirit through inspiration and resilience.
Power is an energy that nourishes our being, energizes our doings and fuels our creativity. We need power to feel effective in our lives, to achieve the things we desire and need, to accomplish the tasks before us, and to have positive impact upon others.
However, power is often misunderstood and misused. Right now the abuse of power that many of us feel outraged about can be overwhelming as the Senate Impeachment Trial is happening. As I've watched parts of the trial, lots of feelings are brewing inside.
As I initially set out to send an e-news column with some insight into power and didn't include what's happening right now in our government, I couldn't do it. So, I want to share a little bit about powerlessness and power in reference to our political climate right now.
When Trump was first elected, I wrote a few e-news columns that touched on the impact that reality had on some or many of us.
So, I'd like to come back to this theme but from the point of view as to what traumas may be touched in us in the witnessing of this trial and in the uncertainty of what justice if any will be served here. And most importantly, what simple or basic things can we each do to facilitate our own personal healing within the current political process of impeachment.
I've been experiencing my absolute astonishment and outrage at hearing the coherent evidence so clearly mapped out pointing to the abuse of power by this President. Power through manipulation and bullying and much much more.
It is such a personal trigger of pain and danger within me and maybe for you as well, that I struggle with landing in the reality that this is happening right now and the painful reality that a majority of our Senator's won't be touched by the truth of what is happening. They are normalizing and condoning bullying, manipulation and lying. There feels to be no protection against someone profoundly destructive, who holds the most powerful position of power within our country and perhaps the world!
I've been struggling with the underlying powerlessness, fear, and hopelessness I can feel as those "highest" in power in our government could sit by and be OK with this behavior! That they could pass it off as inappropriate only, without any consequences!!
Now to the theme I want to focus on which is, what to do with our own reactions. What I've been working on within myself is making room for the place of fear and powerlessness that gets touched as I listen to the trial, meeting the reality of these feelings that have lived in me certainly prior to all this happening in our country, evidences of unhealed hurts from my own childhood.
In many previous columns I've shared about this fundamental emotional healing practice which includes two key practices, awareness and being with our emotions. This practice helps to regulate or balance the turbulent and sometimes overwhelming feelings that open up within us. The faculty of awareness that takes note of our own body-centered emotions and then instead of moving away from them, squashing them or judging them, we simply and kindly be with our emotional experience.
As I make room for and support these feelings of fear and powerlessness, they are no longer sitting unattended to within my nervous system: my body and mind. They are being held with compassionate support and understanding by another part of me. I am not just caught within these feelings, but holding these feelings. Besides this practice, which I invite you to do, I have also considered the part of me that knows how to manipulate, not be honest, be a bully (to myself) and to be uncaring about the impact of my behavior upon others. In these moments, I don't try to position myself as the righteous one here, the saint. I too, know how to have negativity or destructiveness within me and can act it out too. An act of spiritual integrity is to take responsibility for our own negativity and destructiveness. This is a bold step from our conscience and our spirit that knows the difference between right and wrong! Whether it's the Republican Senators that I or we are currently powerless to change, or the people that we are close to within my own lives who we may be in conflict with and want them to be different in some way. If we can welcome the experience of powerlessness within this context or relationship this inclusion of what it means to be human which is the experience of powerlessness at times is a movement towards grounding in reality vs. fighting reality. Grounding in reality is an experience of power. And in my heart of hearts as it relates to our government right now, hoping and praying that the conscience of these Republican senators are touched, their minds and hearts that DO know the difference between right and wrong. And that they break free from the group mind which is true for both parties and find their individual connection to spirit, conscience and the human heart and find the courage to stand in their power and do what's right. That's my prayer! Join me in this prayer from our hearts if this touches you as well.
