The Most Essential Relationship

What is at the root of our struggle with power - true power - the power to create real change in a world that has forgotten it has this power?

Photo by Josh Boot on Unsplash

The other morning, I talked with a friend as I do each Friday. We meet to support each other and listen for ways to champion each others’ work in the world. As an MBA, he has a great business mind. As a friend, he is kind, supportive, and deeply respectful of my work and ideas.

Toward the end of our hour, I struggled to articulate something and found my hands moving beyond my body, facing him; my arms stretched out yet curved around as if holding something. I realized I was ‘embracing’ my life force, feeling it buoying out from me. I felt as if I was surrounding and supporting something alive and powerful. I was. And then I felt how all of this life force, this soul force, is pulsing and billowing out of me and longs to be put into action, into form, into creating something in the world. At the same time, I felt as if I was meeting resistance from the world; a world out there, a world separate from me, a world that wasn’t thrilled to hear from and listen to me.

This is an old pattern from my very young years. We all have these old patterns that form how we interact with the "world out there." Depending on our childhood and how the adults in it reacted to us, we create an idea of how the world will engage with us, especially when we challenge it with the truth of our being.

We see power struggles every day, everywhere: between political parties, governments, and countries. The battle inside each of us is at the heart of every power struggle.

Power. What is it? There are many definitions for the word. Most are reflective of the culture of capitalism, patriarchy, and politics. Most hint at a kind of power centered on a zero-sum game. If I have power, you don’t. If you have it, I don’t. Many refer to this as “power-over.”

But there’s another way to see power. Just like a lamp must be plugged into a source to light the room, each of us must be plugged into our Source to power and light our lives. We are born plugged in. We are born with the light switched on. But at some point in childhood, we turn that switch off because we are taught to distrust it. And then we grow afraid of it. We turn away from our own deeper knowing, our desire to play and create, or our innate capacity to care for others, our natural joy. A few come out of childhood intact, but most do not.

We must be reminded that our innate, generative, joyfully creative power never leaves us. We leave it.

The power is available, but the light needs to be switched on. The human power to contemplate, imagine, and create something new that holds a deeper intelligence, comes from turning the light on. Within us, that means realizing, remembering, and honoring that the Source is the direct line to greater intelligence, compassion, strength, intuition, and love.

We have limited power unless we are connected to our Source. Our power is limited when we attempt to be ‘powerful’ in our lives. We struggle as humans when disconnected from our Source. Human life is one of limitations. We are finite creatures from our human side. But from our Essential side, we are infinite. They aren’t two sides, but it can be helpful to think of it this way, like two sides of a coin. There is one coin but it can be seen in two ways - Human and Essence.

Without the power of The Essential in our world, dominating, controlling, and greedy power will fill the void. Each of us is a vessel for the power of The Essential.

This is why this relationship is the most important we have as human beings. We cannot be real, fulfilled, and fully alive without it. We cannot live what we are here to live without a healthy, respectful, and honoring relationship with Source. Source already honors us. We must honor it. We do this by being the vehicle for its expression into the world that we were born to be. We do this by trusting that it loves us and has the best interests at heart for us and all of life.

We do this by working with ourselves internally to heal our fear of our true nature - this nature that loves us completely and unequivocally.