The Persistence of Power

The choice to pursue one's deepest truths. (Part 1)

The shift from summer to fall felt fast. As it usually does. There’s a way in which the seasons expedite the ways in which we face and feel. The shift from one season to the next opens our mind-heart-body-soul to points of introspection that get paused when we are in the peaks of summer, winter, spring or fall.

This week we met the energy of the Scorpio new moon. Amongst a few other astrological alchemizers - we are in a portal of facing and confronting deep parts of our longing, our loving, our loss, and our ways in which we feel and find power within ourselves. How we have allowed or collaborated with embodying disempowerment. And how we have the ability to feel, heal, and transform all that has hurt into something beautiful beyond what we’ve known before.

I am grateful for the lessons and experiences I’ve had this year that have led me into deeper healing and connection with myself, my power, my ability to be and live my life more authentically. For the people who have mirrored my own pains, failures, poor habits, and the ways in which I don’t quite believe in myself enough.

I’ve been in a devotion of shifting away from outdated patterns where being stuck, numbing, hiding is a default. And moving with the energy and flow of closing loops and completing what has been started. This open and close has created an awareness of capacity in a way I never understood before. With the letting go of lingering - thoughts, emotions, activities, commitments - I’ve learned more about what it is to hold - and expand - power. I’ve found ways to get clear on what needs to be released and what I want to call in to get back into my power.

I spent the past weekend out of town with a former lover. We had planned the trip back at the beginning of the summer when we were hot hot and flying high on all the NRE. In that moment I felt hesitation to commit - a pattern of letting my fear of loss take the lead. But I felt a trust in this connection - in ways I hadn’t known before. In parts, it was a trust in myself. A way of knowing myself deeper than I had in previous connections and a faith that no matter what - I would always prioritize myself.

This may sound like an interesting dissection of what it is to commit to the unknown. But what I’ve been learning about trust - and specifically trust in myself - is that it dictates everything that I do. And it has lead me into places that amplify my pain. A lack of trust in myself has guided me into decisions that were made to please another at all costs of myself. It has told me that their projections, perceptions, requests, and demands were more important than my own. And that if I wanted to know love I would have to abandon myself.

But this year, I’ve been learning love differently. I’ve been feeling it with more fullness, even though the connections I have come to form have been uncontainable. They’ve been shapeless and shapeshifting. And they have been massive mirrors to force me to run or stand still and look deeper within myself.

We bought tickets to a concert of an artist we both felt inspired by. And as the months passed, our sexual and romantic passion turned from hot to confused to cold to triggered to painful to unsure of if repair would be possible. But what I know in a way that I’ve been learning many don’t quite understand in the same ways is that love - love - is something that lives within us that we get the opportunity to share, expand, and exchange with another. It’s an energy that pulses between two things. It’s art formed from the ways in which the soul speaks through the heart.

I believe that we can face the things that hurt or we can numb and push away. This weekend was important for me to experience. To follow through with the commitment I made back at the end of May and discover - can one truly love deeply - and freely - allowing the energy that attracted one to another to transform and take a new shape. Can I co-create the kind of love that is most authentic to me and be received by another without having to over explain, protect, guard, or minimize myself.

This year I have become more authentically myself and opened my heart to love in new and expansive ways. I have discovered ways of loving that have lead me into deeper truths, trust, and connection with myself. And with this, I have found a source of power that is undefinable - and beyond the bounds of societal fears, forces, divisions, and hierarchal rankings to create false senses of control.

I’ve discovered how to love another deeply while not only not losing myself - but simultaneously becoming more of myself. I am grateful to see and feel in every inch of my body the release of patterns that I’ve held onto to navigate the complexities of the life I’ve lived and bring understanding and relief to the pain and expansions happening within myself.

Pleasure and pain are seen on opposite ends of the spectrum, but they’re actually very similar. When we learn how to hold pain, we also expand the ways in which we learn how to hold pleasure. What we are doing is learning how to feel - and feeling requires having a capacity to embody discomfort without numbing, disassociating, or pulling away from what surfaces.

We build a strong association with pain. For many, we have the ability to articulate one or a few profound memories of what has hurt us deeply. And from these memories, we navigate our entire way of living from a contracted state in attempt to avoid experiencing the depth of pain we felt before again. But what happens when we contract in this way is we also minimize and remove our ability to experience fully other parts of the feeling spectrum leaving us feeling muted, numb, grey, and a little dull.

Pleasure is an intense sensation. It has range - it can be soft and subtle like a tiny flutter in the heartspace. But it can also be really big and strong like full body euphoria discovered through the support of plant medicines, substences, physical connection, or orgasm. The depth at which we learn how to hold - pleasure or pain - gives us the ability to feel with range. The more we can hold either, the more we can understand how to hold the discomforts of opposite end of the spectrum without fear of it being too much or losing control.

Each human has a walk in life that we enter the world to experience. Some of us begin our journey from the pain spectrum. Others start by learning what it is to have pleasure. Throughout life - we move across the scale and have the opportunity to expand our human experiencing by allowing the unknown to become fully embodied and finding ways to trust our ability to navigate the unknown from the learnings of what we have discovered in what we’ve already built a level of expertise with. So no matter where one begins - we are invited to know both pleasure + pain deeply and to feel in fully range.

What is it to become empowered?
To be powerful?

What is it to be fearless of the strength one holds within themselves that used to make you feel weak?

To show up, share, shine, in the parts of living and being alive that others fear, avoid or numb?

What is it to be honest and live your truth when your truth is hard to face. When it breaks your heart or makes you feel like you’re too much or not quite enough?

The intensity of power comes from a pulse of fear, longing, and insatiable to hold it all within in contrast with release it out into the world. To know power from a place of intention, purpose, care, and impact. In a way that is meant to expand humanity in the most loving ways - means to face the depths of oneself. In the darkest challenges and brightest possibilities - and to increase capacity to hold pleasure and pain with a courage to know and understand the range of said complexities.

Power is a gift that we are given and that we create. It is cultivated through presence, discernment, and the desire to be in deep connection with existence. It comes from care and love. It is a devotion to taking up space - in the world - but most importantly - within oneself.

Power, although often seen or most easily understood as something awarded externally in exchange for hard work - is actually a really personal practice of intimacy with oneself. The further away we are from intimacy - the less vulnerable we are - the more disempowered we feel. The weaker we become. As we hold the ways we are breakable just below the surface - so closely - that any disturbance - any ways in which we are seen imperfectly or projections that we receive from others misunderstandings, pains, or insecurities threatens to break us and destroy our confidence, safety, or peace.

When we rely on the external - it pulls us away from our power and creates the weakest and most disposable versions of ourselves. When we are able to grow the capacity to hold our own complexities - not out of fear of how they will impact others - but out of the devotion to increase our own life force, vitality, and design our existence and expression from our own authenticity - we build power that is lasting. That is indestructible - that is our own. And it does not depend on another. Nor threaten to harm. It is power cultivated to create - expand - and give to the world.

This weekend unlocked another layer of not only love - but power. A greeting of authentically revealing oneself to another with trust that the exposures will be held well. Not only with one who had held a special space within my heart - but within newly deepening and budding friendships, with my relationship to rope, submission, sisterhood, surrender, slowness, presence, and going with the flow. It has shown me that repair is a process that when given the space to allow mending to take hold - new shapes will form. It redefined the ways in which I hold true to my beliefs in relationship anarchy, family, friendship, creativity, and art.

And through this - I have been not only reconnected to - but affirmed in the ways in which I have found footing in trusting my intuition, and trusting myself.

Reflections part 1 of 4 - of rewiring what it is to hold power, pleasure, play, connection + love. (read part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4).