We talk a lot about “powerful people” or “getting our power back” or “feeling powerful”, but what are do we mean by this? What is personal power?
Personal power is embodying the Self and its natural tendencies of fluidity, flexibility, possibility. Personal power is looking without judgment at blocks and challenges, and using the power of the imagination to resolve and move through them. Personal power is identifying our uniqueness and expressing it through our daily existence. Personal power is the making of meaning for ourselves in our lives.
All too often we exchange our personal power for the dialogue of limitations that is the common marketplace. Compare these two sets of possibilities :
Possibility Set A :
1) My greatest passion is archeology and I would love to spend my days outside, working a dig, and classifying and studying what I find but there aren’t very many jobs for that sort of thing.
2) A PhD would allow me to explore my ideas in the guidance of established thinkers and researchers in my field, and advance me in my career track but I don’t even yet have a Master degree so I don’t know what program would ever accept me, plus it takes so long to get a PhD and I am already a career professional.
3) Check out this story about a guy who was jogging and just suddenly dropped dead of a heart attack – he was the same age as me and seemed healthy – no one knew he had a problem!
Possibility Set B :
4) I decided to research my passion for archeology and found there are work vacations on job sites – I’ll be taking my next August vacation in Rome on a dig!
5) After doing an imagery exercise I looked online and the first link led me to a program that is for career professionals to complete while continuing their jobs, and the track is inclusive of getting a Masters – plus they happen to be having a prospective student cocktail next Tuesday!
6) I AM healthy!
Which of these possibility sets are more likely to be your common train of argument: 1,2,3 or 4,5,6?
The first possibility set is all true stories; in the second possibility set only #5 is true. The archeologist is still in a dusty notary office with one small window surrounded by law books and fluorescent light, and person #3 is still emailing heart-attack articles and consulting with doctors.
Arguing for our limitations is satisfying. Why? Because we are always right! If we argue for our limitations we will always get them. And because we have imagined the limitations, getting them is not scary – it is considered a certainty, what we already know, and therefore does not contain any surprises. Creating limitations, and arguing for them, is an attempt at creating certainty in our lives, a mechanism to facilitate the illusion of control. It is for this illusion that we are often willing to trade our personal power.
By contrast, arguing for our freedom, for our personal power, means taking a hero journey into the unknown. I don’t know if I can find a way to indulge my passion for archeology; I don’t know if I can find a program that fits my lifestyle or if I can change my lifestyle to fit a great program; I don’t know if I can be vibrantly engaged in life. To explore, I must step into the dark woods of uncertainty, change, and mystery.
I call all of the arguments above possibilities because until we live them that is all they are. If we choose a limited possibility then we live a limited waking reality; if we choose an expanded possibility we live an expanded waking reality. To call one a fact and the other an illusion – the silly daydreaming of children – is a distortion: neither is yet experienced, neither has yet been made into a waking reality. What if, instead, I choose to experience the ‘dream’ and make that my reality, and choose to call the limited possibility the illusion, letting it dissipate into yesterday’s clouded thinking?
Personal power is to live what our true inner voice is telling us – not the ‘nos’, ‘can’ts’, and ‘shoulds’ that clutter our daily conversations. But in the traffic jam of this clutter of negatives how do we access our inner voice? How do we recognize it??There is a tool for accessing our true inner voice and it is dreaming. What we call our night dreams is a dialogue with our inner voice. This inner voice shows us the stagnant, repetitive arguments of our limitations, their genesis, and their nature. Finally, through the mirror of dreams, we can hear what we habitually tell ourselves and have tricked ourselves into believing is the truth. This inner voice of real truth also shows us how to overcome these tricks, these blocks, and reveals to us what is, in fact, our unlimited potential, our true path which will make life meaningful for us.
Dreaming by nature is limitless. In our dreams we can fly, breathe underwater, climb mountain peaks, and traverse abundant green valleys. The dreaming inner voice is unfettered by the daily shackles we wrap around our ankles. Because the dreams originate within us, they show us that we already contain that possibility – already we also exist in an experience of no limitations and freedom. Once we recognize that both these possibilities exist simultaneously within us – limitations and freedom – we have choice. It is no longer an outside world imposing limitations on us, but an inside set of possibilities by which, through choice, we craft into our external waking reality. The more we work with dreams and experience their quality of limitlessness the more we learn to quickly recognize expanded opportunities in our waking life and forge different paths.
Dreaming uses a specific language and I teach people that language. It is a language that originates within the Self, and contains all the tools needed to unlock your personal power. Once you understand the language of your dreams you have the tool to return to that place of vibrant living.
Stepping into the dark woods of the hero’s journey, a light always appears. Our dreams are the lamp in our inner darkness. Are you ready to learn how to powerfully dream?
