Entering the third gateway of POWER can be frightening, transformative, or magical, depending on where your work with power lies. True power is knowing your authentic self, removing blocks that would hide or repress that self, and learning to make choices that come from this truth and knowing.
It took me years to understand this realm. I called it “Soul Gazing” and spent time looking at myself in a mirror and loving myself, working to heal my codependency with others, and receiving several “Soul Retrievals” from my shaman mentors, designed to recover parts of myself that I had lost due to the ordinary traumas and travails of life.
It was really hard work, and much of the time I resisted doing it.
After many years that I realized that POWER was a way of being in my body, a way of connecting to my soul. While the first gateway plugged me into the divine, and the second gateway opened my heart, the third opened my soul. And honestly? It was a big old mess in there.
I knew I had all these talents and gifts, but I couldn’t figure out why it was so difficult to connect with them. I felt grateful for being given so much in this life — I’m a dancer, a writer, a musician, and an artist. I’m also a healer, a shaman, a mother, and a lover. My true and full expression involved learning to embrace ALL of this.
But over the years, everyone wanted to shut me down, from my thesis advisor in graduate school, who told me I had “too many interests” to my mother, who wanted me to be an accountant so I’d be “safe”. The men in life told me I was “too much” or “too intense”. I had to fight to stay big and embrace all of who I was. I wanted to be a musician in college, but to please my parents I chose to be a scientist instead, because it felt “safe” to me. The joke of it all is that my “safe” choices led me to illness, depression, and despair. I felt trapped and beaten by life.
True safety, joy, and satisfaction only came to me once I allowed myself to embrace my true self and the POWER that it holds. Working long and hard to practice my creative talents became my spiritual practice in this realm. And now I’m no longer afraid of claiming who I am.
The other day I was at the Dentist and he commented on how I was one of his easiest patients. Instead of blowing off the compliment, my POWER rose up from inside me and thanked him, then offered to teach his other patients how to meditate to feel more safe at the Dentist. I shared that idea from a place of POWER and LOVE. And you know what? He loves the idea! This is just one example of how I’ve become more in tune with my power in the world, and how the world is now receiving me.
True POWER is about being your authentic self and making choices based on that. Your SOUL? It IS that authenticity. It is YOU.