Facing Our Powerful Potential

Throughout history, this wrestling with strength and power has been characterized in all cultures which represent the best and worst of what it means to be human. Both of these energies live within each of us, and we are able to respond instantaneously to whatever challenge we are faced with. When we are living in pure awareness and from our center, a connective embodied power arises that unifies all life and such embodiment, such as facing the dragon, can be heroic in the deepest sense. Yet when we are cut off, even for a moment, we feel numb, we have lost center, we grow powerless and we are consumed with fear of the unknown outcome.

When we face our challenges head on and from our center, we discover and are able to take a stand in our place in the Universe. Facing our potential, we are called to enter a journey of discovery and not surprisingly, at the center our, Source and Oneness gives us the strength to manifest the highest possible outcome in the experience we find ourselves in.

There is duality in this potential, as there is in all things, at the same time we are called to face the dragon or unleashed power of others, while standing up to things and people, who are not living from their center. Some have become disruptive agents that dishearten all they touch, and we are charged to stand in our center in order to not be overtaken by this energy. Perhaps it is a function of the Universe to balance, that causes us to face these sometimes troubling and confusing experiences.

On a deeper level, perhaps facing our potential is the call to summon our best qualities in order to face some one, some thing, some force that is challenging. And perhaps this one thing, one force, or someone, is not always bad or dangerous; it is simply that life often demands that we face things in order to transform…. a process we often miss or tend to resist.

If persistent, facing our challenges can transform us into our truest self.

To “face” does not mean to resist or to defeat, but to encounter honestly. And to “be” does not mean to retreat from this world, but to merge with it from a centered place of strength.

Marin Luther King Jr. revealed an inextricable link between power and love:

“Power when properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites … polar opposites … so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love. We’ve got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our time.”

Perhaps, the question has always been: How do we define these elements? Is strength the art of authority, of achieving domination over situations and others, as rulers throughout history have shown us? Or is it the strength of the art of embrace, of surrendering to the power of love and truth rising up within us?

We all carry the seed of each element; the power of authority and the power of embrace. May we all use our power for our optimal potential to live as illuminated beings.

…Blessings and love, Christina