Power from Within

Learning from Bodhisattvas, Growing Capacity with the Earth

Years ago, studying Tibetan language, philosophy, and cosmology, I took a deep dive into the three main archetypal Bodhisattvas, and realized I had an issue with one of them.

Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion was easy for me to connect with. My entire course of study was focused on understanding and honoring this thorough pathway to living a life of ultimate compassion. The imagery of Avalokiteshvara having thousands of outstretched hands and eyes on each hand spoke to me deeply of the ache I felt to be able to reach out and eradicate the suffering of all.

Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom was also easy for me to connect with. After all, I was pursuing a path to grow my knowledge and capacity for wisdom. The imagery of him holding a lotus stem, and in the bloom of the lotus, a book laying open- in all honesty I find this quite erotic and deeply resonant.

But the last of these three was a struggle for me- Vajrapani, the Bodhisattva of Power. With lightning in his hands, I struggled with this archetype. Power, I believed, was corrupting, was coercive, was controlling, was untrustworthy.

I was not just learning about this system academically- I was also studying as a practitioner. When I realized that equal cultivation of Compassion, Wisdom, and Power are an essential balance of the path of the Bodhisattva, I knew that I had to actively attend to my relationship with power.

In my life I had a massive aversion to power. In my childhood I had a few really intense examples of both abuses of power and the pain of being left behind when someone you love seeks more power than they have. These experiences shaped my relationship with personal and professional ambition, as well as causing me to self-sabotage whenever I was asked to step into positions of power.

All of this kept me in a distorted, unhealthy relationship with power, including, I now understand, contributing in part to a deep pattern of exhaustion and chronic pain in my body. I could not even trust my body’s capacity for power, so deeply ingrained were these subtle but pervasive trauma responses.

When my study of these Bodhisattvas revealed that aversion to me, I began to address it. I began to have conversations with people in my life who could understand the nuances of the negative associations I had with power, and they helped me to see the patterns that were unfolding in those past experiences with more clarity.

By understanding those patterns, I was able to realize how unlikely it was that I would actually repeat those same patterns. That was an unconscious fear that had kept me playing small for a very long time.

Having cleared the air of the past dynamics of my childhood, I set my eyes on our collective power dynamics as a culture. It isn’t hard to see how dominant a narrative of “Power Over“ is in our culture. When we talk about power, that’s usually what we’re seeing. But naming ”Power Over” as one, but not the only, form of power, enabled me to begin experimenting with names for other kinds of power. There are many, many different bodies of work seeking to clarify and reframe different forms of power. Right Use of Power by Cedar Barstow is one I definitely recommend.

The form of power I have come to resonate with is not one I read in a book however, it’s not from the outside, not from theory, or leadership trainings, or anything outside of myself. It’s simple. It’s “Power from Within”. “Power from Within” is what enables other important expressions of power- from “Power With“ (collaborative) to “Power To“ (redistributive, capacity building) to unfold, to be possible, to be shared.

The way I began to trust my own “Power from Within” was not even sourcing it from within my own body, for I still did not trust my self with power. What finally helped me to begin to access and trust power was by connecting with the core of the Earth.

I began regularly practicing meditations in which my awareness would slowly and steadily root down into the layers of the Earth, moving through rock and aquifer and fossil fields, going deep down into the hot, pulsing, life giving heart, womb, core of this planet that made us. There, I would offer beliefs and patterns I was ready to release, trusting in the great regenerative composting capacities of our home mother planet.

There is power.

There is a power I can trust.

Ancient and fierce and life giving and connected to all things.

I would ask for nothing in particular, but would request that I be given what I need to bring back to my life. And when my awareness came back up to fully reconnect with my own body, there was more power there. More energy, more clarity, more capacity.

And I have come to understand that that is the power of Vajrapani- the power of capacity to act, to move the Wisdom and Compassion into form.

Last year, in my first year of motherhood, I was trained and certified in the Trauma of Money method, which teaches a great deal about institutional power dynamics and the collective, familial, and personal traumas that arise from those distorted patterns around money and power (and time) that we are all collectively swimming in.

As we were in that training, my husband and I created and offered for the first time, a course called Sex, God, and Money, which moves through a 12-week journey of analysis, embodied inquiry, and dialogue around these 3 core and interconnected forces in our lives. We are planning on offering that again this summer, as we see the profound impact it had in the lives of many of our participants.

I’m beginning to create a structure for a deep exploration of Money, Time, and Power with people who have struggled with the internalized ways that systems of oppression have kept us from a truly empowered and healthy relationship with these interconnected presences in our lives. I want to keep this small and intimate to begin with, to create a field of genuine trust and trustworthiness between us. It will be 6 people total moving through this inquiry over the course of 4 months: 12 sessions total, with one week off each month for integration and spaciousness. If you feel like one of those 6 people is you, please fill out this application and I’ll be in touch to connect further!

And for everyone- I’d really love to hear from you. What has your relationship with power been? When you hear the word power, what images or words come to mind? What kind of relationship with power would you like to have?