Walking
A Path Of Empowerment
By Kelly Tobey
Let us start by
looking at situations where we may have been trained to give our power
away.
Typically they
start in childhood. We come into this world in a fragile, vulnerable
position. As a child we do not know yet, how to deal with this world. We
look to our parents (or those standing in for the parental role) for
guidance. Often our caregivers lack the skills to be able to combine the
giving of direction with the honoring of our sacred individuality. This
lack of skill opens the door to a parental style of control and
dominance rather heartfelt guidance. Dominance can squash our
individuality rather than fostering its healthy development.
Our basic survival
is on the line as children so the stakes are high if dare to walk a path
that is not in alignment with the family agenda. We learn that if we
give up our individuality and go along with the family agenda that we
are more likely to be approved of and that our basic needs of love,
acceptance, caring, food, and shelter are more likely to be met.
If true power
arises out of us embracing and living in congruency with our essential
self, then it can be seen how a typical childhood can steer us further
and further away from empowerment.
Of course it does
not stop with childhood. Next we may get placed into a typical education
system. Unfortunately many of these systems continue to teach us to do
what they tell us, and to memorize and regurgitate what we are
taught by others, with little or no encouragement to think and intuit
for ourselves. This is asked for in exchange for passing marks and a
stamp of approval. This again leads us further from a sense of an
empowered self as we continue to be encouraged to trade off our
individuality in hopes of getting what we think we need. We are left
with a deepened vulnerability to being manipulated by promises of
outward gain.
In an attempt to
replace the building sense of emptiness inside, we may look to outer
symbols of power as replacements for true internal empowerment. This is
how we are led towards living out the old cliché of selling our souls
for external gain. Anyone promising us satisfaction through worldly
gain, in exchange for us selling ourselves out even further, becomes a
recreation of the old story of the “devil” tempting Jesus. The old
promise of, “all this can be yours if you will only sell yourself out
to me”, comes in its modern day repetition. But of course no matter
what we gain outwardly – wealth, position, relationship,
acknowledgement, etc. – it will never fill the internal emptiness
created by our distancing from our essential self.
And do not be
fooled by those that would place before you the temptations of outward
gain disguised in spiritual language. There are many who would tell you
that their spiritual path is the only one. If you are willing to blindly
give up your individual knowing of what is true for you and just follow
what they say, you are promised many prizes that are wrapped in
spiritual sounding names.
Teachers in any
form, whether they are parents, schoolteachers, employers, or spiritual
teachers, may have full intentions of being helpful. They may not have
malicious intentions. They may assume that if you follow their ways that
your life will be better. So being true to your self in the face of
their good intentions calls for fine tuned discernment.
What I would
suggest is that a teacher who wants his or her student to learn about
empowerment, needs to focus on having the student re-unite with who she
or he is, at their essence.
Living an empowered
life comes from honoring who we are at our essence and being willing to
live out our individual flavor of humanity. Listening to and following
our intuitive knowing will bring honor to our unique giftedness.
Living from an
empowered place, we replace our self-betrayal with self-respect. From
this place we can receive any outward gains with appreciation. Now
instead of wealth, position, relationship, acknowledgement, etc. being a
means to fill an inner emptiness, they all become bonus’s to a life
centered in an internal congruency. They become extras for us to
appreciate, without a need to attach ourselves to them out of
desperation.