Spiritual Forum

This tale involves two noajdies, shamans in the Sami tradition. The two shamans names were Kardias and Torajas and they were both young men who fulfilled the role of shaman for their village. Kardias was much loved by the people because he healed them and performed many great services for them. Torajas was jealous of Kardias and wanted to be more famous, more respected, and more loved than he. He was always scheming to make Kardias look bad and make himself look good but somehow the people always ended up loving Kardias more. One day Kardias went fishing and Torajas took the opportunity to conjure up an enormous Pike (fish) who came up and swallowed Kardias whole. In this way Torajas felt he would both impress the people with his power and get rid of Kardias at the same time. Only the people of the village interpreted the event to mean that Kardias had been summoned to the heavenly realms by the gods and took it as a sign of his great power that he had disappeared. They honored him and respected him all the more. Torajas realizing that the plot had backfired on him, desperately forged a plan that would show he was the greater and more powerful shaman. He himself went out to the sea and fished for the Pike that had swallowed up Kardias. Eventually he succeeded and bringing the Pike back to the village proceeded to cut the Pikes belly open whereupon Kardias came tumbling out. Torajas wanted to show the people that indeed Kardias had not been taken up to heaven but had merely been in the Pike’s belly all along, put there by none other than himself. When Kardias was freed from the Pikes stomach he revealed to the people what Torajas had done to him and the people all sympathized with him. They turned on Torajas and he lost all respect and all honor. He was seen as weak and vulnerable to the whims of his narcissistic ego.

Typical of fairytales this story is meant to teach the difference between real power and wannabe, egoic power. In the story the people of the village could determine the difference between the two kinds of power and clearly chose the real thing over the manipulative power of Torajas. Like all fairytales each of the characters are meant to be symbolic of parts of ourselves, thus we have a petty part that is willing to do anything for external power to feed our egos and we have an authentic self that demonstrates real power. The Pike represents the obstacles and tests that we put ourselves through to develop our real power. The villagers represent that part of us that knows deep down the difference between the real thing and the fake and is ruthless with ferreting the truth out.

While there are many different definitions of power we could use the following one as a very simple working definition: Real power is the ability to be resonant with the Tao in such a way as to get in sync with the power that already exists. So any attempt to be powerful in a way that is not resonant with the Tao or Spirit is not real power. Being out of sync with the Tao prevents one from ever becoming truly powerful. Naturally a person would want to know, “What is the Tao and how do I get in sync with that.” The usual answer is, “If you have to ask you are not doing it and probably not ready for it.” So humans spend countless lifetimes flailing around trying to figure out what power is and making endless mistakes around the whole theme. Having forgotten what Spirit really is they can not get in sync with it very easily, so they must gradually learn the hard way what it means to be in harmony with Spirit.

The game we seem to be playing is this: Power appears to be something we must acquire by certain actions. We believe we are born without it and must get it. Power seems to come and go and we believe we must wrest it away from others in order to have it ourselves. We think that power is control over others. We try to grasp it but it slips through our fingers. When we do manage to gather as much power as possible as defined by culture, we find that it doesn’t seem to be lasting or real just like in the fairytale. It appears to be taken away from us on a regular basis by bigger, more powerful gorillas around us. Certainly when we grab power it does not lead us to happiness and in fact it often backfires on us making us miserable instead. Eventually we discover that having real power often involves a loss of attachment, of paradoxically letting go of the appearance of it. We discover that only by surrendering to Spirit can we access real power. We find out that real power has nothing to do with control over others but has more to do with exhibiting control over our own weaknesses. We discover that we never lost power in the first place and it has been with us from the beginning. We just failed to perceive the real deal and got lost in a maze of dead ends and pretenses. In the end we have a hearty laugh and the joke all along has been on us.

Mother Power and Father Power

We live in a universe where everything is broken down into polarities so naturally power appears to be broken down into a series of polarities as well, external power and internal power, father power and mother power, material power and spiritual power, dark power and light power, and so on. Let us consider father power and mother power because these impact us everyday and few people are aware of how they do so.

Each one of us, regardless of whether we are male of female, has mother power and father power within us and how we use these is strongly influenced by our ancestral lineage, how the men and women on each side of our families handled these aspects of their power. Of course the most influential people for most of us are our own parents and how they embodied power in the world, handled power issues with each other, and demonstrated power to us or over us. In addition to the influence of our imprinters and ancestors each of us carries the sum total of how we have handled power in all the lifetimes leading to the current one. We each have beliefs about power, perceptions about how others handle it, and perceptions about how we have handled it or tend to handle it in certain situations. These beliefs have everything to do with a positive or negative relationship to power, a confidence around it or fear of it, and a sense of maturity regarding it.

Mother power is the ability to use the feminine in a constructive manner. Our relationships with our mothers determine to a large extent whether mother power is an obstacle that is turned against ourselves, or whether it can be used as a support for enlarging our power base. Mother power is global, pervasive, and inclusive. It has to do with the ability to handle many things at once in a calm, peaceful manner.

Father power is the ability to use the masculine force in a constructive manner. Likewise our relationships with our fathers determine whether this force can be used constructively or is turned against self. Father power is focused and laser-like. It has to do with the ability to persevere and see a project through to the end. This power also has to do with naming things and using language as a form of persuasion.

Generally our relationship with the opposite sex parent is critical because it governs how we use the energy that we need more help with. This is mitigated somewhat by our roles and past life familiarity with the gender in question.

There are certain basic guidelines in life that determine how we handle male and female forms of power. First of all we tend to do to others what was done to us when we were children, especially by our fathers and mothers. Therefore children who were victims of abuse often become perpetrators of abuse later on. Children who were treated with respect tend to become people who treat others with respect. We also tend to do to ourselves what was done to us as children. Again we will attempt to carry out the approach of each gendered parent subconsciously toward ourselves. If our mothers constantly worried about us then we tend to worry about ourselves from this feminine place. If our fathers gave us a vote of no confidence we will tend to give ourselves a vote of no confidence regarding our masculine abilities. On the other hand if each parent gave us positive feedback then this same positive feedback will be reinforced by our own self-talk within.

Here are a list of traits that are associated with the father masculine and mother feminine sides of ourselves. These traits of course fall into positive and negative poles in keeping with our tendency to experience everything in polarities.

Positive qualities of Mother Power

Receptive; grateful, nurturing, feeding, warm, safe, vulnerable in intimacy, emotionally protective, creative, spontaneous, flexible, adaptable, community oriented, inspired, peaceful, healing, tranquil, validating, supportive, comforting, embracing, connecting

Negative qualities of Mother Power

Confusion, chaos, unpredictable, emotionally abusive, unsupportive, highly critical, invalidating, emotionally destructive, smothering, cold, isolated, withholding, entangling, manipulative, seductive, entrapping, confining, limiting, weakening, over-protecting

Positive qualities of Father Power

Generous, protective, clear, certain, physically strong, good boundaries, safe, decisive, capable in the world, good provider, alert, focused, organized, active, plan oriented, good at surviving, aggressive, productive, able to reach goals, reliable, good at structure, able to control the outcome productively.

Negative qualities of Father Power

Tyrannical, abusive, physically destructive, overly aggressive, dominating, demanding of accomplishment, overly structured, attacking, tight fisted, hypocritical, obsessed, competitive, over working, cynical, dictatorial, oppressive, enslaving, taking advantage, controlling.

Look over these lists and then look at your relationships. How do you behave at work, with your children, with employees, as a friend, with enemies, as a teacher, with yourself? How well do you take care of yourself? How do you give yourself a hard time? Are you a mother toward yourself or a father? Which part of each do you play out, the positive or the negative poles? What are you more comfortable with? Which part do you apply toward your spiritual life? Are you father oriented or mother oriented in your relationship with Spirit? Is your father power more resonant with Spirit or is your mother power more in harmony with it. Which side of you is more visible? Which more underground, less visible to others?

I had a male employee years ago that from day one would never address me or look at me for more than a second. All his communication was directed toward Lena, my wife, even questions that were more appropriately asked for me. At first I took it personally and didn’t like him but then I realized he performed his work well and that he simply had mother power issues and father power issues and this had nothing whatsoever to do with me. Nevertheless he could never hold a job long and I could understand why. Simply put, he was out of balance.

Recently I had the opportunity to co-teach a course on purposeful consulting at a University in Southern California. Part of my job as a contributing faculty member was to conduct transitional ceremonies and present a shamanic, spiritual perspective regarding consulting work. In this course we were trying to break new ground and push the envelope, to get students to re-evaluate their predictable stances and come from a place of authenticity without necessarily always knowing the answer. Interestingly, various students perceived the faculty in entirely different ways. For example some students absolutely hated my approach and determined that I was arrogant, controlling, insensitive, and abusive. Others saw me as helpful, wise, and offering a change of perspective. Still others saw me as risk taking and powerful. Each saw me in the light of their relationship with power, some through the father lens and some through the mother lens. This experience was extraordinarily valuable for me to experience because I too was processing their reactions through my father power and mother power lenses. The ones who didn’t like me were women with father power issues so this bought up my own mother power wound, invalidation by the female. What they needed was an accepting male authority that would not take umbrage at their reactions. Knowing this I made every attempt not to react but to stay neutral. I found the exercise challenging. At the same time I was offered the opportunity to look at my own programming and see where I was still reactive.

My positive mother power was compassionate toward them, wanting to heal their wounds. My negative mother power wanted to be highly critical of them and desired to withhold myself from them. My positive father power was clear and certain of what I was doing while my negative father power was perhaps overly controlling and overly structured in an attempt to deal with an academic setting. The actual truth, I will perhaps never know. However these kinds of tough experiences are worth their weight in gold because only where there are these challenging and differing viewpoints can I see what forces are working within me. Take advantage of these opportunities when they present themselves because you can see so clearly and quickly what is running you. If it doesn’t feel good then there is a lack of resonance with spirit and thus very limited power is available. If you can find a way to feel good about what is going on, even if it is tough, then you can access real power because you are functioning in harmony with Spirit. In this event I sometimes felt extraordinarily good and sometimes I felt awful. I was wafting back and forth between the two and thus I was experiencing fluctuating power, sometimes yes, sometimes no.

In actuality every event in life is a comment on your relationship with power. If you are simply reactive then you are at the mercy of the negative poles. If, on the other hand you are willing to look at the deeper lessons, you have a much greater chance at finding the synthesis instead of swinging wildly from polarity to polarity. I began this article with a working definition of real power being what is in resonance with the Tao or Spirit. In conclusion I will offer another but resonant definition to the first: Real power is that which can not be taken away from you for any reason. People can take your money, your possessions, your position in society, your reputation, and even your physical freedom so these have nothing to do with real power. What can never be taken from you is the wisdom and experience you have acquired that is now part of your essence. Your special relationship with Spirit can never be taken from you without your permission. That is your real power.