Stand Your Ground: Power in Balance
Think of how you stand when you can’t find your balance. Any strong wind can knock you right off your feet. Emotionally, that strong wind can come in the form of other’s (and also your own) judgements, opinions, prejudices and projections. We certainly can’t withstand storms of pain, anger and fear if our emotional body can’t find its equilibrium. We also can’t experience the fullest joy without that firm sense of ground under our feet.
Equilibrium or balance equals power. Power to stand your ground, power to decide and act based on your deepest knowing of your own truth. Make no mistake, this kind of power never acts to take power over or away from another. Not a human, not an animal, not an ecosystem.
A great metaphor illustrating balanced power comes from the Andean wisdom tradition. It is understood in this cosmology that the Mountain (related to the masculine aspect/rational mind) sinks his roots into the Earth (the relational/feminine, intuitive) and is nurtured by her. In return, the glaciers from the Mountain gift the Earth with water to feed her seeds. This is a relationship that forms one of the key concepts in the cosmology of the Qero’s which is called ayni or right relationship or balanced action.
When we are in ayni, right relationship, we have the power to dream, grow, and support anything. When we are out of balance, not functioning in ayni, the rational mind may miss many possibilities and focus more on probabilities. Probability is an intrinsically limited and limiting concept.
Another aspect of being in deep internal balance is when we come to know our essential selves unhooked from created identities which come from family, culture, others’ ideas of who we are. Self out of balance with our own true nature is not a self that is in balance in relationships or with the earth.
This is why all of my work as psychotherapist as well as shamanic practitioner is directed towards creating an intimate & loving relationship with your essential self while clearing away the old wounds and mistaken identities that have been given to us along the way, particularly in the first 7 years of our lives when our minds are dominated by a theta brain wave state. This state provides for a form of hypnosis, absorbing other people’s mirroring, projections and perceptions of us. This can result in a loss of our own internal guidance system and of our external ability to ‘stand our ground’ or cultivate resilience when the strong winds of family & culture threaten to blow us down.
