You are a being of immense power. Like every living being in the universe, you are infused with the energy of vital force – a form of available power that you can choose to direct in any way you desire.
The vital energy you carry is your personal power. My Siberian shaman master called this energy kut which, to my understanding, is similar to what is referred to as vital chi in Eastern spiritual traditions. Both terms describe the life force that animates and empowers us.
We are all born with a certain amount of personal power, assigned to us based on the energy needed to fulfill our life mission. In this sense, power can be understood as the potential we bring with us to Earth.
This energy, in itself, is neutral. It exists for us to manage and direct in ways that feel meaningful and help us fulfill our dreams and life purpose. Through our intention and focused attention, we can channel it towards specific creations or actions. If we could maintain undistracted focus and unwavering clarity of intention, the flow of our personal power would feel effortless and aligned with our true purpose.
The Loss Of Power
The reality, however, is that our energy is often scattered. Emotional identification – where we overly attach to feelings, people, situations or even places – drains us, pulling our focus away from our intention, while leaving us feeling powerless.
We often give our power away to family members, managers, work, and structures such as religion, school, governments etc.
Some of the ways in which we lose our power are:
- Hiding our true feelings to prevent conflict
- Letting someone else take control of our decisions
- Engaging in relationships where our boundaries are disregarded
- Re-entering harmful and toxic relationships
- Putting aside our own needs to accommodate a partner, a friend, a co-worker or a family member
- Disconnecting from nature by spending too much time indoors and overindulging in technology
Trivial distractions in daily life, such as harmful habits or external noise, further deplete our energy. Moreover, inner conflicts, such as doubt, fear, or conflicts between our desires and social demands, create even greater energy leaks.
To reclaim and preserve our personal power, we must first become aware of these leaks and then take deliberate steps to redirect our energy towards our intention.
Power Retrieval
In many shamanic traditions, practitioners perform a ritual known as soul retrieval. During this ceremony, the shaman connects with the soul of the person for whom the ritual is being performed to locate and reintegrate lost fragments of their soul. These soul fragments become displaced due to traumatic experiences that were too overwhelming for the person to bear. In such moments, the individual instinctively ‘shuts down’ their perception of reality as a protective response. As a result, the aspects of their soul present during the trauma are left behind, often residing in the underworld – a shamanic realm tied to the past.
While this process can be profoundly liberating and empowering, it can also be challenging in that it requires the individual to take full responsibility for their personal power – to recognize that they alone can reclaim it and that they alone can prevent it from being relinquished again.
(to be continued)
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