The Spiritual Practice of Personal Power is one of the introductory strands in a book that I am currently writing. To Do Your Work explores the twelve pressures of modern life which surround personal clarity and life’s spiritual journey. These twelve pressure points are the focus of the spiritual effort of personal power, choice, and autonomy.
To explain the spiritual practice of personal power, I’ll begin with this definition and then breakdown the parts to make sense of the whole concept.
The Spiritual Practice of Power is
The personal process of learning to exercise personal choice and self-determination with self as Power-Within and in the world as Power-With.
I always like to begin with a definition of terms.
The thinking that I go through in bringing all the terms into clarity within my mind helps form a firm foundation for digging deeper and finding any blocks which can be both subtle and nuanced.
This is a our beginning:
To do your work is a spiritual practice of personal power.
Let’s break this down a bit.
What is Work?
By work I mean the effort that you need to make within your life to get clear and live your life as the inherently worthy human being you are — and do what needs doing to release whatever is holding you back from clarity to live your best life.
Your work is also a personal commitment — a commitment to not hold back, to break through rather than breakdown, to be willing to consciously engage with both challenge and possibility.
Thus, To Do Your Work is an efficient way to quickly describe all that goes into whatever your work is today and will become tomorrow.
Your work is an ongoing process because the journey of living your best life is never done.
What is Spiritual Practice?
To do your work requires the effort of spiritual practice.
For me, spiritual practice doesn’t begin with dogma or a litany of dos and don’ts.
Instead spiritual practice is a conscious effort to engage all of who I am in all that I do and in all that I learn.
Spiritual practice combines personal thought, feeling, belief, and action with the exploration of what’s beyond, the great unknown and the universal mysteries. This is a journey to bring together mind and body with heart and soul. A journey of letting go as well as bringing together.
Here’s a definition:
Spiritual Practice is any conscious personal action or experience, motivated by the intention of understanding and integrating the whole of you physically and spiritually, body, mind, heart, and soul.
Spiritual practice is also the individual effort to internalize and experience that which seems beyond and separate as not only connected but also as an integral authentic expression of self.
Thus, spiritual practice may include more formal experiences such as prayer, meditation, and affirmations.
Though spiritual practice also doesn’t need to be so formal and can happen when you are washing the dishes, walking the dog, or driving to work. Spiritual practice is held within personal intention and the intention becomes both focus and path toward new self understanding.
Spiritual practice goes hand in hand with your ability to do your work.
What is Personal Power?
Personal power is your experience of your inherent internal capacity for creative motion and expression. When you claim personal power you claim your intrinsic capacity to live your life within free choice and deep trust.
You feel connection, not separation, within and without.
You feel a personal coherency which expresses energetically as balance, resonance, and alignment.
You also are able to express yourself in what you say and do. You live your life free to create and express your creation however it feels in balance to do so. And you trust yourself because you have identified yourself as worthy and lovable.
The pressure points of power and the fear dilemmas we are getting ready to explore all want to subvert your sense of personal power.
Power-Over wants you to always be under, without connection, divided from your best self and the center of your personal power.
Whereas, your natural instinct will be to share the best of yourself within the shared connection you naturally feel with others also expressing their creative best.
Personal power relies on personal autonomy or the understanding that you are self-governing. Your choice is your choice — and your responsibility.
Personal power also rests in the concept of personal agency as the ability to exercise independent action and free choice.
Personal power arises from self-awareness. The aware self feels a growing integration within and a connection with the world and that which is beyond. This awareness leads to more exploration and deeper expression in all aspects of life.
Within the claiming of personal power, you are learning about self-presence, personal choice, courage, vulnerability, self-worth, discernment, responsibility, and trust to find and understand personal truth.
The biggest shift on the planet is happening within the exchange of power where more and more the choice is for freedom in expressing personal power and the belief that everyone is free to make the same choice of their own personal power.
What is the Spiritual Practice of Personal Power?
The spiritual practice of personal power is your process of learning to exercise personal agency and autonomy with self as Power-Within and in the world as Power-With.
Living within personal power, your effort is to thrive within the shared connection available to all.
This effort will be challenged by those who want to control your choice to their benefit.
Know that because of the extraordinary global shift we are all experiencing, claiming your personal power right now is both difficult and possible.
The push of pressure and fear needs to be resisted — yet the push provides information and direction for releasing the outdated beliefs and ingrained habits holding you back.
When you approach your life with conscious intention to integrate your experience on all levels and engage the unknown with excitement instead of fear, you are in the midst of spiritual practice. A life practice to get clear and express the best you are and can always become.
When you do your work, you will find that the spiritual practice of personal power leads you to this moment of laughter and love. You are what you seek and you learn to be yourself as the wonderfully worthy person you are.