Why do we struggle to live from our power?

“Women, reclaim your power!” We have been used to hearing this over the last hundred or so years as the brave and impassioned women who came before us led the charge towards greater equality. But that kind of fighting power is not the only power available to us – especially as women.

There is a much greater power – the power of Source Energy, to which we are all infinitely and intrinsically connected. But living from that power within is no piece of cake.

At the quantum level, where everything exists simultaneously as one field of conscious energy, we are not separate from any part of the creation – not from any body, any place, any dimension, any time, any thing, any experience or any possibility. We are infinitely connected to the field, where our true nature, as a localised spark of the Divine, is unlimited abundance, unconditional love, infinite creative power, pure knowing and awareness and infinite potential.

That makes us incredibly powerful when we remember to live from this level of consciousness. But as most of us aren’t there yet, our human level self often feels separate from what we are wanting to experience.

We usually have key themes showing up in our lives that cause us the greatest sense of separation, creating varying levels of discomfort, struggle and resistance.

It could be money struggles, health and body issues, relationship challenges, feeling like you’re off track and not on purpose, feeling isolated and unsupported, struggling with time management and boundary issues, and so on…

The sense of separation from this recurring thing, whatever it is, usually takes up a lot of our focus and energy as we try to gain the thing that’s lacking. It is a huge drain and distraction.

But it has a purpose.

It keeps us from being our true power.

Because if we were to show up and be truly powerful we might scare ourselves to death!

Separation is an illusion that keeps us from our power

At times when I felt disillusioned with my business, I felt separate from the success I wanted to experience. I knew separation is an illusion, and I knew I was the one keeping the separation in place because it served some part of me. I could also feel that it took a lot of energy to do that.

When I felt into who I would be without the distraction of all the struggle and effort, I could feel real power surging through me.

It felt incredible!

But holding that amount of power didn’t feel particularly safe, (Imagine getting behind the wheel of a supercar when you’re used to driving a Ford Fiesta!) – although it was thrilling.

And as I was experiencing it I remember being unclear about what I was meant to do with this much power. But I had a very strong sense that to use power in the way we’re meant to, it needs to flow into something significant that we’re here to create in the world.

We can’t just have it and do nothing with it because it would negatively affect us, maybe even burn us up and hurt us!

So having this power represents a big responsibility.

Essentially this power is love.

Not romantic love, but the creative force of the universe that sees through all the blocks and limitations we perpetuate in our lives, that witnesses the truth in every situation, that sees the potential hidden within every person, that doesn’t judge world circumstances as good or bad, and sees the illusion of fear and powerlessness in those who would try and control by force, manipulation and violence.

This love ultimately sees everything as coming from the intelligent Source of life that brings us the exact experiences we each need to evolve into our highest expressions of ourselves, and which will allow the Divine consciousness of Gaia/Mother Earth to evolve too.

And when you steadfastly radiate this love you won’t get thrown off centre, get stuck in fear, lack or scarcity, take offence, get triggered, cave into pressure and other peoples’ agendas or lose your boundaries.

So, if you’re willing to take responsibility for this powerful force which wants to flow through you, love is all you need – because love is all there is.

Why do we fear our power?

So what stops more people from owning and expressing this level of love and power through their lives?

Well for one thing, when you’ve come in with a mission to do your bit to raise the consciousness on the planet and assist Mother Earth and humanity to evolve, you have to be willing to show up, be visible and be known for your gifts and what you stand for.

And for Lightworkers and spiritual individuals doing this work, many of us still have a lot of resistance ingrained from past centuries of persecution, torture and death for being seen to be practicing ‘the healing arts’ at the hands of those who had power at the time.

Our Hidden Her-story

These inner gifts and awareness that are awakening in so many people around the planet now are aspects of the Divine Feminine, and of course, this is nothing new.

Archaeological findings from the Upper Paleolithic Age, about 25,000 to 30,000 B.C.E. suggests a large area of the planet was home to those whose earth-based spirituality experienced the Divine as both feminine and masculine. This ‘Old Religion’ is the shamanism of ancient Europe and the Middle East. It was thought to be very similar to Taoism, and Native American and other aboriginal spiritual practices.

The Goddess was as important, if not more important, than the God, because she could be seen, touched and directly experienced in the physical. And Earth, nature and womankind were the essential providers of all life and sustenance, whereas the God was mysterious and more remote.

Women held the office of healers, leaders and creators because they were considered to be naturally connected to the Divine and able to receive inner guidance for the good of the community.

Because of this reverence, women’s power and women were valued deeply. It must have benefitted the whole community, because this peaceful, connected way of living and being spanned many thousands of years before our modern day patriarchal religions and cultures over-threw it.

Reflecting on this ancient history, it makes me wonder how powerful our female ancestors really were back then.

What was truly possible for a woman to create when she was free to be powerful, typically connected to a sisterhood and/or community that held a shared creative intent for the whole, and without the centuries of conditioning that has kept modern women in her place, under the confines of Patriarchal control?

 These days, now we’re collectively waking up, more of us are discovering that we’re able to create and live with more magic and miracles as part of daily life. But when you first start experiencing what doesn’t appear logically possible, it feels profoundly mystical and unexplainable.

So what more, I wonder, is possible today if you had no doubts about your own power or fear of using it?

Venus of Wilendorf – Photograph by Steven Zucker

Where did the Goddess-worshipping cultures of pre-history go?

It’s suggested that life-threatening environmental factors may have caused more aggressive patriarchal cultures in different parts of the world to leave their territories and take over the lands of the peaceful Goddess-worshipping ones by force.

Many thousands of years later, as world populations grew and Christianity, Islam and Judaism spread, women’s power and the Pagan cultures that honoured the sacredness of women were feared, seen as a threat and suppressed.

Worship of the Divine Feminine was outlawed and the Earth, as the Source of All Life, was disregarded as divinity and seen as a resource to be plundered.

The Church has a lot to answer for

In Europe’s dark history from the mid-1400s to mid-1700s, the Church demonised women to hide its own evil deeds.

Witch-hunts caused tremendous damage to the status of women. Laws were passed forbidding women to inherit, to own property, to receive an education, to divorce, to have an abortion or have any kind of autonomy.

The medical profession was growing, which women weren’t allowed to join, and they were no longer permitted to openly practice their healing arts and midwifery, which was deemed witchcraft.

The nobility forced peasants off the land and into the cities, so they lost connection with the cycles and energies of nature.

And of course, the Church and nobility gained all of the property, wealth and lands of anyone who opposed them or were in support of their opposers.

In 1486, two German Dominican monks, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger wrote a book called ‘Malleus Malificarum’ – or ‘The Hammer of Witches’, codifying the misogyny of the Catholic Church. It was full of the vilest lies ever told about women and those who practiced The Old Religion.

It authorised the use of  torture to secure confessions and created a witch-hunting hysteria throughout Europe.

Sanctioned by the Pope, it apparently outsold every book other than the Bible.

It became a guide for witch-hunters, and they used it to commit all kinds of heinous crimes of cruelty and violence. And it was generated by the Church’s fear of women’s power, the Divine Feminine and repression of sexuality, which of course the Goddess worshipping cultures revered as the creative force that brought new life.

During that time of tremendous repression it’s thought that up to 200,000 people were put to death, which proportionately, compared to Europe’s population today, is thought to be around nine million people.

To eradicate further the Pagan culture, the worship of the Divine Feminine and the innate power of women, sacred places of worship had churches built on top of them, traditional feast days and celebrations honouring the Goddess and the seasons were hijacked, replaced with Christian festivals, and a culture of fear, separation and mistrust spread through society as neighbour was forced to speak against neighbour.

As a result of vilifying the inherent power of women and the Divine Feminine we became split within ourselves. Disconnected from the earth, from one another and from love – our true power – living much more from fear and control, rather than trusting the rhythms and flow of life.

Taking back our power

In the western world, history marched on. Women started to fight for their rights, and just over 100 years ago the first women gained the right to vote. And women continue to move ahead and gain traction in restoring their power and status.

But not only have they had to fight damn hard to make inroads, and prove themselves as worthy and equal to men in society, women have had to break free from their own mental cages. These are the mental cages constructed from fear that have kept them trapped and small, that stop them showing up as powerful women. The life-threatening consequences of which are embedded deeply in the collective consciousness as a wound in the psyche.

So as a woman, if you have had a measure of success so you know the potential impact of your work in the world, but you seem to have hit a personal wall that no end of healing, courses, therapy, workshops, transformation tools and coaching programmes will let you move past, then maybe you are unconsciously hooked into this collective consciousness.

Perhaps an aspect of you is stuck, looping back to this collective ancestral fear that is still very much alive. But also, this collective field has been fed by the suppression of women from every culture around the world, and it is still being fed by modern day cultures that diminish the power and sexuality of women, where pain, suffering and death might be yours if you dare to show up in your true power or question the authority of men.

If the protective part of you senses this, no wonder it does everything it can to keep you safe – but that’s also the unconscious part of you that stops you moving forward.

The good news is, that we don’t need to be stuck in these patterns.

But for many women, we do need to meet this horrible history within ourselves and process the ancestral pain of the past. After all, it was only 12 or 13 generations ago when the women many of us are descended from were living in the witch-hunt times, and for a dozen generations before them this fear was endemic in the culture. 

It is no small thing!

But we women are majestic, powerful, connected, magic-weaving creatures. When we honour our ancestors and the strength they had to endure, when we consciously choose to see, acknowledge and unhook from these painful energies of the past, and when we re-connect with our greater sisterhood, find balance with our healthy inner masculine and make use of the resourceful energies that serve and support us, the past loses its control over us and nothing can stop us!

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Thank you! x