The Power of Relationships

The Power of Relationships

by | May 4, 2017 | Cultural Creativity, Featured, Self/Business Growth

Every relationship you develop, from the most casual to the most intimate, serves to help you become more conscious.

We are taught to honour others, yet often this is one of the most difficult acts we can perform. For not only does it require us, first and foremost, to honour ourselves, it also requires us to come to know our Self. In a larger sense, your relationships are spiritual messengers, they bring into your life revelations about your own strengths and weaknesses.

Some of your relationships may be particularly painful (and necessarily so) as they’re here to help you to learn about yourself and your limitations. You may not be so enthusiastic to explore these “less attractive” aspects of self, yet recognizing your power to make choices and how they affect your world is the power of relationships. Your painful relationships help you to understand that every choice you make contributes to what you create. Choice is the process of creation itself.

Every choice you make is a creative act of spiritual power for which you are held responsible. Managing this power of choice, with all its spiritual and creative implications, is the essence of human experience. Yet you can’t know the full outcome of any choice you make, and so you may find yourself trying to control your life, and the life of others. Disappointment inevitably ensues since, try as you might, the physical world (and the people you are in relationship with) cannot be controlled. Your desires and whims are not for life to serve you on a silver platter.

Which returns you to the place where the greatest power you have is how you choose to behave in your relationships. Your relationships (especially the painful ones) help you to master your inner responses to the external world. They teach that you get to choose your thoughts and emotions.

The power and challenge of your relationships is to learn what motivates you to make the choices you do. In learning about what motivates you, you learn about the essence of your Self. Sex, power, and money are the currencies of relationships and your fear and/or faith is the energy you put behind this currency. This dynamic of choice, of fear and faith, guarantees you cannot run away from yourself or your decisions. For every outcome in some extent reflects this faith and/or fear.

To discover your personal motivations and your “false gods,” how you use and misuse the currencies of the physical world, you need relationships. So much of the way you respond to external challenges is how you respond to yourself. To guide you in developing a healthy and loving relationship with yourself, you have your relationships as a mirror. They are awakening you to your true personal power.

photo credit: Toa Heftiba

What Icarus Can Teach Us

What Icarus Can Teach Us

by | Mar 31, 2017 | Featured, Self/Business Growth

Do you know the Greek myth of Icarus? Icarus is the son of Daedalus who dared to fly too near the sun on wings of feathers and wax. His father cautioned him that flying too near the Sun would cause the wax to melt. But Icarus became enthralled with his ability to fly and forgot his father’s warning. The feathers came loose and Icarus plunged to his death in the sea.

As I see it, this myth is a lesson about balance, about finding balance with your ego and with your gifts. It was Icarus’ choice not accept his gift as it was and to see it as enough. Instead, he chose to push it further, to a place where his gift was destroyed, and he destroyed himself in the process.

We all have, and are given, wings to fly on and it is our choice what we do with them. Do we not use them and never take flight? Do we accept them as they are and fly proudly on them to new destinations? Or do we misuse them, flying too high, too close to the Sun, destroying our gift and ourselves in the process?

If you don’t fly—or you try to fly too high like Icarus, the myth teaches you’ll find yourself falling into the depths of emotional despair, drowning in your egoic feelings (as represented by the sea Icarus drowned in).

To make the most of your gifts, you don’t need to make yourself into more than you are, you don’t need to fly higher than you can and burn yourself, but you also don’t need to stay down on earth, denying your own wings to fly. You are enough. Icarus teaches you have power over what you do with your gifts, and to what heights and destinations they take you.

photo credit: Benjamin Carnevale

Standing For Accountability

Standing For Accountability

by | Jan 31, 2017 | Cultural Creativity

It seems we are being challenged at this very moment to stand for what we know is true and right. Whether we are being called to empower ourselves as we face political bullies, companies that abuse their power, and/or other entities that prey on our natural weaknesses, this is a time of great transformation and opportunity. It is a time for us to stand and to use our voices.

In my own world, I’ve been challenged over and over in the past weeks by broken systems that attempt to dehumanize our experience in an attempt to streamline their own operations. I’ve been asked by bigger businesses than myself to not be an individual, and to instead accept a one-size-fits-all solution, policy, and/or way of doing things. None of these approaches work for me. I am not willing to fit in, to go along, nor to be quiet, so as to make another more comfortable, more at ease, and more lax in their work and way of being. I am an individual and I demand to be treated that way. When I see that I am not, I understand I have a choice to continue investing my time, energy, and money in that system/business/entity or to not to. I never have to stay quiet and take it.

A paradigm is rising across our planet, made up of people like you and me who stand for love, inclusion, and integrity, and who believe we have a responsibility to stand for our rights and for the rights of others. We are awakening and coming together in unexpected ways and in unprecedented numbers to use our voices and to wield our personal power to break down old, corrupt structures. There is still much work to be done, and as we continue to integrate and heal the deep pangs of division we all feel, I find solace in how we are united in our quest. It is a moment when the enormous bully or perpetrator says, “Yeah, I did it. So what are YOU going to do about it?”

This is our moment. This is our opportunity. I believe in your personal power and in mine. I believe this is the moment where our ability to stand tall for who and what we are, and represent it as best we know how is most crucial. Please take good care of yourself so you can stay strong and bring your best self. We will make the difference.

photo credit: Scott Lum