Knowing Power
By
Sarah Varcas
This final Quarter Moon of the year brings into focus the issue of power. Who and what has it and what we choose to do with it. This is of particular importance now, given the other current influences which demand both increased authenticity and heightened awareness. Power is an expression of energy and no energy is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It simply exists and how we put it to use defines its role in the world. Each one of us acts as a conductor of energy which flows throughout the universe animating all living things. The same energy that propels us forward through life causes the planets to orbit the Sun and the oceans to rise and fall. These forces of nature, destructive and creative in equal measure, are as much a part of us as of the cosmos. We have them at our disposal to fuel our path through life.
Which begs the question, if we have access to such immense power how come we often don’t feel it? Why can life feel so heavy or challenging? Why do we feel overwhelmed by its demands, by unhelpful habits we can’t seem to break, or simply by the power that other people have over us? In a nutshell, if we are so powerful, how come we still suffer and fail to get our own way?! This Moon, building to full and imploring us to take action and create change, has some important reflections to share. She reminds us that true power is not power over something or someone, power to manipulate life or to make the unwanted go away. That’s a distortion of power. That’s what ego tells us we should be able to do. It’s dualistic power – me up against you fighting to get my bit of success in the world. It’s the demand that life deliver exactly what is desired to this one in seven billion people that is me, on a small planet swirling through the vastness of space in an ever-expanding universe.
Today we are humbly advised that’s not how power works and if we want to claim ours we need to understand that the power to shape life and the power to be shaped by life are two very different things. The first assumes entitlement (to get what we want) and the second assumes responsibility (to play our part). On the cusp of the new year the better we can get to grips with this differentiation the quicker off the starting blocks we’ll be in 2015! The power which flows through us, propelling us into being at our moment of conception, fuelling us through to our moment of death and beyond, is born of this vast eco-system that is our universe. We are part of nature, the same as the trees, the stones, the stars. We are energy made flesh, resonating at different frequencies simultaneously which we experience as physical, mental, emotional and spiritual experience. The thoughts which pass through our minds are energy. The feelings that arise, the sensations we experience, our desires and aversions, aspirations and fears, these are all expressions of the same energy which keeps everything in its right place throughout the cosmos and beyond. This is the primal force which first exploded in the void creating the very spark of life that currently expresses itself in the form of you reading this and me writing it, the world as we know it today and the myriad versions of life which exist within it.
This energy is not personal it is collective. It fuels us to be a part of life, a conductor receiving and transmitting this energy wherever we go. It is not best used for personal gain but for collective evolution and when we waste it on trying to get the details of our life to work out for us we have missed the very essence of this gift. Power in these terms is the power to embrace life and all that it entails, to open our minds and hearts to the unfathomable, the incomprehensible, the paradoxical and illogical. This power is here to strengthen us through tough times, to give us patience of heart and peace of mind whilst life crumbles to be reformed a new. It comes as faith, insight, endurance and wisdom in the darkest moments and joy, inspiration and bliss in the lightest. This energy source from which we all draw has the capacity to give us everything that we need when we can fully open ourselves to it and allow it to flow through us unfettered and unbounded. We diminish it by using it to struggle and shape those things which occupy our minds because we think that’s what power is. But it isn’t. Power is what allows us to stand firm in the face of challenge; let go without struggle those things passing out of our lives; accept that what we think we deserve and what life, in all its complexity, has in store may well be very different, simply because it’s not all about us.
The power to which this Moon points can be claimed once we realise that we are a tiny speck in an infinite universe and the central Sun in our own world. To be both we must embrace the challenge of listening to life, letting it guide us where we need to be; allowing it to show us when to shape and control, when to release and allow. This is true power, for it means we are never broken by life’s twists and turns but instead step into them, feel their current and flow, shift and change as we must to match them. And we are never disappointed by life for it becomes an adventurous journey on which anything could happen and the ideas we have about how it should take shape don’t even come close to its true potential. This Aries Quarter Moon invites us to know true power because only in doing so can we fulfil the promise of incarnation and the potential of all that we are.
The evolution of consciousness continues a pace and 2015 will see another stage unfold. It needs us empowered and wise, clear about our roles and responsibilities along with our promise and potential. Here is our chance to demonstrate our commitment to the cause and claim the true power which is available for each one of us, raw and unfettered, a forever gift from the divine.
Sarah Varcas
