Who do we give it to? From political leaders and religious icons to the person walking down the street, generally speaking we give our power away to anyone we think can make our journey on earth easier, safer, and pain-free; anyone who convinces us they have a quick fix, or will do the work for us, or take our problems away; anyone who will protect us from the consequences of traveling on this earth plane. Besides people, we give our power to an assortment of belief systems, thoughts and ideologies that promise the above.

It is ironic. Even though we each chose to experience this journey in the earth dimension, the first thing we will trade in is that very experience. When we encounter the difficult bumps in the road, we want to give up, get out, medicate, or turn the whole thing over to someone else to do for us.

Does it work?  Never. Giving our power away leads us into bigger problems, bigger bumps, more complicated consequences, and general unhappiness. Giving our power away ultimately leads to disappointments, feelings of betrayal, and massive participation in the blame game. It is a waste of our energy, for giving  power to others can never produce any worthwhile or long-lasting results. How ironic, again, that when the person or belief system we’ve given our power to doesn’t give us the promised goods, we turn on it or them.  It does not occur to us to question whether giving our power to anyone or anything in the first place was a good idea. It does not occur to us to ask if we ourselves are responsible. Instead, we kill the king, martyr the savior, divorce the partner …and promptly look for another. Out comes our silver platter with our power placed on it, asking for takers, asking for someone or something else to be responsible for our journey. Around and around we go through the centuries, missing the opportunity each time to realize the problem isn’t with them, it is with us and our endless willingness to give our power away.

The fact is, no one can do the journey for you. Further, you don’t really need anyone or anything to do it for you because you carry within yourself all the tools that you need. One secret ingredient that will help you walk your path powerfully is something no one likes to talk about: pain. You must be willing to feel your pain. Pain is common to the human journey, and everyone’s path is painful. Pain is not as bad as you may think. It is much better than the suffering that entails when you give your power to others or to a belief system in the false hope of getting rid of the pain you must encounter on your journey.  When we are willing to be OK with the pain, we are much less likely to give our power away because we’ll have removed one of the main reasons why we give away power to others in the first place. We will also be less likely to medicate for the same reason.  We’ll know that medicating is just an avoidance of those difficult and painful bumps which we all must eventually face.

The word power has a very solid and grounded feel to it, and you feel it the more you claim your  journey. When you take your power back and keep your energy within your own path, it is available for you to use in facing those obstacles and bumps on your road.   You can have friends, guides, teachers, supporters, leaders by your side, but the obstacles in your path are yours alone to face. No one can ever stand in that spot on your path but you. Everyone else is on the sidelines of your journey. It is unfair to others to try to place your obstacles in their lap, even if they ask for them. You must walk your walk yourself, every single inch of it. That is power.  You can’t help but feel powerful when you really get that you are absolutely and completely responsible for your responses and how you use your energy on a path that is uniquely all yours.

How do you keep your power, then? You need to be willing to keep your power. You need to be aware of the age-old human tendency to place power on a platter and hand it over to others and others’ belief systems in an attempt to avoid pain, and resist that tendency. It is very subtle, so be aware that we do it often, in all sorts of small and large ways. You need to be aware that while others may give you pieces of the puzzle, you’ll have to put them together yourself. The path you journey on is yours alone to figure out, and by doing so, you and your path become authentic and powerful testimonials to your spiritual energy.

The final irony in the human weakness to relinquish our power and our path is that we are each extremely powerful and sophisticated spiritual energies, or we would not have contemplated journeying to this very difficult human dimension.  More than contemplating, we have all decided to actually experience it!  Power is your middle name. So the next time you are tempted to place your power outside yourself and look for a new leader, a new ideology, a new savior to bring you happiness and smooth out the painful obstacles on your road, know that a portion of your spiritual energy is having a huge ‘belly-laugh’ over the absurdness of such a situation!

One thing I have come to realize  is that behind all that rushing is fear.  Not an obvious fear, but fear, nonetheless.  We  become driven by the myth that there is some destination point, some arrival point that we must hurry up and get to. We  rush through our lives because we are afraid that we may ‘miss out’, ‘arrive too late’, or not get to that magical destination point.  Having rushed all my life, I can tell you there is no such thing as a destination point.  We never ‘arrive’; there will always be a further destination point that our mind will trick us into believing exists just up ahead.  At some point we begin to realize that it’s all about the process, the present process, and that the  journey is never-ending.

In reality, our very rushing causes us to miss out on the essences that we most want in life.  Life is a feeling experience, and we can only feel in the now moment.  The feeling experiences that we want out of life can only be experienced in the present.  Yet somehow, our mind has tricked us into believing it’s all ‘up ahead’.  We get so focused on that future destination point that we miss completely the life that is happening in front of our eyes.  If we stop for a moment, we may see that at least some of what we most want is already here, hiding in some small corner of the present moment, waiting for us to water it with our attention so that it can grow bigger.

It’s not easy to take your foot off fourth gear if you’re a rush-aholic. You have to re-configure your priorities.  What really are you here to achieve?  What’s the fear that’s driving you? It takes a lot of  soul-searching, clarity and discipline to give up all that hurrying toward future-based fantasies and that mythical, magical arrival point.  Whatever causes you to stop rushing, be grateful for it. Sometimes, your worn out, exhausted body may be the one to put on the brakes.  You’re forced to stop. You can no longer rush. You’ll find yourself  in a strange environment; you’ll even experience culture shock.  Such is what it is like for a rush-aholic to finally arrive in the present.

The present moment–aahh, could this be the arrival point you were always seeking?  As you move toward becoming a recovering rush-aholic, you’ll find the future will begin to drop away. Don’t be alarmed… no, you are not dying.  There is something up ahead, but you no longer try to live there.  You can take your time.  You understand that you can feel only in the present, so what’s the rush?

Part of the answer can be found in our biology. We are indeed, the human animal. The physical body that carries us through this earth journey shares about 97% of its DNA with the chimpanzee. As a species, we are little more than a glorified ape. Chimpanzees, as we know from Jane Goodall’s extensive research, commit assassinations, mass murders and serial killings. Yet since civilization began, we humans have been attempting to transcend our biology and act in a more conscious and enlightened way, worthy of the divine soul that inhabits these animal bodies. But when we are under pressure, when we are in the grip of fear, the bridge we’ve been patiently building between the divine and the animal quickly snaps. Under the pressure of fear, we become the human animal, exhibiting greater violence than any other species in the animal kingdom. 

Fear has most of us by the throat. It is just a matter of degree and intensity as to when we succumb to our DNA.  For some, just a little bit of pressure on the jugular causes them to throw reason, awareness, divine compassion, or what they most love in life to the winds. 

We are engaged in a grand experiment. Can what we call the human spirit transcend its physical biology and act in accord with the divinity that we truly are?   Can we take our power back from fear and learn to respond to fear consciously? The earth plane is the PhD course in overcoming fear. Our success in this classroom and our ability to help evolve this great experiment rests on our willingness to become conscious, self-aware and connected to our divinity when we are in the presence of fear.  

It is the most difficult work we will ever do while on this earth plane. The first step is to understand the nature of the classroom and to begin to understand the ground rules. We can accept that fear is not going anywhere, and that we have a biological tendency to act out like an ape when we feel fear. We can remember that we are part of a great experiment. Then we can roll up our sleeves and begin the process of becoming more self-aware; we can start to walk the very narrow path that will allow us to stay focused on our spiritual mission to overcome fear.