Don’t look outside of yourself to understand and source leadership and power, look within. Every one of us is a leader when we tap into the inner sovereignty of our unique configuration of beauty and power. To be a leader is to take full ownership for your best qualities and abilities, and gift them to the greater world through your presence and actions.
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As a young woman, I was hungry for power and influence. From my middle school years onward, I was a consummate leader. My siblings, school mates and later my co-workers would most likely have told you I was bossy, competitive and a compulsive overachiever, but my mother knew different.
She sensed I was a gifted, high energy person adapting to the cultural options available to me for power and leadership. She steered me into a business education and corporate career, and couldn’t have been prouder when I graduated top of my MBA class and lined myself up for a prestigious consulting career.
Pivotal events conspired to rewire my understanding of power and leadership: the lightning flash of insight that my material, achievement-driven life was bereft of soul; my refusal to follow a career that required me to operate as a man in my woman’s body; and waking up to the mean-spirited, abusive underbelly of my culturally inherited, hierarchical model of leadership.
In this leadership model, leaders stand out from the crowd by being better or more than their competition: more brainy, more skilled, more charismatic, more influential, more connected, more aggressive, more of whatever attributes are lauded in a particular environment. Power is to be hoarded and shared among the limited, most worthy few.
A Sovereign Vision of Leadership
Even after I had become a spiritual person following the egalitarian, life-affirming ways of the Goddess and sacred feminine, I still coveted ‘better than the competition’ leadership status in my new spiritual circles.
Then one painful, life-changing day, a dear friend made me shamefully aware that my conception of power and leadership, with its ‘better-than’ ethos, was predicated on negating the innate worth and soul beauty of others. As in most of my turning points, I was gifted with a dream vision that completely rewired my understanding of power and leadership.
[p-quote2] In this vision, I am sitting on a throne, bearing the full regalia of a queen: crown, ring, scepter and royal robe. When I look around, I am surrounded by infinite thrones, interconnected by a web of silver, shimmering threads, one for every person, creature and life form on the Earth. And I know that when you approach my throne, you must bend and kiss my ring in recognition of my unique beauty and gifts, and when I approach your throne I must do the same for you.[/p-quote2]
There is no top or bottom of the pile, no better or worse, just infinite configurations of beauty and power. Your true leadership shines forth when you fully claim the inner sovereignty of your soul-based Deep Self and honor the same in others.
Discovering Your Sovereign Leadership
In this sovereign vision of leadership, you seek out your personal power by turning your awareness inward. You become the leader you are meant to be when you claim and live from your unique configuration of beauty, gifts and best qualities.
To do this essential pathwork, you have to step aside of your habituation of thought and action that tells you who you are and what your place is in the outer world, and turn your attention to your inner voice, the one connected to your soul-based Deep Self and true beauty.
Here is a simple, potent exercise to begin this pathwork.
1. Quiet your mind and center yourself in your inner landscape.
Find a private space in your home where you won’t be disturbed. Close your eyes. Take several slow, full breaths, focusing on the movements and sounds of your breath and body. Let go of your thoughts and any stress or tension you may be holding. Make yourself as empty and open as you possibly can.
2. Turn your awareness inward. Look to your past and select one incident when you felt authentic and powerful, either by yourself or in the company of others.
Open to this incident. Remember the details. Feel the experience in your body. Let it speak to you and teach you about the beauty and gifts that are yours to live and share with others. Really take this information in. Let it infuse and fill you up with a felt sense of your personal power and best qualities.
3. Visualize your inner throne room and claim this space as your own.
The incident you are remembering arises from your inner sovereignty, a place inside of you that holds your unique configuration of beauty, gifts and best qualities.
Use your imagination to create this inner space. It can be a throne room, or a garden, or whatever symbolic space speaks to your inner sovereignty and personal power.
Settle into this room. Fill it up with everything you know about your beauty, gifts and best qualities.
Set the intention to continue to visit and learn about this inner space, and the secrets it holds for you on your path of reclaiming your sovereign leadership.
4. Bring this exercise to a close.
Place your hands on your solar plexus and know that this sovereign space exists inside of you, in your core, and you can return to it at any time.
Then use your breath to bring your focus back to your physical body and your waking, everyday consciousness. Pat your body and say your name out loud.
This exercise is not a one-time practice, but a continuous focus of your Path of She pathwork. When you do this kind of deep, introspection work and set the intention to learn more, life will bring new lessons, insights and experiences your way to help you truly know and reclaim your beautiful, powerful sovereign leadership.
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