An intriguing question came through my Facebook newsfeed: what are your superpowers? On the surface, this may seem like a fun, diversionary post, prompting you to indulge in whimsy about your hidden, larger-than-life abilities. Yet there’s so much more to this question that calls you to discover and claim the special gifts and powers that are yours alone to share with the world.

Claim your superpowers and offer them up in service to others. This is how you become the true, beautiful, powerful you the world has been waiting for.

Forget the superheroes of the DC and Marvel universes, with their superhuman powers and strengths.  Yes it would be marvelous to fly, shapeshift, manipulate the elements, space travel, and the gazillion other fantastical talents of these otherworldly beings, but none of these things are within your human reach.

While you’re at it, forget the superstars that our culture obsesses about. Yes it might be marvelous to be a movie star, famous musician or artist, media celebrity, billionaire or world-class athlete, dazzling the world with your special talents and meteoric success, but, if you’re like the vast majority of us, these adulated characteristics won’t apply to you.

Superpowers aren’t only the prerogative of superheroes and superstars. You don’t need to measure your personal abilities, worthiness and contribution to society against these select, special few, with their showy, out-of-reach talents. It’s much more empowering, and interesting, to widen your gaze to the super-people closer to home, including yourself, with amazing, unique superpowers of the more accessible and nourishing kind.

Add to this the idea that you were born into this world for one reason: to claim your special gifts and offer them up to others. You are here, on this Earth, to be of service to others and our planet home. This service isn’t about self-sacrifice and personal deprivation; instead it’s your path to self-actualization. By claiming and cultivating your special gifts, and sharing them with others, you will naturally blossom into your true, beautiful, powerful Self.

Where you find this sweet spot of service and self-actualization, you know you’ve hit upon your superpowers.

When I read the post with the question about superpowers, I immediately put my fingers to the keyboard, and, without thinking, typed the following:

My superpower is to be a master story-hunter. I go searching for the story-magic that’s needed in the moment, traveling deep in the land of lost tales and forgotten dreams. I follow the trail of angst and longings of the story-seeker that show the way to the frozen-in-time moment of the long forgotten tale, and then I pluck the story back into the waking world and place it into the hands of the story-seeker, trusting them to discover and make their own the beauty and healing medicine from the lines and drama of the tale. My cape is deep red, the color of life and beating hearts and living stories. Yes! This is my superpower.

There’s a backstory to my superpower. Several years ago, I was on a four-day spiritual retreat that focused on finding your place and service in these turbulent, world-changing times. I had already begun working on my first Path of She book, but I couldn’t seem to find my groove. In one of the exercises, it suddenly came to me that I was a collector and teller of stories, and not just any old tales, but lost stories that arose from the deep roots of our collective humanity, and the sacred dark of our inner landscapes; stories that offered healing, transformative medicine for these times.

Yes I’m a writer, but that’s what I do, not who I am. In my sacred, essential core, I’m a master story-hunter. This is my superpower that I bring to most everything I do: my Path of She writing and teaching, my journey of soul, my personal relationships, my magic and ritual work, and in my every moment dance with life. I live and dream by story. I honor and free lost stories by returning them to the waking world, and to the story-seekers who arrive on my physical and cyber-space doorstep. My deepest wish is that these stories will help others find their own beauty and gifts, and claim their superpowers in service of themselves and others.

Words can’t do justice to the sense of rightness and peace that settle on me as I say these things out loud, and claim them as my special gifts and sacred purpose. This is my sweet spot of service and self-actualization. Yes! This is my superpower!

Pull up a blank page on your word processor or journal book and answer the question: what are my superpowers? Don’t think, just open to that part of you that knows why you are special and what gifts you have to offer this world, and let this part of you write.

By this question, I don’t mean your fantasy, wish-I-had powers, but your close-to-home, special-to-you beauty and gifts. Let your soul reveal itself on the page, and speak in whatever words best illuminate your superpowers.

If you’re blocked in answering this question, or you sense that your mind and preconceptions are interfering, let this exercise go. But carry the question with you for the next few days, remaining open, curious, and hungry to discover and name your superpowers.

Your superpowers don’t need to be showy or awe-inspiring. They can be a special talent, quality of being, or powerful kind of knowing. You’re already sharing your superpowers with the world. You can’t help it. They’re part of who you are, always present, although you may not be able to name and know them yet.

Think to your childhood play, your most passionate, joyful moments, the things your family and friends like best about you, and the times when you lit up the world around you. Stir up these memories and energies inside of you, and let them draw your awareness of your superpowers to the surface.

When you feel answers rising within you, pull up that blank page and give voice to the superpowers of your special gifts and sacred purpose. You’ll know you’ve found them when you feel that sense of rightness and relief that comes with naming a deep, profound, personal truth.

You were born into this world for one reason: to claim these superpowers and offer them up in service to others. You may not know what this means, or how to live in alignment with your superpowers, and that’s okay. Trust that you’ve found your sweet spot of service and self-actualization, and that something has shifted within you that will guide your way on your journey of blossoming into your true, beautiful, powerful Self.

Check out Path of She book offerings in the Path Store.

Artist: Autumn Skye (autumnskyeart.com)

I dream of being with a woman elder who teaches me about a clan of good men with special spiritual energy that have been with humanity throughout our history. Then the dream shifts. I’m waiting on a street corner on my island home for a man to pick me up and give me a ride. I intuitively know that he’s part of this clan: a good man, and a teacher and holder of this special energy. The car pulls up. He smiles and greets me. I get in the car and then the dream ends.

There are good men among us — the poets, teachers, leaders, wise men and healers who give over their hearts and hands in service of the miracle that is life.

In my waking-world life, I know this man, and he is indeed of this special clan of good men whose presence and deeds can open hearts, heal souls and change our world. He’s a poet, teacher and Zen practitioner — a brilliant yet humble man, with gentle, penetrating eyes that seem to take in our world of beauty and sorrow with a deep love, wisdom and crinkle of humor.

Oddly, the good man isn’t our cultural ideal of the masculine. Instead this ideal venerates “real men” who emulate a rugged self-determinism founded on domination and personal gain. In the battle for supremacy in our shared social order, real men fight their way to the top of the pile, reaping the rewards of wealth, power and adulation, indifferent to the price others pay for their success. Our modern political, social and economic systems are founded on this masculine ideal of dominion, will to power, and unfettered self-interest and greed.

It can be hard to recognize the good men among us given the long shadow of our cultural, real-men ethos. Many of us have experienced harm at the hands of an abusive man, or because of the misogynist roots and toxic male and female stereotypes that permeate our social order. Others may have a strong political or intellectual viewpoint that understands the role that men and patriarchal institutions have played in the worst of our human history and current malaise.

Yet there are good men in our midst, with big hearts and spirits, gifting their best in service of others and our world.  And these men, with their positive masculine traits, are desperately needed as partners, allies and role models in the mending and renewing of our human society.

When I shared my good-man dream with my poet neighbor who appeared as the good man in my dream, he replied, “Yes, there are such men without a doubt. I’m glad you know, Karen. That, in itself, is worth all the dreams.”

Here is a simple exercise for claiming this powerful, healing good-man medicine in your own life.

1. Start by turning your attention to the good men in the public sphere, living and historic.

Who are your heroes: men you admire for their good nature and good deeds? What gifts do they give to the world through their beliefs, writings, teachings and actions? What kind of positive change do they bring about? What impact do they have on the hearts and souls of others? How do they make the world a better place? Consider the common qualities that you admire in these men.

2. Carry these good men with you in your heart and thoughts for a day.

Imagine them as your companions as you go about your day-to-day life. Try to see the world through their goodness and best qualities. Notice these qualities in yourself and in others. Let your experiences widen your heart and change you.

3. Bring your awareness closer to home, to the good men in your family, community and workplace that more directly impact and influence your life.

With these more intimate connections, remember that no person can be all good, and that you may have a hard time seeing those near to you as fitting the good-man ideal because of some imperfection or inconsistency in their personality. Don’t look for perfection. Instead, consider the men in your life who have a good heart, give of themselves to others, and have a positive impact on the world around them.

4. Again, carry these good men with you in your heart and thoughts for a day.

See the world through their goodness and best qualities. Notice that the good-man ideal applies to everyday men in everyday circumstances, and that the men in your life have positive, life-affirming traits outside of our cultural, masculine stereotypes.

5. Choose a simple way to honor the good men in your personal life and the greater world.

You could tell one of these good men how much you appreciate them, share a positive article about men on social media, or better still, decide to change something about yourself in alignment with the good-man ideal, knowing that a positive masculinity is part of our human nature, available to all of us regardless of our biological gender or gender identity.

In doing these things, we can step outside of the culturally imposed masculine, and begin to dismantle and replace its restrictive, toxic parameters with the bigness of being, heart and soul that is the true, best essence of men and masculinity.

These things shake us awake from our disquieted acquiescence to the real-man cultural ideal. We widen our gaze to the good men and their positive masculinity. We remember: that our hands and our hearts are made for service to ourselves, each other and our Earth home; that good deeds, founded in love, compassion, justice and beauty, are the true markers of the best of our humanity; and that these life-affirming choices and actions are not just the responsibility of the good men of our world, but of each and every one of us.

Together we can claim the dream of the good man as our new cultural ideal of masculinity.

Photo Credit: Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Deep, transformative magic waits for us in our flesh and bones form. Our body is a treasury of primal wisdom and sensate knowledge that speaks to us through the language of movement and sensation. Wondrously, one of the best, most joyful ways to access this treasure trove is through inspired, ecstatic dance.

Breathe in the music. Surrender to the movements that naturally arise within you. Explore your body’s sensate wisdom. This is the transformative magic of dance.

I am infinitely blessed to be part of Dance Temple where my dancing tribe gathers each week, under the guidance of brilliant priestess-facilitators, to dive deep and wild into our body’s transformative magic through free-form movement.

This same magic is as close as the privacy of your own living space, where you can dive deep and wild into the dance temple of your own sacred body. This pathwork exercise guides you in the delicious process of creating your own dance temple experience.

For this exercise, choose at least thirty minutes of music that speaks deeply to your body and soul. It can be slow, fast or a mix. Don’t include your preferred dance music or your favorite songs. You want to discover and inhabit your body in new ways, not slip into your existing patterns of movement.
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The air is hot and moist, charged with the moving forms of fifty plus fully-embodied, dancing human-creatures. I remove my glasses; with my compromised vision, the outer world becomes a soft-edged, fluid sensuality woven of sound, scent, energy and the minutia of muscle, bone, breath and sweat.

Step onto the Dance Temple floor with me. Surrender to the music. Dance the body’s primal wisdom. Be changed by the minutia of muscle, bone, breath and sweat.

This is Dance Temple, a place of free-form, authentic movement. Our brilliant, inspired priestess-facilitators lightly guide our process, setting our shared focus and helping us to inhabit this moment together. The rules are simple: move however you want, don’t talk on the dance floor, and respect yourself and each other.

What is deep, deep inside rises to the surface and speaks in the spiraling of my spine, the rotating of my shoulder blades, the gyrating of my hips, the reaching and extension of my limbs, and the fluttering of my fingers. I am liquid me, joyfully, ecstatically, powerfully present and free.

I cannot speak for the inner process of others, but what I witness around me are exquisitely beautiful people, of different ages, shapes, colors and gender options, totally giving themselves over to the music and the moment. This is diversity in motion — a kaleidoscope of swaying, bopping, twirling, grooving bodies, each with a dance as unique as their fingerprints.

I cannot tell you how or why, just that I feel an exquisite rightness inside of me and in our togetherness, a kind of collective homecoming within our moving, inspired flesh. Whatever emerges from this fusion is pure love, pure joy and pure magic, the very stuff that can heal our souls and transform our world.

We need more Dance Temple moments in our lives, where we stop talking, start grooving and let our body do its unique, delicious thing, speaking in its sensate language of movement and dance. Our bodies know what we need to heal, grow and flourish. Our bodies know how to be with other bodies in a place of self-expression and respect. Our bodies know how to cultivate joy, make love and weave beauty.

Maybe, just maybe, the thing that can change our world is as simple as embracing the dance temple which is our own sacred body, with its unique form of expressive movement and profound range of sensate knowing. Alone and with our dancing tribe, we can move and groove, waking and shaking things up, and finding our way home together.

Related Post: The Dance Temple Habit: An Exercise in Full-Bodied Dance Magic

 Photo Credit: Christopher Campbell on Unsplash

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I’ll be totally honest with you; I was a reluctant recruit to the notions that men too are wounded by our patriarchal world and the negation of the feminine aspects of our human nature, and that they need women’s empathy and support in their healing.

Then one day, my best female friend challenged me. I’d been sharing with her my exploration of the Goddess, the sacred feminine and magic, and my recent healing work with my mother and feminine nature. She stopped me midstream and asked, “What about men and their wounding, Karen? How are you going to help them heal?”

My response was something along the lines of, “Not my problem. Let them figure it out on their own.”

Let’s reach for a shared reality in which gender is a liquid quality that doesn't limit us but morphs according to our individual configuration of our sacred feminine and masculine natures.

Not long afterwards, the Goddess came to me in a dream and gave me my marching orders, “I want my Beloved back.” And from there, many dreams and healing moments later, I realized that the tear in the outside culture between men and women was inside of me. And that I could only mend this tear, inner and outer, by extending the same loving concern and compassion for the wounding and pain of men as I did for myself and for my women kin.

Man or woman, gay, trans or straight, victim or privileged, we’re all born into a misogynist world that force feeds and constrains us within narrow, damaging male and female stereotypes and roles. For some the harm is direct and brutal, for others it’s more subtle and subtext, and none of us can escape the ever-present cultural negation of women’s ways, values and spirituality, and the mirror distortion and limitation of men and masculinity.

In this exercise, I invite you to explore the gendered tear inside of you, but gently so.

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