TRANSCRIPT: “In order to talk about Love let us talk about power first. It will help if we can deepen these concepts. We are talking here about ‘empowerment’, but I don’t think we actually understand the word power. For a lot of people the word power also has become a painful experience because they associate it with control, e.g. power over.
Humanity’s greatest learning right now is to come to a loving understanding of what power is about, and therefore to understand what to ‘be empowered’ is about. Because to be empowered does not mean that ‘now it is my right’ and ‘now it is my turn and I can do what I want’. That is all coming from the ‘will’ centre, it is not coming from awareness and it is not coming from ‘heart’. This is sometimes the flip-side of having felt disempowered for so long.
In order to come to a more balanced relationship with the word ‘power’ and what power means we also have to honour and understand where we get power ‘from’. We are each of us amazing and beautiful expressions of a greater wisdom, we are each of us cells within a larger body, we are each of us beings of light and expressions of Life.
Also to honour that, we would not even feel any sense of power if we did not have the air to breath and the water to drink and the nourishment that our planet provides us or the capacity to learn and to be conscious. All of those capacities and these living resources, by which we have this gift of human life, we did not create those. So that will ground us already in a sense of humility and gratitude for even having this opportunity to be here to talk each other. What I have seen is that in coming from disempowerment to empowerment there is a lot of balancing that needs to happen.
Sometimes the flipside happens and then it is suddenly ‘control over’ and saying “now i am going to be the one making the decisions” and “I will now make you feel how it was to..”. All of that comes from pain, of course it is understandable but I feel that there is the need to truly make an effort, all of us, to go deeper in that reflection. We are so quick, especially in our modern society, to think that we know, to think “yes now I am empowered”. Really? What does it mean?
In a lot of my work with women for the last 20 years I have had a lot of women who come to me in my private practice as a mentor and a coach, who say “I don’t know what it means to feel like a woman”. Some feel really shy to talk about this, they feel like they have been living in an organised clock-time way for so long, and you could call that ‘the masculine’, but is that really true?
When I see a man that is truly in his balance he has an amazing sensitivity and vulnerability. I often feel that men carry their ‘feminine’ inside and we carry our ‘masculine’ inside. So a man is actually really soft and is really vulnerable on the inside, and maybe that is why men sometimes harden on the outside because it is scary because the inside is really quite soft and is very receptive. Whereas we are sometimes surprised by women because we may look so vulnerable and soft on the outside but inside we can be tough and sometimes quite hard as well.
To be empowered first of all means that you are really being in balance with yourself, you are being integrated, and you are living in a balanced relationship with all that sustains you and all that forms part of ‘that you can be you’ today. If you have that gratitude and awareness there is a natural respect that flows out from you to everyone else because you understand that you are the sameness.
We are each unique expressions of that sameness. When that awareness is truly embodied then we can come into a space of collaboration and co-creation and move out of competition and divisional dynamics. But we need to be patient with ourselves and support each other, because these other patterns are deeply ingrained. There is a very deep conditioning.
Just to say the ‘word’ does not mean we embody the ‘behaviour’. This is where feedback and checking-in with each other is so important to say “look this is my intention, but how am I really coming across? Do you feel free to express yourself? Is this an empowering relationship for you? Does this relationship support you to flourish, and do you feel safe to also express what are your insecurities and your vulnerabilities?” These kind of questions and checking-in whether the way think we come across and the reality actually are aligned, are really important.
There is such a deep unlearning that needs to take place before we come into a more natural way of being. To provide a safe space for these ‘difficult’ conversations with each other and to live longer in that question of “do we really understand what power is?” With power comes responsibility. That is why this article I wrote recently about Kanyini which is an Australian aboriginal concept. Kanyini is about love with responsibility through infinite care. Yes, that is what I like to share.” ~ Anneloes Smitsman
This video is from the recording of the radio interview with Anneloes Smitsman, CEO & Founder of EARTHwise Centre, and Rose Trefz, Founder of Global Sisterhood and Worldwide Women’s support circle, hosted by Heidi Little and Bob Challenger as part of their One Love Rising Radio Show.
- To listen to the full interview on youtube, click here.
- To listen to the original recording via itunes and more, click here.
Picture credit feature image: New Dawn Collection.
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