What makes you feel strong in your life? What makes you feel connected to the force of life that pulses through the whole universe, and beats through your heart? How do you access it? How do you want to utilize it? How do you unleash your power?

We are all powerful. Each of us is an embodied expression of life’s desire to exist and its capacity to become, to continue, to dissolve, and to reintegrate. We are each a continuum of cosmic ferocity, capable of reshaping ourselves and impacting the world. 

That’s not to say we don’t feel disempowered sometimes, or disconnected from the source of our energy. 

The struggles and setbacks, the failures and dark nights of the soul are going to be here. There is no final destination in which we resolve everything, and swim in a pool of light, problem free. I know you know this. But sometimes when times are hard, we all need a reminder. As we rub against, push through, or lean into the challenges of the moment, we reshape ourselves, and carve new features. Some parts get destroyed. Other parts become more prominent. And more parts, new ones, rise into existence. 

There are times in our lives when we feel deeply connected, when the challenges we face feel like opportunities. We hear teachings that support this sentiment, and we experience our capacity to choose and keep choosing this outlook as a way of living. This is empowering. 

We all know the power of gratitude. We know that when we turn our attention to the things that work, to the beauty that is right here, to the blessings in our lives, our system responds. Other systems around us respond too. We feel more connected. We’re able to bounce back from hardships. 

Gratitude helps us function with levity and grace, with open heartedness, even in the face of tragedy and in the midst of crisis. It helps us see where the treasures hide, who and what is helpful. It gives us strength to stand where we are, and helps us find our next step. 

Personally, I think that being grateful for the actual misfortune is a bypass. We must contend with the pain, allow the real feelings to express and be seen, and give grief a ground to plant into before growing a gratitude tree. But creating meaning, and forging opportunities within the tight crevices of struggle, can breed not only potency, but the capacity to actualize, and give birth to something of value. 

Periods of disenchantment, when the world seems to crumble, and the hardships keep piling on, and we feel like we cannot carry the weight anymore, are inevitably going to be there too. We will sometimes feel powerless, trapped in a collapsing reality, unable to see possibilities, and even lacking the desire to change.

We can get stuck in the murky mud of feeling like we just can’t take it anymore. But this feeling can also be a catalyst. Sometimes we need to choose to shift. Other times, when the heaviness is really coming down at us, we need to lay low, stay down, let the darkness hold us, and in a soft way receive ourselves in that place. This is where we wait for the structures to fall down. Open sky will appear. Eventually. We have to give it time. We can’t push for it. We can’t force it. We just have to wait.

We tend to think of waiting as passive. External action is validated by modern society. We only feel empowered if we take steps toward something, or out of somewhere. Doing something about a situation is necessary and important. AND sometimes, the very act of letting ourselves rest, turn off the lights, and sink in, syncing with the rhythm of the night, is the portal into the light. 

We are not in control. There are many other forces around us. It’s not that we don’t have agency or leverage, but we’re not the only ones calling the shots. We’re not exactly always in charge of our own selves either; Our biology influences our outlook. Hormones dictate much of our mood, and no matter how much effort we put into not letting our emotions be in the driver seat, we can’t always harness our own energy. We slip into the arms of the feelings sometimes, and can’t always direct the flow according to our intentions. Our nervous system is not always regulated. Even those of us who know how to recognize when it isn’t, can’t always catch the dysregulation in the moment. We also operate with patterns so deeply rooted in our unconscious, that we aren’t always able to see where the behavior comes from, or feel like we have a choice in how we respond to a situation or to an inner conversation. 

And yet we can choose. And rechoose. And choose again. And choose how to be with our choice. And choose how to move with the thing we didn’t choose. And choose who we shape ourselves into when the choice isn’t ours. 

Our power isn’t set in certainty. Our power is an undulating, twisting, and ever adjusting energy. It is a force of transformation. And it is both gentle and fierce. It has a Sarpa Drśti; Serpent Gaze, in Sanskrit. Sarpa Drśti refers to the ability to look at things from different angles, to wrap ourselves around something through many directions, to be able to burrow into subterranean worlds, crawl on the earth, and also slither up tree trunks and coil around branches.  

In some key streams within the yoga tradition, the power of the universe is thought of as Śakti; The Goddess. Śakti in Sanskrit means; power, capacity, capability, force. When the power of the universe becomes an individual, it moves through the body as Prana – the life force that permeates all of existence. The yogis envisioned the transformative aspects of this great feminine force as a serpent, coiled and dormant at the base of the spine, until she awakens, usually through practice (sometimes spontaneously). This power is Kundalini. 

In a previous post we explored the Indian story of how the gods joined and generated  together a power greater than each of them alone. They were facing a buffalo demon who was threatening to suffocate the universe with his immovable certainty. They emanated power from their third eye, and sent it into the center of their circle. This great conjunction of energy, light, and heat, created the goddess Durga – tough cookie, demon slayer, badass beauty, wise warrior. 

The gods are ready to send Durga into battle, but the goddess retreats into a cave and she stays there for a while. Lashing out at a demon without proper prep isn’t her style. She needs time to figure out who she is and to cultivate who she wants to become. Time to study, to meditate, to practice pranayama. Time to dance all night and sing her heart out. Time for resting on the ground and crying for days. Time to train her heart to stay soft. Time for teaching her mind how to think broadly and how to focus, how to be inclusive and discerning simultaneously. She waits. She learns how to receive the tides and how to let them go. 

It’s dark in the cave, and she softens her skin and sinks into the walls and the ground of this womb; commingled with the enveloping embrace of creation, and her own distinct, independent expression of it. She syncs her rhythm with that of the darkness. And she waits. Ain’t nothing passive about this. 

When she emerges, it’s not that she feels steady, or sturdy, or ready. We don’t always exactly feel ready, do we? We convince ourselves that we are so that we can go for it, even as we tremble. She hasn’t perfected anything, or made herself immune. Immunity is the delusion of demons. She is strong and she is scared and she is sacred. This is risky business. Nothing assures her victory. That’s what makes her courageous. She is connected, committed, and still conflicted. 

She wishes she could stay in the womb for just a little longer. But it’s time. She leaves the protective walls of the cave, steps into the open air, her power irrepressible, it will not be contained, but she has done the work, and formed clear boundaries. 

To unleash our power we must first harness it. Different times in our lives require different methods, different practices, different rhythms. Sometimes we need to wait. Sometimes we need to just do it. We don’t always have the privilege of retreating into a cave for a thousand years. Sometimes we need to figure things out while on the go. There are ways for us to cultivate an inner cave; small, yet deeply effective touch points that help us gather our strength and utilize it in ways of wisdom. 

We can become wise sages, but we are never not also wild savages. How do we harness something that we can never be fully in charge of? We can never control our inner beast. And do we want to? Do the work. Get better at gathering yourself. Keep the shadows seen, the demons fed, and the madness integrated, not repressed. The madness is our creative flame, and it must keep an untamed spark. 

Durga comes out of the cave riding a lion. She has befriended her animal nature. The lion’s mane is still big and wild, danger still twinkling in their eyes, teeth sharp, and their roar still booming through the landscape. Regal and sovereign, feral and fierce. Durga hasn’t tamed the lion, but has cultivated a relationship of mutual respect. Unleashing this great ferocious power requires skill, practice, discipline, and the courage to be just enough out of control. 

Hope this touches your heart in that soft place of your animal nature, caresses your mind in that hard place where the human tries so hard to be in control, makes your body feel seen and understood, and gets your creative energy moving.

Do you wanna listen to a VoiceOver of this essay? Check it out my Substack and subscribe there.

Sending you so much love,

Hagar