Self-expression, empowerment and healing from the past.

An inner exploration.

Once upon a time, in a land not-so-far-away, a younger and more naïve version of me had the horrifying realisation that the spiritual community she’d devoted most of her time and energy to was not, in fact, the vibrant cauldron of personal empowerment she’d thought it was.

It was the opposite.

In healing from that cult experience, I made a decision that I thought reflected my values.

That decision became of one of the guiding principles of my life.

I want no part in disempowering anyone. Ever.

Seems like a fine decision, doesn’t it? I thought so.

And yet, an innocuous comment on last week’s post helped me realise that in trying to abide by it, I was inadvertently gagging myself.

The comment that spotlighted what I had yet to see, was reasonable and kind.

It asked me to explain the relevance of the first part of the post (my old feeling of not-enoughness fuelling the consumption of content) to the rest of the post (my desire to consume things for fun getting in the way of the silence I need to hear my intuition clearly).

The superficial reason that I didn’t actively connect the two ideas in the post was easy for me to see: the connection between the two things was obvious to me and I simply forgot to explain that connection to people who aren’t in my head!! 😂¹

But that wasn’t the only thing I realised.

In the past, trying to uncover what was really going on for me (so that I could address it) used to look like this:

Does that make you wanna tell me anything you think I wouldn’t want to hear?

Yeah, me neither. But that was how I rolled for decades. Until one day, in a moment of grace, I had a realisation that changed my life.

It took me a long time to train myself to see uncovering something ‘negative’ as a fabulous opportunity for growth (instead of something to berate myself over).

*insert video montage of me trying to live this way and failing for years until it eventually starts to stick*

Supporting myself with curiosity and self-compassion is now much more the norm than the exception, and looks a bit like this:

Which is why, when I considered what was really going on for me when I wrote last week’s slightly disconnected post, it was easy for me to see what was lying beneath the surface.

So what does not wanting to imply there’s a hierarchy or to present myself as a guru have to do with me not explaining my logic properly?

It turns out I’m still healing from my cult experience, and I still recoil from the idea of being a “spiritual teacher”. I think there’s something great about that. I’m not full of ego, and I genuinely want to stand for empowerment instead of disempowerment.

But my commitment to empowerment needs to include me. I don’t want to gag or disempower ME.

I don’t particularly want to arrive at a place where I’m ok with declaring myself a Spiritual Teacher. That idea honestly makes me gag a little.

But it’s also important for me to acknowledge that I’ve dedicated the bulk of my life to personal growth and spirituality. I’ve spent countless hours, months, years, exploring my inner world, learning to channel, working with energy, learning to love myself, working out how to hear and follow my intuition, developing a modality that is incredibly powerful when it comes to helping myself and other people Return to Wholeness.

If I’d dedicated myself just as ardently to learning how to be an architect or an accountant, would I hesitate to call myself an Accounting Teacher? Or an Architecture Professor?

Hell no!

I think where it gets messy is that Spirituality feels to me like ‘learning how to live’. And yes, I’ve done all that inner exploration and uncovered incredible and powerful things that make growth and expansion so much easier. And I genuinely want to share that with people.

But I’m not ok with thinking of myself as someone who’s teaching people how to live.

Helping people to connect to their own guidance? No problem!

Assisting in people’s inner world exploration so they can reconnect to their own power? Sure!

In a previous post titled Why I’m retiring from Being of Service, I declared the following:

“Going forward, here’s what I don’t wanna do:

• preach

• feel like I’m trying to teach you something

• imply that I know what you need better than you do

• do anything (either consciously or unconsciously) to make you adopt my world view or opinions.

What I DO want, is to share myself, my journey and my explorations with you in real and authentic ways. To connect, to create community and to sprinkle lightness and delight into the world.”

I think I was on the right track with that, but I think the “I don’t wanna feel like I’m trying to teach you something” needs some tweaking. Not the intention exactly. More my interpretation of it.

I want my sharing to be connected, authentic and real. I don’t want to leave gaps (just to make sure that I’m not spoon-feeding people). I want to feel free to rant when I want to rant. I want to feel like I can communicate my passion and my beliefs without restricting myself just to make sure I’m not trying to ram them down people’s throat.

I don’t want to hold back.

But I do want to be conscious. In my communication. In my sharing. In my life.

This remains a work in progress for me. A continued unfolding.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of this!

This is where I’d normally put the comment button. But this time I’m trying something different. There will still a comment button a little further down the post. But you can also get to the comments section by hitting the heart button AND you’ll simultaneously make my day (coz the hearts make me happy)!

The unfolding continues…

If you’d like to respond to some questions, then that’s lucky coz I’ve got some!

1. What was your favourite drawing this week?

2. What’s your relationship with empowering/disempowering other people? How about empowering/disempowering yourself?

3. Do you regularly hold back your self-expression to try to control someone else’s experience of you? How do you think and feel about that?

See you in the comments!

1. In rereading this post I realised that I STILL hadn’t explained the connection between the two aspects of last week’s post! The point I was making was that even though I was consuming content from a theoretically ‘good’ place (wanting more fun), rather than a ‘bad place’ (feeling like I needed to ‘know more’ so I could fix my not-enoughness), consuming it in a way that doesn’t allow the space I need for my intuition to land, still doesn’t work for me. So yes, I upgraded from a shit motivation to a good one. But that doesn’t mean there’s not still more room for improvement!