Photo by Lars Kuczynski on Unsplash
Dear Friends,
One month from today, September 29th, is Michaelmas when we bring to our consciousness the qualities of the Archangel Micha-el. I want to suggest a Micha-elic word/experience to contemplate every day for this month:
SOVEREIGNTY
For the last few weeks I have been wondering about the experience of sovereignty as I have been asked to present a program here in Chapel Hill on the theme of sovereignty on Michaelmas.
I’m wildly excited by what I am realizing about sovereignty and the self…yes, myself! All my work for the last 33 years has been about awakening, building and sustaining the sovereignty of self in others (and in myself!). This only happens through the sacred and essential art of self-imagining. Everything sacred is essential and everything essential is sacred. Nothing is more sacred or more essential than the Self, sovereignly imagined.
When I work with an individual in sacred conversations, I support them in peeling away all outside influences that hold dominion over how they feel about who they are. Every course in The Imagine Self Academy, every Inner Christmas message, every blog I post is dedicated to nurturing and cultivating self-sovereignty.
Sovereignty is the embodied and inspired presence of supreme inner power unswayed by outside influence. It is never too late to awaken your Sovereign Self.
Sovereignty is the core of equanimity. Sovereignty allows us to hold sway over the inner and outer complexities and contradictions of being human and being individual. Sovereign imagination cultivates how we shape our contributions, our relationships, our well-being and our inner development.
Without sovereignty our soul conforms to the realities of others. Our will obeys the authority of others in disregard of our own truth, beauty and goodness. Without sovereignty we become self-less, self-lacking.
Morally, self-sovereignty is the opposite of tyranny. Those who know inner sovereignty want no “power over” anything that is sovereign to another. The more awake we are to our self-imagined sovereignty the more we are awake to the sovereignty of others. Our social life, our responsibility to the planet and our creative consciousness begins with our reverence for what is sovereign, sacred and essential in ourselves and others.
In our formative years (birth to adulthood), we begin with imitating the authorities who surround us. Then with a growing sense of self, we begin to obey and disobey those who instruct us in life. Finally, we start judging ourselves and judging others and choose to emulate those we idolize and disregard those we deem foolish and out of fashion while we experiment with selfhood. All this can lead to genuine inner sovereignty if those we imitated, obeyed and emulated demonstrated self-sovereignty.
Now let’s ask some questions of ourselves about how we feel about self-sovereignty. These questions truthfully contemplated will bring us to direct experience of how self-sovereignty lives in our souls. Don’t judge, just notice. There is no single or right answer to any question.
Look at your formative years and the individuals who impacted your development. Did they model self-sovereignty?
Who do you give dominion to, submit to, cling to? The individuals and the groups?
What authority do you doubt? This is about the awakening of sovereignty in your direct experience rather than the belief in the word and world of others.
How confident are you in your ability to shape, design, alter anything in your personal life? Do you forego your needs, choices, opinions because you feel you must imitate, obey or emulate others?
Do you rely on the past to shape your future?
What is scary to you about self-sovereignty?
What is feminine about sovereignty? This is an important question because we live in a world that is historically misogynistic.
Over the next four weeks I will be posting more about the Micha-elic experience of personal sovereignty. Please email or post in the comments your thoughts and questions about sovereignty.
I just did a quick count of how many times I wrote and you read the word “sovereignty”. 29+ times. It should be living in your soul now!
The webinar I gave 12 days ago, Being Worthy, was full of ways to experience sovereignty in feeling whole, feeling safe, and feeling welcome. You can still listen to the replay and access all the Being Worthy supporting materials. Click here.
