"This Week"by the
Bahrain Meditation Centre

19th August, 2006

The Empowerment Seriesnd Embrace Self Responsibility

During the last decade the concept of empowerment has sold many books, filled many workshops and is now funding a new industry called coaching. But what is empowerment exactly? Is it just another fashionable concept in the arena of personal development? Is it just another passing fad in a plethora of self help techniques now available at the touch of a button near you?

Personal development is not self empowerment. To develop something implies to add too or accumulate more of. Personal empowerment does the opposite. Self empowerment is not true empowerment until:

1 The attachments which make the self dependent on others are released
2 The barriers which the self erects to protect itself are collapse.
3 The illusions which drain and distort the energy of the self are dissolved

You already are a powerful being and you already have all the power you need and can ever have. It is simply suppressed, blocked or distorted by a variety of factors that you are mostly unaware of. Foremost among these factors are the beliefs you have learned in the past which now lie at the core of the many habits you have developed which sabotage your power.

During the course of the next few months we will intermittently explore a variety of these learned and fatal beliefs and look at ways to cancel and replace those beliefs with the truth. Belief is not the truth. The most common fatal belief is the one that currently runs the world. It sounds like this, “It’s not me, and it’s them”. This is the illusion that someone else is responsible for what you think, feel and do. Whenever you point the finger at someone else for what you feel, you make yourself a slave to that person or that situation. Each time you blame, you affirm another fatal belief that you are a victim. This is self disempowerment!

The only way to restore your power is to release this belief and allow the truth, which you already know, to emerge and establish itself within your consciousness. In this case the truth can seem quite harsh and extreme. Which is why, when it is practiced, it is so powerful. The truth is also always simple, “It’s not them, and it’s me”. Always.

It doesn’t matter what happens, regardless of the nature of the event or the sharpness of the words intended to insult, your response is always your own creation. And if you feel upset, scared or sad in any way it is always your own creation. Suffering is always self created. That is why, buried within this truth is a deeper truth, “Nothing bad ever happens”. (We’ll return to that in more detail later in the series).

A powerful soul has reawakened within their consciousness, the awareness that they have a choice in their every response. They have realized they can maintain a calm, positive, stable attitude, regardless of what happens around them, even to their physical body. When they do, it’s as if they ‘stand in their power’ once again.

For most of us this theory is hard to see, and even harder to imagine practicing. We will even find ways to resist it, as we remain attached to the belief that others make us feel what we feel. One sign of this resistance arises with the thought, “Well if you don’t react negatively to bad news, if you are not affected by the negative words of others, it means that you are not human and you don’t care”. Once again the opposite is true. The mark of an effective leader is they never react negatively to anything or anyone. This enables them to show others how maintain a positive attitude and respond proactively to any crisis or chaos when it arises. Someone who has restored their personal power cannot be insulted as they know themselves so well they are unaffected by others negative vision of them. This allows them to be available to help others through and out of their self created negativity. This is the true meaning of turning the other cheek. It doesn’t mean allowing someone to carry on with their negative behavior. It means engaging with them, seeking to understand them, developing a compassionate response, and thereby helping them to see, when they are ready to see, that they are only disempowering themselves.

Ultimately the empowered individual has realized and is able to live the simplest truth which sounds like this, “ Its not what you say or do to me that makes me feel this way, it’s what I do with what you say or do to me that makes me feel this way”. This takes time, practice, patience and, as you can imagine, much self forgiveness!

Question: In which two relationships in your life today are you currently blaming others for how you feel?
Reflection: Why are you not accepting responsibility for your mental and emotional suffering?
Action: Visualize yourself responding in the above relationships in a positive, proactive way?

Om Shanti
(I am a peaceful soul)