There’s a lot written about the power of awareness: quite rightly and so good especially for these times when much that was hidden in our global lives is being thrown up to the surface.
It’s often given as a solution or desirable outcome. And it’s true that energy of opening and newness can bring a huge sigh and a smile of relief.
Becoming aware is like going outdoors for the first time. It’s fresh, there’s light and space, a distant horizon in place of the walls of contraction. This is the liberating power of awareness. Freedom from, so to speak.
However, to be new, something must be strange. With awareness we are strangers in a strange land. With this newness can come trepidation. We may notice we feel on guard. And many of us will go back indoors.
Freedom from: freedom to
Maybe you’ve heard of this: the hero’s journey. It’s a pattern that runs through human myths universally, discovered by Joseph Campbell and written in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. You’ve seen it replicated – simplified – in a thousand films and novels. And it’s how we tell our biography: it’s human storytelling.
So – the hero is an ordinary being, going about their day, when crisis strikes. The hero is confronted with circumstances and a dawning realisation that it’s make or break: something must be done. The hero realises it could be all down to them.
In the storybooks and many films, the hero sets forth with gusto. However in the original pattern, the hero may ‘refuse the call’. Some want to go back indoors and maybe they do. To succeed, any hero has to leave home – a wonderful metaphor for the journey we begin with the outdoors power of awareness.
There’s no going back. It’s scary. Exciting.
Once outside, the hero begins the journey which has the purpose of finding the elixir to take back to the community to save it. Through encounters with helpers and challengers along the way, the hero learns and changes. They find the elixir and joyfully return home.
The outcome isn’t reclamation. It’s evolution. What started out as blinking awareness in the light of the unknown and new outdoors with purpose in heart, brings evolution: the upward spiral of going back to the same place but it’s not the same. It’s better.
Our freedom to exercise our power for good lies in the awareness of our powers. They are the elixir of action, wisdom and heart with commitment, jovial collaboration and vitality.
These are our energies: our natural born energies. Not a quick flip into enlightenment, but a wonderful, rocky, exciting and worthwhile human journey meeting many others like us along the way.
Lovely to meet you.
Love,
Faith
Discover your elixir and begin to bring it into the world here: From dreams to reality
