Connecting to our personal powerhouse
Housing the source of our energy
There's a beautiful young wild cherry tree in my garden I deeply love.
Just a few years ago it was a slender branch that had started to grow unnoticed from the root of its exhausted parent.
It got abundant nourishment this way, and so developed into the magnificent plant it now is, much faster than it would have been capable of without that parental support.
As human babies we are not different, we need stable and trusted bases and to be nourished by the healthy relationships our parents establish with us.
These bases work as a powerhouse for us as kids, they resource us and allow us to flourish into harmonious adults.
But in our life journey it happens to many to lose somewhere, sometime, that sense of grounding and connection that is necessary to keep us growing and flourishing.
To sustain that drive, we need to cultivate our own powerhouse and attend to our own roots. A new, intimate and loving relationship with a personal source of identity and energy, one of our own, will bring us to discover, learn, take risks and grow, overcome fears, doubts, and setbacks, in the same way the safe bases of our childhood did.
And if these new roots and new connections are found outside of ourselves? Friends or lovers, a job or a job title, social status or wealth, a political party or a system of beliefs … there are many possibilities.
These connections are important, and in some cases vital, for a healthy life. However, if they don't stem (grow) from our own, personal roots, they will not be deep or sustaining enough to support us in our life journey and in growing into the fullest expression of ourselves.
Because, when nourishment and energies come exclusively or mostly from outside of us, we naturally come to melt our sense of self and of our own value into what the world outside tells us that they are.
We perceive ourselves through the lenses of those we have outsourced our energy to. We progressively lose sight of what is unique to us and we try to fit in the outer model that we have borrowed.
We adjust, without even realising it, in order to be appreciated more. In exchange we get more of that sense of safety, belonging, and recognition we crave, being the deeply social beings that we are.
And there's a risk there: as we become more of what others expect us to be, we can deprive ourselves of our own nourishment, and in doing so, deprive others of the value of who we really are.
In losing our unique perspectives and way of being, we impoverish the system we belong to of the healthy diversity that keeps it resilient.
And we lose the capacity to offer our uniqueness and value to the rest of the world.
This is a lose-lose scenario, where we are not fed properly and as a result we cannot feed others back.
Restoring our wholeness and creating unique value
Restoring our inner system, our wholeness, and an alignment between our needs and the kind of nutrients we receive from our environment, is important.
It is vital not only for our own personal health and balance but in order to re-balance our exchanges with the outside world.
It allows us to share our energy (expressed in ideas, time, work, conversations, love, voice, intentions) with the system we live in.
When wholeness is restored within our body-mind we feel energised with a sense of meaning and purpose.
We become much more able to participate and excited to contribute to the system we are part of (family, workplace, community or society at large).
Similarly, when we authentically contribute to the wholeness of the system to which we belong, we add value to its (bio)diversity without having to fit in a one-size-fits-all model.
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