COLLABORATION AS EMBODIED SOVEREIGNTY
Hello beautiful souls!
We are honoring Indigenous People’s Day with some reflections on collaboration and what that really means in a culture that was founded on colonization and acquiring wealth and land through domination, genocide, and enslavement of other humans. Yes, it’s a heavy topic and we are dedicated to working on what we have internalized from the culture and creating the changes needed to evolve and become a “power with” collaborative culture. We’re in Libra season now so it’s a perfect time to talk about harmonious collaboration and making that happen. The lessons I have been learning have been quite humbling so I want to share in the tradition of talking about what’s really real in the world today. Gotta hold on to something right?! We had better hold onto our souls because things are about to get even more accelerated in our growth and evolution!
Collaboration as Embodied Sovereignty
Are you prepared for a new unity consciousness as we leave behind the patriarchal overculture of a “power over” paradigm? Are you over this self-serving culture as much as I am? Let’s talk about empowered collaborative leadership. Sounds dreamy, doesn’t it? Collaboration is relational, inclusive, and non-colonizing. It requires working under a value system of belonging, inclusivity, and equality. In this relational paradigm, no one has a greater right over any other. It’s understood, inherently, that our goal is to exist harmoniously in communities, businesses, institutions, and governments. Why? it’s how we survive together instead of increasing the separation from each other and ultimately Spirit.
The predominant culture seems to have forgotten this goal and is only interested in pushing forward self-serving agendas. I’m speaking about humanity at large and this great impasse of attempting to colonize, co-opt and dominate each other. It isn’t working and only results in gridlock and warring between us and within us. I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here but there’s a lot coming through the channels right now on this topic that feels worthy of spelling out clearly and hopefully giving it a voice.
In our current power-over paradigm, we are taught to give our power to others by letting them tell us what to do and what to think. It’s so ingrained in our culture to follow who is in charge or more accurately who has taken charge. This is true in our western medicine model so I’ll use that as an example. We go to the Dr. and do what they say because they are the expert. Typically, we have to seek out alternative healthcare on our own because a Dr. won’t go there. There’s no integration of knowledge or information because there’s a split between these two paradigms and they are often at odds with one another due to the competition in our culture and scarcity mentality. Does the Dr. think they will go broke if you learn about a helpful cure or remedy elsewhere? What if the Dr. is highly limited in their scope of knowledge and you are someone who needs an alternative therapy that would help tremendously? We are conditioned to ignore our own internal radar and not be intuitive because we have become reliant on experts to tell us what to do. This gives us more time to work hard and buy things ;) See the disconnect?
In working with personal sovereignty which is inherent in a collaborative paradigm, we assume nothing and project nothing when dealing with another sovereign being. Now there’s a major feat right there before we even start to engage. Next, we have to be on the same page with who is leading, teaching, guiding, etc. because collaboration doesn’t mean there aren’t leaders and positions of authority. Whose house are you in? Whose terrain are you treading? Don’t assume it’s yours just because someone invited you into their “house”. Personal friendships and partnerships of all kinds can become out of balance with the “power over” dynamic taking over without conscious awareness. Authority in this paradigm doesn’t mean “power over”. It means the right order in terms of the relational field of humanity. Who was here first? Who invited who into their/our business, life, or home? How do we honor one another’s wisdom and acquired knowledge? See how it gets tricky quickly?
Since starting the Tree of Life Mystery School and inviting lots of collaboration, it’s been interesting to observe my massive learning curve about this way of being relational, embodied, and sovereign. It was eye-opening to realize how much power and authority I was willing to give away to others. There were a lot of areas where I had to seek help because I was branching out into new terrain. For years I did everything myself and kept the scope such that I could pull it off on my own.
When we consult or seek guidance from someone who may have more knowledge and experience, we navigate dynamics that are likely engrained by our ego, personality, and cultural programming. We don’t even know we’re giving our power away or taking over someone else’s power and highjacking their sovereignty. People give their power to us all the time unconsciously and we may not know they are doing this until it’s too late and we’re left holding a responsibility for which we didn’t ask. I have done this and ended up feeling like a victim when they don’t deliver what I need. Well, collaboration, as I am finding, is hard work, tedious, and requires great clarity, communication skills, and patience. Raise your hand if you’re great at all this!
Here’s an example. We ask for collaboration on something but we’re not making it clear what that means. I thought I knew what collaboration meant but am learning that our culture doesn’t do a good job of teaching us this and the power-over model runs deep. We don’t know if the other person has an agenda of making a paycheck and thinking of it as a completely linear transaction. I provide this service, you pay me, and we’re good to go. That’s the quick and easy method and what we’re used to doing in a fee-for-service economy. Collaboration is a whole different thing and probably not needed all the time but it feels important to make that distinction.
Collaboration takes into account the whole, what is greater than the parts when you combine them. It’s alchemical and relational in the sense that when both are attuned to the other, the greater good and whole of intention, phenomenal things can happen because we are consulting something bigger and relinquishing control over the outcome. It sounds fantastic but our egos LOVE control and taking all the credit so it’s easier to just trade services and go our separate ways. We might even neglect to give someone else credit for their work because you paid them for it didn’t you?
It was clear as I conducted a business for many years seeing clients, leading groups and small retreats with my known entities: myself, and those coming to me for guidance and assistance. From the get-go, I had control because I’m the expert right? They pay me for a service, and we move forward. It was always more than that with me and I was also learning and growing in the process. However, it is quite limited in scope in this patriarchal paradigm of teacher and student, expert or Dr., and client or patient.
I never quite realized how limiting this was because collaborating in an equitable paradigm requires us both to take EQUAL responsibility if things go south. It’s much easier to give our power away and become the victim. This is a common defense so we don’t have to be responsible for anything. For some, taking control over the situation is the tendency, and others readily give us their power because we make it appear we know what we’re doing. But do we? Do we always know what’s best for someone else, their life, their business? Have we listened to them? Some of us push our agendas thinking we’re helping people which is a distortion when you pull back and consider if it’s really a more selfish motive.
The victim/perpetrator/rescuer dynamic is attached to the “power over” dynamic and inherent in our cultural way of relating. We see this played out again and again in all our myths, stories, and archetypes as well as in our lives any time we feel victimized or someone accuses us of something because they gave us too much power. We also see heroes, heroines, and elevators of others that involve true empowerment instead of trying to be “better than” or compete with others from a place of scarcity. There’s a lot more to say about this but we’ll stick to the topic of collaboration for now. Basically, the drama of war, abuse, and Western culture is set up for disempowerment. Empathy for others is sacrificed to get ahead and gain power by siphoning off of others instead of from an internal source.
That’s not to say there aren’t some tremendous collaborative teams out there. I’m sure they exist but I hadn’t seen these values discussed explicitly in an educational and spiritual community system until I started studying Family Constellations and really started to understand the relational field of human souls. Humans like to look outside ourselves and this model of staying relational and collaborative keeps bringing us back to thinking of ourselves as holding our power and navigating that power with other empowered humans. Can we go there, please?! Would you rather listen to another podcast, read a book, and find the answer? I will continue to do that as well to feed my curiosity but that curiosity has shifted tremendously to look within my intuition and empathic sense of who is vibing with me at this present moment in evolutionary history.
Birds flying in formation and schools of fish swimming together are beautiful examples of the wild animal nature of the morphic field. This is energetic weaving together for the greater whole to move forward efficiently and with much less effort than if we were attempting this navigation alone. Too much separateness for far too long has left us unaware of our telepathy, our ability to work together when we are in tune with the greater collective field of energy.
Let’s circle back around to embodied sovereignty. We focus on embodiment at the Mystery School in order to stay in integrity with our body’s cues and knowing that tells us when we are being pushed, manipulated, or someone has left us holding the bag of responsibility that is not ours. Staying in our power is what Energy Magick is about, tools for embodiment and personal sovereignty. This requires attention to our bodies, our emotions, and each other in the relational field of humanity. Once we do this and have established trust in our collaborative efforts, we can band together and accomplish great things. Ready? Let’s do this!
