This Sovereign Self Space celebrates their gifts and talents, their quirks and foibles, their accomplishments, heart and love.

Then, they are to spend some time with this space each day, developing and growing it, if they wish, or just hanging out in it and taking in the fullness of who they are.

Lindsay sent me photos of a giant collage she’d made for her Sovereign Self Space. Her accompanying email was so insightful and filled with realizations about her patterns, that I asked her if she would be willing to share it with you. She very graciously agreed. So here is her lovely email, along with my response to her.

You may relate to many of the things she talks about here.

I did my homework! But I’m shy about showing it to everyone so I’m just sending it to you. 
   
It was interesting because in the beginning there was a lot of resistance but then I just hit this flow. And I liked it. I liked the feeling about not thinking about how it had to be and just making/creating/writing without a voice editing it. 
   
And it ended up being a circle. Which was not the plan. 
   
It started very literally, then became more abstract, then ended very poetically.
   
I made note of various monsters that came up, like my “there’s no time monster” and my “seriously, you think you can solve your problems by sitting around doing arts and crafts” monster, and my “you aren’t doing it right! Go review EXACTLY what Hiro said so you FOLLOW THE RULES” monster, and my “what is the point” monster. 

But now I like it. Although part of me wants to go back and ‘fix’ parts of it. Which I’m trying not to do. 

Which makes me realize how careful I am to edit myself before I go into public (by public I mean be in front of anyone who is not a close friend – and that group is small). How cautious I am of what I say and how I say it. 

So that being in public can be really stressful for me if I’m not on a stage (like at the front of the classroom), or in charge (as in the head of the group), because then I’m not in a position to craft the image of myself as I want people to see me. And I don’t think that constant desire to present only a portion of myself is very sovereign . . . 

Of course, I’m willing to have you look at it because I know you’re here to help. I thought maybe in looking it over you might be able to observe some things about me that I can’t see through the haze of all my need to construct a narrative about who I am, even to myself. 

Lindsay, this is wonderful–an intriguing mix of inner and outer qualities and accomplishments, and the underlying patterns that they reveal.
 
Thank you for taking the risk to explore all of the feelings that this exercise stirred up in you. It’s great that you met those parts of yourself that want to be right, follow the rules, feel not-good-enough and need to have their story straight before showing it to the world.
 
We all have these selves within our ego-structure. And, since everything including the ego is made of the same soul-essence, each of these parts of your self holds, in its heart, a spiritual truth.

The need to please or to be seen in a certain light is, in its essence, the need to belong, to be loved, to take your place in the circle of life, and to contribute to your world.

The expression of these needs becomes distorted through fear and misunderstanding about your own nature and your place in the world, but the needs themselves are universal, and fundamentally human.
 
We’re not here to do away with the urge to present a certain image of ourselves or construct a narrative about ourselves for the world. Rather, we are here to meet that urge with love and curiosity, and to discover the jewel hidden within it.

That willingness to explore, to be curious and open to whatever you find in yourself, brings you into your sovereignty.
 
The voices within you that say: Who do you think you are? What makes you think any of this is interesting? You didn’t do it right!  and so on, are fragments of your wholeness. So they have the memory of wholeness within them.

As their sovereign leader, you can help them feel safe and heard–first, by inviting them to tell you their stories and listening for the underlying fears in which those narratives are embedded; and then by holding up a mirror so they can see their own essence.

When you help these fragments of your selves reconnect with their wholeness, they lend the power of their gifts to the shaping of your life.
 
This is one of the main tasks of sovereignty–bringing the inner selves that live in your kingdom into harmonious relationship with each other, and making your kingdom a place where all of your selves are liberated to grow into their full potentials.
 
These feelings are so universal, yet we’re shy about talking about them, because that exposes the most vulnerable parts of our selves. We feel ashamed, tender, afraid of judgment or criticism, so we all walk around hiding our feelings under masks that stifle our power and creativity.

You’re brave for having done the homework with such clarity and determination to seek out the truth about your self and your patterns.

Your willingness to share this publicly is both an act of courage and of great generosity. We learn from each other. And in sharing our most vulnerable selves, we make the world safer and kinder for everyone. Thank you so much!

If you feel like playing kindergarten with us, go ahead and create your own Sovereign Self Space. A sacred space that celebrates you. Come back and share photos and stories, if you feel moved to.

I’d love to hear what comes up for you when you share your self more fully and honestly with your world.

Each time we risk being ourselves, we open up a channel for greater intimacy, closeness and connection. Our world needs you–your particular, unique, quirky, wonderful self.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Can you wear your crown when you’re ill or in pain?
• Who or what calls your name?
• Who’s wearing your crown?

GOING AWAY

Strolling on the beach with my son
yesterday, sun licking our faces, a sparkling sea
washed over our feet. I breathed a prayer:
Thank you. Thank you for this day.

Fronds of seaweed licked the tidal sands, flickered,
receded–
returned twirling on the next wave.

A little boy, maybe ten years old–freckles,
sandy hair, nose
buried in a melting ice-cream cone–wailed:
My ice-cream is going away! It’s
going away! His mother looked bemused.

Vanilla ice-cream dripped, a bone-white froth
down his fingers. His mouth a jagged sob, face
flushed, furious with refusal.

All month, since I moved from my beloved
home, a ten-year-old in me has wailed:
My home is going away! It’s going away!

Next month, my son, my beautiful baby
boy—six feet tall now, and married to his love—
is going away. A new city will hold him
in its lap. A new home. He’s going

away. No no no no no. They’re all
going away.

This little poem about home is part of a collaborative writing project with Jen Louden, Susan Piver and Mahala Mazerov. My three friends posted their wonderful riffs on Home on their blogs on Friday. I’ve been busy wailing: My home is going away! instead.

Here’s my belated offering.

And, since it’s also Poetry Sunday, please join me by sharing your poems in Comments. Let’s celebrate poetry together.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Tsunamis In the House of Wholeness
• No. Yes.
• Flight to Freedom

This is a time when we are being called upon to become more fully our selves, to bring our genius and power to the task of creating a world that works for all of us.

So where does sovereignty fit into this task of self-making and world-making?

Spiritually, sovereignty is one of the capacities and qualities of your soul. So it is inherent within you—it’s an aspect of your being.

Each of us is a spiritual being. We exist not as a point in space and time, but along a continuum that includes space and time at one end, and the subtle realms of formlessness—no-space, no-time—at the other. At one end of this continuum is your incarnation—your particular, unique self—that which makes you who you are, as unique as your own fingerprint.

At the other end of the continuum of your being, you are a fractal of all that is—you live within the whole, you are not separate from anything that exists, either in form or in formlessness. This is the realm of oneness and unity.

The quality of Sovereignty is yours along the whole of the continuum of your being, but it looks different depending on where you’re standing in that continuum.

In terms of your incarnation, your own unique and particular selfhood, you have sovereignty over your own life. This means that everything within your own energy field is your kingdom, and you are the queen or the king of it. You have responsibility for your own life, and you have the freedom to choose how you will live.

This doesn’t mean that you can have anything you want. We live in the world of form, and form necessarily implies limits. We also live in nested ecologies. There’s the ecology of your personal life, which includes your relationships, your work, your health, your environment, your neighborhood, your country.

There’s the ecology of the world, which affects every being that lives on this earth. There are subtle ecologies in which our extended soul is embedded.

Each of these affects you in different ways, just as you affect all of these ecologies as well.

So sovereignty is not an Alice In Wonderland world in which you can say “Off with their heads!” anytime something doesn’t go your way. It’s a quality of being, it emerges from your relationship to wholeness, and it carries with it both the responsibility to govern your inner kingdom wisely, and to contribute your gifts and talents to the creation of the world in which you want to live.

So if you want to live in a world filled with kindness, love, safety, respect, creativity and compassion, then cultivate those qualities in your inner kingdom first. As you embody them in your own life, you change your personal ecology, which then changes the world around you.

Sovereignty isn’t some magical kingdom in which we are enthroned forever. Cultivating this quality requires a continual engagement with the day-to-day stuff that shows up in our lives. Sovereignty brings a stronger, clearer vibration into that stuff, so that when you’re sitting in the middle of your own particular crises, small or large, you can still be sovereign.

You can have a day when everything goes wrong, and still be sovereign. You can create the kind of energy and experience you want to have—not by changing what’s happening out there, because you have no control over external events—but by resting in the qualities you want inside yourself. You can meet outer circumstances with equanimity, humor, peacefulness, delight.

…………………………………….

There’s still time to join us for six weeks of Sovereignty Kindergarten, starting July 14. Learn what sovereignty is–and isn’t–why you need it, and how it can transform your life.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Happy Thanksgiving, Baby
• Elegy
• In the Center of My Ribs…

NO. YES.

What gives you the right to grab what is not yours
to take? You have grown large on piracy,
swollen like a balloon on breath stolen
from children who no longer sleep or fill
their lungs because you have convinced them the
air belongs to you; their breath, their dreams
belong to you. You have taken the tender
bamboo of their hearts and boiled it into
broth to nourish you, appetite.
You have sucked the marrow from their bones and
grinned with relish at the brine of blood on your
tongue. Your table d’hote is not unique. Genghis
Khan fed at it, made menus of the lives
of those who loved him; cast around for more–
always more–to fill a hole as cavernous
as you.

No

Every no bears in its belly the sibilant
yes: a pomegranate seed white in its
sheath of translucent red

As always, I’d love to hear your poems in Comments. This Sunday ritual of sharing our poems and our hearts nourishes our sovereign selves. It brings us into creative community. Thank you for playing poetry with me!

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Sunday Poem #8
• Going Away
• Flight to Freedom

FLIGHT TO FREEDOM

My ancestors launched into the Arabian Sea
in tiny coracles fragile as leaves
to escape the jihad.

Their country
torched by Arab invaders, their people
slaughtered in the name of Allah,

they entrusted their bodies to the tides,
sailed east to India; fled
for their lives and for freedom to worship

Ahura Mazda, the god
of their ancestors. The year
was 760 AD.

Thirteen hundred years later, I took flight
westward across that churning sea.
Seeds of their spirit

in me. Those ancestors,
with their wandering blood, keep me questing,
peregrine.

I do not own the comforts
of their religion, seek instead a god

who lives in me; am impelled
not by raiders but
by this spirit’s urgent embarkation

to be free.

…………………………………………………

As always, I’d love to hear your own poems in Comments. Let’s share the freedom of making poetry together on this Fourth of July Sunday.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Tenaramente
• Elegy
• A Capella

I am not someone who has a career (I’m a full time mom and wife). It’s always been my dream to have a creative way of helping support my family…. something that’s in spiritual alignment with myself and the greater good of the earth and humanity.

From the time I was a child I’ve wanted to know my calling, so I could know which direction to proceed. I know I have a gift to share with the world in there somewhere. Do you think you could help me find it? I just don’t even know where to begin….

Stephanie, your calling arises from the whole of yourself…from your gifts and talents, your love, your sense of rightness, from that which brings you joy.

Start with a spirit of exploration and curiosity, and look at your life as it is right now. What brings you into that feeling of rightness, of flow and love and joy? When do you feel most fully alive? What challenges you? What returns you to yourself?

You may want to make a list of the things you loved to do when you were a child, and build on that. Often, in childhood, we’re in closer touch with our inner beings, our genius. As grownups, we may find ourselves drifting away from center and then it’s more difficult to know whether what you do arises from love or responsibility or something else altogether.

Next, consider how your gifts and talents, your love and joy, intersect with the needs of the world. What do people need, that links you to them, and that lets you serve in a joyful, heart-full way? What can you offer, that you love to do, that would meet the needs in your world?

These are places to begin to explore what calls to you.

Consider, too, what matters most to you right now, what fits into the flow of your life. If you’ve always wanted to sing opera, and you have young children at home, you may not want to choose a career as an opera singer just yet. But you may choose to pursue that passion in other ways, until the timing is right for a fuller engagement with it.

Set a clear intention, and ask for what you want. Ask the Universe, or the Sacred, or whatever you call that spirit that holds all creation in wholeness, for insight and guidance about your calling. Then pay attention to whatever crosses your path, and consider all of it to be a response to your prayer.

Find ways to step into the flow of your creative genius each day. Through writing, art, dance, song, cooking, gardening, washing the dishes–whatever brings you to a state of presence, love, joy and grace.

Your calling lives in the same realm as these qualities, so invoking and cultivating them will take you to the heart of what you’re here to do.

If you’d like to learn more about sovereignty–what it is, and how to practice it–please join us for Sovereignty Kindergarten. Starting July 14th, we’ll spend six weeks together learning skills to help you discover your inner sovereignty and apply it in your daily life. Early bird discount of $100 until July 7th.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• There’s Wholeness in Holes
• Who’s wearing your crown?
• Can you wear your crown when you’re ill or in pain?

What do you suggest when someone is not at all sure of her grounds to assert her sovereignty? Like when the opposing forces are trying to trump her ace with the threat of hellfire and damnation? Maybe she mostly doesn’t believe in these things, but a tiny little bit of her thinks they might be possible, and so she is cowed?

Amna, to develop sovereignty you have to begin by knowing yourself. This means sorting through and clearing out the assumptions and beliefs you’ve inherited from your culture, your family, your religion, schools, media, society. And also sorting through and uncovering your own biases and unexamined points of view.

These assumptions and beliefs are forms of energy.

Once you’ve cleared them, you’re left with your own inner truth, which is the bedrock on which you can build a sustainable life.

Threats of hellfire and damnation are forms of energy intended to frighten you into obeying someone else’s rules, or buying into someone else’s version of reality. Fundamentalism is always prescriptive. It claims to know The Truth, and attempts to define reality for you. It does not honor your soul’s knowing or respect your sovereign right to choose your own path.

If you grew up in an environment that implanted such belief systems in you, the energy of those beliefs is still inside you. It’s not enough to know, intellectually, that they aren’t true. You have to actually remove that energetic implant, and replace it with your soul’s presence. With what your soul knows to be true.

There are a variety of ways to do this. When I’m working individually with clients, I look clairvoyantly at the beliefs and patterns that are embedded in their energy bodies, and use clairvoyant healing techniques to remove them. Then I help them fill up the spaces we’ve cleared out, with their own soul, and with the qualities that their soul brings.

If you’d like to learn more about sovereignty–what it is, and how to practice it–please join us for Sovereignty Kindergarten. Starting July 14th, we’ll spend six weeks together learning skills to help you discover your inner sovereignty and apply it in your daily life. Early bird discount of $100 until July 7th.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Can you wear your crown when you’re ill or in pain?
• There’s Wholeness in Holes
• Who or what calls your name?

TENARAMENTE

I stand at the boundary. On this side, familiar
terrain. Hills like lyric waves brushed with sage, dew
an aria on my tongue, golden wedge of light on my
elbow. My arms know precisely my baby’s
milky weight, his warm mouth loose against my
breast, my nipple cooling in this lambent dawn.
Moss fur nuzzles the soles of my feet.

This is the threshold: this granite arch soaring
skyward in the middle of a mustard field, keystone
lost in the limpid blue of heaven. Ahead, unknown
country. Images pour through my head like rain:
Death in rusty black cloak, hooded, faceless, scythe
gripped in blanched fingers. And bodies, light as
dried laurel leaves, borne on bamboo biers, covered
in marigolds; tinkling cymbals, heartbeat of drums,
chanting voices bearing the soul back home.

That which is before me is veiled in light. My hand
through the archway no longer a hand, effulgence
of ultraviolet pulsing to a rhythm familiar as my
heartbeat, enigmatic as an atom. I lean my upper
body through the arch. Soft. Smell of almond
blossoms, sticky fig-juice, olive groves. Shiver of
argent sound, bells, chiming inside and out into one,
my skin no longer my skin, no boundary, but a
dissolved definition. An exchange of electrons and
protons with ambient life which once bore many
names–tree, fish, star, mud. My flesh and theirs
transmuted into vibration, dance of particles into
waves, waves and particles, call and answer, calando,
dolce, dolce, tranquillo. I am a sympathetic string in
a great aeolian harp, vibrating to the melody of these
rushing winds, vast ripples of light and air and spirit.

Step now across the slate-gray stones. Prelude over,
my voice flows into this canon which sings the Real.
My infant son plays in the crack between worlds,
time in his right hand, eternity in his left. He puts
God in his mouth and savors, rolling divinity on
his tongue, face rapt, chortling his own cantata.

………………………………………

As always, I’d love to hear your own poems in Comments. Let’s share the voices of our hearts with each other.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• Flight to Freedom
• Elegy
• A Capella

My question relates to sovereignty and physical ill-health / incapacity.

On one hand I have a sense of being placed in a physical prison, and having my choices limited.

But I also have other conflicting feelings about it. Some days I feel angry because no-one in my kingdom (my body) is obeying my commands. But then I feel sad and guilty because I think that I must be a very poor Queen for my kingdom to be in such disrepair. It hurts.

How can you live as the Queen or King, when it feels like the whole kingdom is rebelling?

Bec, I’m so sorry you’re feeling ill, angry, sad and guilty in your relationship with your body and your health.

The thing is, the sovereign is the leader who serves, rather than She Who Must Be Obeyed. Your inner selves won’t take kindly to being ordered around. Why would they?

Sovereignty brings all of your selves into right relationship with each other, and restores the inner order and pattern of your wholeness.

Its function is not to command your body to do what you want, but rather to create safety and support for all of your selves–to create an inner kingdom in which each self can flourish. Sovereignty means that you provide wise leadership, draw the very best out of your selves, and bring them together as a family to create the life that’s in harmony with your soul’s purposes.

A kingdom rebels because the needs of its members aren’t being heard and met.

We are not a singular self, but a collection of selves. And each of our selves is sovereign too; each one has the capacity for wholeness. Each of our selves emerges from the same Sacred source.

Our selves may become distorted and disconnected from their inner essence, but at the heart of every aspect of our selves is wholeness.

At the heart of pain, physical illness, incapacity, there is still wholeness. This is not just a nice idea, but a very real vibrational field which you can experience. It can be harder to access in the midst of physical pain, illness and disability, but we are fundamentally whole, even when we don’t feel that way.

This doesn’t mean that the physical disability is necessarily healed. There may be karmic or genetic reasons for it. But it does mean that you can know yourself as whole even though your body is disabled.

When you stand in your wholeness–when you identify yourself as whole, rather than identifying yourself as ill or disabled–then you can meet your illness, pain and disability with respect, love, delight and compassion. Remembering always that each of your selves has at its heart a truth and a gift that you need, in order to grow into your full potential.

You can talk with yourselves, especially the ones that carry illness and pain, and ask them to tell you about the spiritual truths at their hearts. Let them know how much you need their gifts, to create the life that’s yours to live. Listen to how they feel and what they need. Not with impatience or condescension, guilt or blame, but simply because they have wisdom and strength that are essential for your well-being.

Honor their sovereignty, and they’ll help you create a healthy personal ecology.

How do you handle illness, vulnerability, and pain? I’d love to hear your insights and comments, as well as your questions about Sovereignty.

If you’d like to learn more about sovereignty–what it is, and how to practice it–please join us for Sovereignty Kindergarten, starting July 14.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• There’s Wholeness in Holes
• Who’s wearing your crown?
• Who or what calls your name?

This one is from Sarah, who very kindly gave me permission to share it with you:

What can you do when you get into a situation–particularly in a relationship, of any kind–in which you have set a precedent of disrespecting your sovereignty, so to speak (for example, doing favors for someone when you really don’t have the capacity)? How can you re-assert your sovereignty when you suddenly realize that you’ve been neglecting it?

I ask because I’ve been in situations like this, and tried to re-assert my sovereignty, and it has backfired. Usually the other person reacts as if I’ve thrown a shoe at them, no matter how careful I am in communicating. How can we do this in such a way that supports both our sovereignty and the other person’s?

Sarah, thanks for the great question.

When you change–when you take responsibility for recognizing your own capacity, honoring it, and acting accordingly–the relationship between you and your friend changes as well.

Change may bring up ancient fears for your friend: Fear of being abandoned, of not being taken care of, of having to take responsibility for himself, or for having to change what may have been a comfortable dynamic for her.

So the first thing to recognize is that your friend’s reaction is not about you. It’s a response to her own fears, emotions, thoughts and beliefs. And it may come from a much younger self, rather than from her wholeness.

When you ground, center, and become present in your own space, you can see each element in this situation–yourself, the person you’re relating to, and the relationship between you–just as it is, without judgment or sentimentality.

This means that you can see who your friend is, beyond his or her reaction to the change in your relationship, and you won’t take their reaction personally.

And if you do find yourself feeling defensive, or trying to explain or justify your actions, you’ll be able to step back, check in with yourself to see what you’re feeling and what you need, and take care of your needs first.

Once you’ve taken care of yourself, you can talk with your friend about the changes you’re making, about the ways in which you’re trying to be more honest about your capacity. You can tell them how you feel about the process–the hard and the good around it. And you can ask for what you need from them, without being attached to whether or not you’ll get those needs met by them.

You might say something like:

I know in the past when you’ve called me because you’re feeling alone and unappreciated and want to talk, I’ve set aside whatever I was doing to talk with you.

What I realize now is that I haven’t always been honest with myself, at those times. I haven’t paid attention to what I need, and I haven’t been honest with you about what I can offer.

So there have been times when I really didn’t want to talk to anyone, or I was in the middle of a project of my own, but I didn’t say so. I’m sorry about that.

I’m working on taking responsibility for myself–checking in to see how I’m feeling and what I need. So when I do say Yes, it’s because I’m really able to be present for our conversation. And when I say No or Not Now, it’s because that’s what’s true for me in that moment.

This means that when you call me, I may not be available to talk right then. I care about you, and I will be there for you in whatever ways I can. My commitment is to be honest with myself and with you. I’ll tell you if I’m not available to talk with you when you call. If I know when I’ll be available, I’ll tell you that too.

And since I’m practicing asking for what I need, I’m going to ask you now if you would like to tell me how you feel about this change in our relationship.

Try it. See what happens when you shift the terms of your relationship so it’s more in alignment with your own truth.

Some of your friendships may naturally fade away. Others will become energized and stronger because you’re standing in your sovereignty, and respecting your friend’s sovereignty too.

Honesty is a good basis for real friendship.

How about you? I’d love to hear your insights and comments, as well as your questions about Sovereignty.

If you’d like to learn foundational practices to strengthen your sovereignty in a playful, light-hearted way, join us for Sovereignty Kindergarten, starting July 14.

If this post spoke to you, you might like these as well:

• There’s Wholeness in Holes
• World-making
• No. Yes.