Inquiring into the Will to Empower, and the Wisdom of Tenderness

However well-meaning, there can be a subtle trap in coming from an agenda wherein one is "trying to empower" others.  The tenderness of heart that meets life as it is, melts separation, and illuminates the tyranny behind that which would have things other than the way that they are. Tenderness is a pole to acceptance and relaxing into what is here - including our humanness.  Empowerment is often a result of that.  Trying to empower as opposed to seeing what is empowered and reflecting that back becomes more about the one trying to empower and what their needs are to empower; what their sense of identity feels it is dependent on by "empowering".   The push to 'be' is a different experience from the tenderness to allow what is; to allow (even) the "nothingness" from which 'pure light' springs; to allow with great tenderness, and in that softness, the embrace that sees ever-more clearly, what is. 

Tenderness is a great teacher - coming to it in our culture is grace and wisdom. The tenderness of allowance and the allowance of tenderness starts with the way one is with oneself. Forgetting the strength at the core of our tenderness is what can cause us to contract to protect ourselves. Tenderness is a reflection of our deepest heart. It both comes from and is a bridge to compassion. It is the breath of no reason behind creativity.  It the breath of light behind play. It is the breath of love behind communion.  

Tenderness is a grace that allows frailty - and in acceptance of frailty there is a strength of what does not need to hold to itself . (unless frailty is taken on as an identity and held to). It is the grace of allowance and in allowance, there is the strength of what is beyond believing the story; beyond the duality that would divide against our humanness that would make something wrong of it, try to change it, or deny it. Frailty, met with the gentle strength of tenderness, can be what melts the armor around a heart, the armor that holds illusions of separation in place.  It can be a pole to the unknown; the strength of presence that rests as emptiness, the oneness that can sing "yes now" to exhale, to death,  to releasing,  for it has nothing "other" to fear.   It can be the seeds and springboards of pure potential and the creative will.    

Seeing another's essence, (or as neverness calls it), their "fractal signature" and reflecting that back to them can be empowering if it offers them what they feel or recognize is the visibility of their true nature.  There is a sense of empowerment in being deeply recognized. Being deeply recognized and recognizing and the mutuality and connection of that, the awareness without division that sees and is seen, that is unveiled and illuminated from that, can feel empowering.  A sense of empowerment comes from a sense of wholing or wholeness, the sense that one feels when self-expectation drops away and is replaced with self-acceptance or a stillness of being; a sense of oneness that is there in contrast to the sense of what was felt as division, separation and disconnection.   

Awareness without division is empowerment.  Perhaps more than any idea or attributes of self that might be recognized, there is within the arms of acceptance, a sense of peace that does not impede the dance of fluidity;  that does not fight life as it is while holding onto life as we think it should be.  It does not fight what is with ideas that it holds onto of who we are, or who we think we should be.  There is nothing to obfuscate wu wei; there is nothing to obscure divine creative intelligence flowing as it does when all relaxes that habitually divides against that and contracts against the sweetness of our true nature.  Awareness without division redefines power and will, and realizes that its natural beingness that is all is empowered. Empowerment cannot come from an idea or will.  An illusion such as an "I" or a "me" can only feed its own illusions and cannot empower.  "Will is an imaginary function from an imaginary entity." Wei Wu Wei

Facilitating "empowerment" can take a subtle turn if what was seen as a person's special gift, "fractal signature", or soul essence, is objectified and remembered conceptually and not seen through communing with the soul's journey and through whatever is happening then and there; if it is not experienced in the light of fully embracing our humanness; if it is felt to be separated from the breathing oneness that is everything. It can take a subtle turn if  their 'fractal signature' is seen as finite or fixed, as ideal/goal lost or yet to be realized.  Then, what is is marginalized or judged and not allowed as it is.  If facilitating is made into a goal and not what happens as a result of simply being, seeing, and connecting; then it is more about the needs of the facilitator to facilitate than the space that is created through communion.   Fractal signature can be seen through the soul's journey - and that journey is happening with eyes closed to it or not, and no matter what apparent direction the person is moving in.  Empowerment Is, when the empowered allow or fall into (Self) recognition; it is what happens in the grace and wisdom of Self-allowance. Creating the space for that is having the vision to see and breathe with the fluidity and formless/emptiness behind form and the innate creative intelligence through whatever is happening.


Ellen Davis - © 2009