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What do you think about when you hear the word power? Maybe you associate it with authority or control or maybe an abusive power comes to mind. Or maybe you associate it with feeling powerful, or on the opposite side, feeling powerless. Now, one thing that hasn't changed over the span of humanity, the life of humanity is that as human beings, we all have to face challenges in life that can leave us feeling powerless. But luckily, the great wisdom teachers showed us how Yoga is a practice of invoking and embodying our innate power. We all have the powers of the divine within us, and we're invited to realize these powers. The problem is, I guess, is that most of us, number one, don't even realize this truth. And number two, even if we do sense or feel or Intuit this truth, you don't know how to realize those powers within ourselves. So in this episode of the karmic warrior podcast, we're going to be talking about these five powers of the Divine that are inherent within you, and how you can access those powers to express the fullness of who you really are. So stay tuned.
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Hey, there, I'm Lisa Engles Witter, and welcome to the karmic warrior podcast where I help spiritual seekers just like you to harness the ancient wisdom of yoga to live in extra ordinary life. And the goal of this podcast is super simple, to make it easier than ever before for anyone to find happiness and fulfillment in their life, by using what has already been passed down to us for millennia, by the ancient wisdom masters. So now perhaps the biggest challenge that I see with my clients who come to me is that they find themselves stuck repeating the same lessons, we might call it over and over again in life, they're frustrated, they're at a loss, because most of them have already done years of the work. They've done therapy, they've done coaching, they've done spiritual practices, but they still struggle with the same unhealthy relationships, or they feel like they should be further along in life than they already are. If you can relate to that, then I invite you to head over to www dot karmic dashboard, you're calm to grab my free report on why you keep getting handed that one lesson in life, even if you've spent years doing the work. In this free report, I reveal to you the secret to harnessing the law of karma not the law of attraction, the law of karma to finally break free of that one lesson so that you can live a freer, fuller life right now. And to put the link in the description below. And it's right here on the screen. If you're watching on YouTube. Also, be sure to subscribe to this podcast. And if you're watching on YouTube, click on that little notification bell if you haven't already, because I post new episodes just like this one on a regular basis. These days when you hear the word power, especially in the media, it's almost always associated with an abuse of power, whether it's in government or corporations or even spiritual organizations. And I would have to say that all the crisises crises, crises, crisis's crises that we face today, whether it's climate, the climate crisis, leadership crisis, racism, crisis, right economic crisis, the global health crisis, morality, crisis, all of it all of these are symptoms of a loss of power. So both authentic or true power and powerlessness are symptoms of something deeper. So let me explain what I mean by that. Authentic power is this natural expression of knowing the truth of who we are? And being able to answer that question, Who am I? Anyone who has been with me for any length of time, whether it's my students or my clients, this is one thing that I always come back to we need to be grounded in knowing having an experiential knowing of the truth of who we are. So power is an authentic expression, a natural expression of who we really are. When we're connected to our power, our actions begin to reflect that noise. So that's a little litmus test there you can tell If someone is connected to their authentic power simply by their actions, so when we're when we are connected to this authentic power, our actions are motivated by love and a desire to serve, whether that be our family members, or our community or the world at large. And knowing when we're in our power, we know that we're always connected to this infinite source that lives in us through us and as us now on the opposite side of things. Powerlessness is a natural expression. But it's a natural expression of not knowing who you really are not being able to answer that question, Who am I? Who am I? So in fact, at a personal level, many people actually are operating from this state of power loss without even knowing it. So in this context, we could really say that true, an authentic power, once again, is knowing who you really are and taking action from that place of knowing. So I'm in the non dual Shiva tradition, it's taught that there are five fundamental powers of the Divine. And
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I am a big fan of Christopher Wallace, who wrote the book, tantra illuminated, and he also wrote the book, the recognition sutras, I highly recommend them if you're interested in yoga philosophy and digging in a little bit more, but he outlines these powers very beautifully in both of those books. In any case, in non dual Shiva Tantra, it's taught that there are these five fundamental powers of the Divine, and therefore they are also powers within you. And those five powers are the Power of Awareness. Also, the words awareness and consciousness are often used interchangeably in yoga philosophy. So the power of awareness, the power of bliss, the power of will, the power of knowing and the power of action. So the divine holds these five powers and these five powers are said to pervade all of reality, and a non dual Shiva Tantra. Each of us is invited to recognize that not only do these powers pervade all of reality, we our selves hold those powers. In fact, those powers are inherent within us. And we're invited to have this experiencial realization that we are no different than the divine. So in his book,
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tantra illuminated, Christopher Wallace says that the experiential realization that we are truly not different from God is triggered by the recognition that these five powers also comprise the totality of our individual experience of embodiment. In other words, again, these powers are inherent to what and who we are. And in any given moment, these powers are either concealed from us or revealed to and through us in our thoughts and our words and in our actions. So that's what I want to talk about today. Because I just feel that this is such an important topic. And these days, so many of us are walking around in our lives in a state of power loss, when we don't have to be. Right. So the question is, how are these powers concealed from us? So they're concealed by the degree to which this very first power, the power of awareness is contracted in us? So I'm going to explain this you don't need to worry what is what is she talking about? Here? Let me explain what I'm talking about. So, this is the first most fundamental power that is inherent within us which is the power of awareness in any given moment, we can either be more aware of the contents of consciousness, or of consciousness itself. For example, you might be experiencing a really difficult situation and all of your attention and all of your awareness is focused on the thoughts and the stories and the emotions that are surrounding this situation. Oh my God, hear she's such a jerk and I'm so angry at them. It's so frustrating to have to work with him or her for him or her and If only, you know, they weren't in my life, whatever, whatever the drama might be, right? These are the contents of consciousness, they are the things that objects that phenomena that we're more aware of. And it's considered this type of experience is considered to be a contracted experience of the power of awareness. Now, on the other hand, you could be experiencing the same, the exact same difficult situation, not one thing changed about that situation, but you could be more aware of the power of awareness than of the contents of awareness. In other words, you're more aware of awareness itself, then of the contents of awareness. So when you're more aware of awareness itself, you're not going to experience this same type of contraction, you're not going to identify with those thoughts, his stories, his mental constructs, those those emotions, right? Rather, you're going to experience all of that as an object or phenomena that are arising and subsiding within you, but not the truth, not the truth of who you are, or what you are. So to tap into this Power of Awareness is actually fundamental to realizing who and what you really are. And it literally is the change that changes everything for you. Absolutely, if you could do just one thing, to being to tap into the power of awareness on a regular basis basis, it will change everything for you. With this practice, you, you begin to shift your focus your focal point, from the contents of your awareness to awareness itself. And you can do this at all different points during the day, it doesn't matter when you can stop in the middle of your day, you can be in the middle of a conversation and shift your focal point. Now this takes concentration, it takes discipline, and it takes
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you know, doing it over time, but it's something that can be done. And it's something that is encouraged for karmic warriors to do right. So let's move on to this second power, the power of Blitz. So the power of bliss is inherent to the power of awareness in the same way that heat is inherent to fire or wetness is inherent to water. When you've accessed this power of awareness, even for you know, half a minute or 10 seconds, whatever it might be, there is you will experience a sense of contentment, that pervades your entire experience, a sense of peace, a sense of joy. These are all words bliss in in Sanskrit is Ananda. That's the word for bliss. So bliss is very, very different from happiness. These days, there's so many books written about happiness, and how to how to be happy and the science of happiness. But bliss, bliss is very different than happiness. Happiness is something in which we're dependent on situations, circumstances or events, playing out in a certain way. Happiness is dependent on our needs being met, whereas bliss is independent of our situation, circumstances and events. Bliss is not dependent on anything. It is something that is inherent that we will experience when we tap in to that power of awareness. Now, I want to mention that this distinction isn't semantics because bliss is not an emotion, like happiness, rather, it's an experience of being within ourselves. And when you have the felt experience of this power of bliss, you begin to see how happiness actually totally compares and compares, totally pales in comparison there is no comparison between happiness and bliss. And this power of bliss will spontaneously arise within you when you're abiding in the power of awareness. So, the power of bliss is dependent on how can tracted your awareness is or how expanded your awareness is, if that makes sense. So even if you're in a place in which your awareness, your Power of Awareness is contracted, and you're more focused on the contents of consciousness rather than consciousness or awareness itself, then you won't have access to the power of bliss. On the other hand, of course, it's just the opposite. If you're, if you're abiding in that sense of awareness, you will naturally feel a spontaneous arising of joy, of contentment, of bliss. Okay, so that's the second power that is inherent in you. And the third power is the power of will. Now, the power of will is this impulse, or this urge for self expression. But in the teachings, it's said to be a pre cognitive urge for self expression. So what happens is that when our power of will is unconcealed or revealed to us, we're tapped into the powers of blissful awareness or blissful consciousness. So that's when the power of will will begin to reveal itself to us. And the experience of the power of will is a dynamic impulse to express the fullness of our being the fullness of who we really are. Now, on the other hand, when this power of will is concealed, what happens is, and this is this is true for most of us, most of the time, I will say, without practice, the power of will will be concealed. And what it feels like is this nagging sense that something is still missing from our life, this nagging sense that I haven't got it yet, I haven't, I haven't gotten there, yet, not quite fulfilled, I'm not
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whole, I don't feel whole, something feels incomplete. It's this nagging sense, I know, you know what I'm talking about. And we've all felt it from time to time. And it's from this place of not feeling whole, that this, there's this urge or this desire to do things to fill that thing or that void. Within us, we think, okay, if I just do this one thing, or if I just get this one thing, I'm going to feel complete, I'm going to feel whole, that is an expression of our power of will being concealed from us. So you see the subtle difference that I'm talking about here. When our power of will, is in its uncontracted expression, when our power of will is revealed to us, we become a direct conduit for the Divine Will. Our power of will in its contracted state, on the other hand, is when we experience struggle, in doing things, things feel like we're suffering when my friends, a colleague says this, The suffer and struggle mode, we're trying and trying to make things work in our life in our favor, and we're getting drained by exerting so much effort, and then attempt to fill this proverbial void. Alright, so that's the power of will. Now before I go on to the final two powers, I want to say that the power of each of these powers again, relies on the fundamental power of awareness, us having some sense of abiding in the power of awareness. First, it's through abiding in the power of awareness that each of these other powers begins to reveal itself to us begins to open itself to us.
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Now, what the teachings tell us is that for the power of will, to flow into the power of action, which is the fifth power we'll get to in just a minute, for the power of will to flow into the power of action. It needs to be fused with the power of knowing otherwise, the power of will and the inspiration that that we get through the power of will, will just sort of fade out it'll fizzle away and all die away. So um, think about this. If you're going to put your creative impulses into action Write the power of will, if you're going to put that power of will into action, you have to have some semblance of knowledge, you have to understand how the specific thing that you want to put into action is done right. For example, if you have the creative inspiration to write a song, you have to know the fundamentals of music, you have to know notes, and chords and melodies and how to put those all together into a song right, then you have to know how to play those melodies on some type of instrument or how to sing those those melodies. If you're a chef, and you're inspired to cook a new recipe, you have to know how to combine flavors, and what temperatures to cook foods at at. So you have to equip yourself with knowledge first, before you can put anything into action. And when you commit to mastering knowledge in whatever field of interest, it is for you. What happens if you've ever done this before you gain us a type of freedom of expression in that area. And I think that my husband is one of the best examples of this that I know of, in my personal life. He plays tabla, which is an Indian percussion, drums. And he's been playing for 40 years. And it's a very, very specific instrument with raagas. And they're very, very complex. But once he dedicated himself to understanding and knowing the structures of raagas, and how to hit tones on his, on his drums, then what happened is that within that structure of this very complex form of music, Indian classical music, he's now able to be fully expressed in his creativity within that framework. But that took years and years and years. For him a dedicated study, in order to gain that knowledge, the same can be said for any area of life, right? So maybe you can think of something in your life that you've dedicated yourself in knowledge to so that you could express whatever that will, that that power of will that urge to create was coming through you so that you could put it into action. But the key here, I think, is that we we must submit ourselves through discipline, to to gain that knowledge, so that we can have a freedom of expression to that will that power of will is completely free to express in us through us as us. And I'll say that all of this is true for the spiritual paths to you need to equip yourself with knowledge about the path in order to draw on the wisdom of the masters of the path, right. So that brings us to our final power, which is the power of action, the power of action is the culmination of this, this entire movement, this arc, this movement of consciousness into expression, through activity, so all activity is actually an expression of power. But it depends if that activity is a concealed expression of power or a revealed expression of power. Remember we want what we're looking for is authentic power, not an expression of authentic power, rather than an expression of powerlessness. So in yoga, there are two words for action. The first word for action is Korea. The second word is karma. And then we need to make a very, very important distinction here.
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Between these two, so karmic actions are actions that are motivated by an expected result and karmic actions are they actually bind us to a life of ups and downs to pain and pleasure whereas Korea, Korea is a spontaneous, spontaneously arising action that expresses our true nature. So any type of action that is done for its own sake with no agenda, and that is a spontaneous expression of our true nature is a manifestation of this power of action. I have what's called kriya. Shakti. And it does not bind us to our karmic results. Hence, this is, this is part of this secret of clearing our karma, right? Something that I'm really passionate about. So on the other hand, any action that's motivated once again, by this desire to attain a specific result is karmic action. And if we look at it, what happens is, and I say this, and I've, I've, I have talked about this a lot. When we look at being in our power, in our true power, it all comes back to being grounded in awareness in the power of awareness. That is the fundamental nature of who you really are. So if you want to clear your karma, you have to begin with abiding in the power of awareness. And you can begin to see how oh my gosh, are my actions, actions that are motivated by a desire to attain a specific result? Well, if so, then that's a karmic action. Now, I'm not going to go into all of that. Here. That's not the purpose of this episode. But I just want you to see how easy it is for us to to create karma in our life, karmic results, as opposed to are my actions a natural expression of who I really am. And those types of actions are not going to create karmic results, they'll create create results, not karmic results, that cause pain and suffering. And we have all had experiences of both of these types of actions, we have all had the experience of karmic actions and karmic results in our lives. And that's where most of us abide most of the time. On the other hand, we've also all had experiences of authentic expressions of action when the Divine is flowing in us through us as us and it gets expressed in action. And you, you know, those that those actions because they feel quite different than karmic actions, there's just a natural joy and ease in the expression of those types of actions. So
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hopefully, that makes sense to you. So those are the five powers that are the five powers of the Divine. But there are also the five hours that are inherent within each of us that each of us is invited to recognize as the truth for ourself. So again, those five powers are the powers of awareness, bliss, Will, knowing an action. And when we're in a power filled state, when we're in our power, all five of those powers are working, they are on on they are being revealed to us, they're not being concealed from us. And to be in a state of powerlessness is simply when each of these five powers are in their concealed expressions. To be in a state of power is when each of these five powers are in their revealed expression. So it's all about whether these powers are being concealed, or whether they're being revealed. And we all have the capacity to cultivate these five powers in our life. But it always begins, like I said, with the power of cultivating awareness, because it's from this fundamental power, which is who and what you really are, that we can begin to access and unconcealed each of those four remaining powers in our life. And there are very specific meditations that are used to do this in the tradition. And it's always recommended that you work with a teacher who can guide you through these so that I don't leave you hanging here. I do have some very basic meditations on my YouTube channel. I'll add the link to that in the description of this podcast here so that you have access to those. But I do want to invite you to my live meditations every Tuesday and Thursday on Insight Timer, that's an app. Come join me over on Insight Timer, and I'll also put the link there in the description to this podcast. I do live meditation on Tuesdays at 9am. Pacific time and Thursdays at 4pm Pacific time. And in those live Meditations. We do meditations that do exactly what we've just what I've just laid out here in this episode. So I'd love to know your thoughts about this episode you have any questions or comments, leave them in the comments below. I do read all of the comments, and I do respond to them. And as a reminder, I just want to remind you to head on over to karmic dash warrior.com to download my free report where I reveal to you the secret to harnessing the law of karma, so that you can finally break free of that one stinking lesson. That one gosh darn less than that, so that you can live a freer and fuller life right now. And until then, thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to seeing you next time. Namaste day
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
