It Takes Two To See One
We absolutely must collaborate with other people to play our biggest game.
We manifest through the gateway of our relationships with other people and from here we can access the resources that we need to self-actualise.
Allow your awareness to expand into the connection that’s already there within an extraordinary field of support in your relationships with others. As we step forward, not only to create the future of our lives, but to ignite our power to create the future of our world.
A question that comes up often: How can we truly find our power in this whole context that we’re in, in our lives and in our world, where others are not fully awake and in their power?
As we step into collaboration— what’s likely to happen is that we’re going to bump up against a world that’s not fully empowered yet. We’re going to bump up against others that are not fully empowered yet. As we gain and expand in our personal power as creators, we are going to recognise that we live in a disempowered world. We’re certainly going to encounter others who are reacting from their false centres or unconscious patterns, who might be stuck in a dominator model of power. In a lot of structures in our world, there are a lot of hypermasculine, controlling ways of being for people in power, or people that we’re in relationship with, or people that we encounter that we might need to work with on the path to creating this extraordinary future. People that we might be collaborating with who might be overwhelmed emotionally, or stuck in magical thinking, or relating in various superficial ways, or acting or reacting out of scarcity and lack, or being competitive when you’re being generous and extended.
There are really two choices that we have when we encounter the disempowerment of others and we encounter the disempowerment of our world.
Option one is to be affected by the consciousness and behaviour of other people: other people, the world as it is, they’re going to determine the limitations and constraints of who we’re going to be.
Option two is that we instead engage and respond in ways that transform, ignite, and create a new possibility. In the simplest form, we can either be at effect or we can be the cause of a new possibility.
Others are not fixed. The world is not fixed. It is evolving, and our power to influence others, our power to step forward and bring forth potentials, our power to create a whole possibility— not just for our family or in our immediate relationship, or in our organisations or in our businesses, in our larger world—it’s probably a hundred times bigger than it actually feels.
We’re going to move out of reaction and feeling at the effect of others’ lack of consciousness, and into creation—seeing that we have the power to shape the future in every arena of our lives! We’re going to learn how to join forces, even with people who are imperfect, in ways that can create a space to access the resources, the support that we need to exponentially expand.
What would it mean for our world to work for everyone? If you’re part of this community I know that you deeply care not only about your own future, but you are concerned about the future of our world.
Never before have you had so much power to participate in shaping the future. The world is not shaped by what happened in the past. What we are experiencing in our culture is the momentum of past choices, values, attitudes, actions, agreements, and commitments of people who came before us.
The world has always moved forward when a small group, about 10% of the population, awaken to a new, higher set of values. What happens when about 10% reach a new set of values? There is an influence that’s infused many, many circles deep that ignites a shift in the entire culture, in the entire world.
Throughout history what moved the world forward is not the majority; it’s a smaller group taking a stand for a higher order of values and a higher possibility of our human potential. There has never been a time in the history of our world where we can do that quickly and powerfully. If you think about the things in our world that we might want to influence or change in our lifetime, it feels overwhelming because these things feel fixed: climate change, income inequality, issues with race, class, with women and gender equality, the unfinished work of the wage gap. Whatever it is that you deeply care about, you can be part of the process of transforming it in a shorter time than you can possibly imagine.
Everything is interconnected, and everything is in a field of mutual influence with everything else. We are mutually influencing each other all the time.
I want to invite you to think about an area of your life, or it might be a relationship, or a situation where you feel stuck or powerless in relation to another person, or a situation that might be happening that is obviously comprised of other people. It might be a place where you feel like you’re losing power, where you feel very stuck, where you feel very dominated or at the effect of things, a place you can’t get traction.
Imagine you are someone who has this life-giving energy to engage and transform the situation, becoming aware of yourself and the other person and whatever protection you need to put around you to feel safe, if there is conflict that feels unsafe.
And bringing your expanded ability to step back and see with x-ray vision into the deeper motivations, to feel with empathy the perspective of the other that you may not have been taking into account fully yet. Notice what’s been the dynamic, how has energy been flowing between you and the other person? Notice how energy has been flowing, what it feels like. Take it out of the story of what’s happening and who’s at fault, and notice the other person, feeling empathy for them.
It’s almost as if you were dancing together, they would be leading. And feel yourself and be aware of yourself, if that’s what’s happening. And take a moment to come to a still place of pause.
I want to invite you to drop down into your body, even more deeply expanding outward to the edges of the room. Stepping into this deeper, wider center where you know and you can know, that the deeper truth here is that you have as much power, a right to take up space, a right to have a voice. You have a say, that this is your life, and that you are a creator of the future. And imagine your energetic field growing bigger. Imagine your energetic field is becoming deeper and wider in this beautiful, empowered, feminine, life-giving energy. Seeing yourself as powerful, and that you can influence the situation for the better. From this place of expanded power, I want to invite you to reflect upon this question: If you saw yourself as powerful, of having influence here, what’s the highest possible future in this situation or relationship? What’s the highest potential of this relationship? If you could have it absolutely your way, being deeply related to others, what’s the outcome here that is the highest and best for all?
If you were to step in right now with a commitment to show up in ways that would generate that highest possible future, how might you show up in the situation, how might you respond?
What’s a new way of showing up?
And writing it down, taking a moment to reflect.
Walk through Life as a Creator
The next practice or the next orientation shift that’s disrupting this old narrative of powerlessness is to begin to walk through our lives where we’re moving out of reaction and at the effect of things and into creation everywhere. This is a power practice that you can take on in your life. What we’re disrupting and what we’re breaking up is this old idea that “I don’t have a say, and I don’t have a voice, and I can’t affect or influence change in any way.”
When you start to experience being in creation as being true, what starts to happen is that you gain the confidence to stand to create bigger things in your life that you can’t necessarily see or sense or feel. This is very deep for us because, again, I want to come back to underscore the opportunity that we have to change the world with our gift, to impact, to influence, to step into a fully actualised life, it’s much bigger than it feels.
Expanding your circle of care outward to the edges of the situation, stepping into an identity of seeing yourself as someone whose opinion matters, whose feelings matter, whose ideas matter, who has the power to influence and catalyse a higher possibility in a situation. Stepping back into our power question: What’s the highest possible future here? What’s the highest possible future that I can create here?
Expanding our Power of Collaboration to Play our Biggest Game
If we want to express our creativity, we’re wanting to create a context in which we can be sourcing and creating and have an experience of expressing that that’s received, that’s witnessed. If we want to express the fullness of our light and our radiance, we’re creating a space and we’re creating a context to do that. Ultimately, at the level of destiny, becoming ourselves fully, giving our gifts to others, creating this context, it really involves partnering with others, collaborating with others, co-creating with others, engaging others. Whether it’s in a formal structure of collaboration or whether it’s in an informal structure of forming an alliance, joining forces with others is absolutely the key to having exponential impact.
Those people who hold the sacred keys that will unlock the power for our destiny and influence and impact, are going to be imperfect people. And so, what we need to expand is our own power to collaborate and to create, often in imperfect situations with imperfect people, in ways that have us be able to source the support, the partnership, the resources that we need.
I want to invite you to reflect upon what your experience has been with collaboration and partnerships up until now. What’s this been like for you?
Look back at your past collaborations and look back and see, what are the different things that have come up. Where have there been tensions, and where have there been conflicts? What is it that you might fear or be holding back? The first step in making your own resistance conscious is harvesting the experiences you’ve had in different collaborative situations up until now. “I don’t want to be scrutinised. I don’t want to be held back. I process more quickly than other people, I don’t want to have to slow down and accommodate other people’s style differences.” These are all the different things that come up. Look at that, take a moment to look at that.
All of those things are true, and what’s also true is that it’s only through the gateway of joining forces with others that your contribution is potentially exponentially 10 times bigger. Collaboration at its worst, disempowers us, it holds us back. Collaboration, when we step into it, it actually holds the key to our much larger destiny!
There are a whole list of things to be looking for in Power Partners.
Do you feel a sense of resonance?
Do you feel a sense of synergy?
Is there alignment?
Do you share the same values?
Do you share the same vision?
I want to share that with you and really underscore that it’s not that we want to collaborate or co-create with anyone: you want to collaborate where there is resonance, synergy, shared values, a shared orientation, a shared mission, and you naturally see that mutuality and reciprocity are organic in the relationship.
Where there is resonance, synergy, value alignment, where there is natural, organic reciprocity that is part of the ease and flow of the relationship—that’s someone to collaborate with. Becoming more discerning, finding good matches, and really assessing who you’re going to invest with in. Being able to make your expectations and needs very clear and upfront.
What happens in collaborations a lot of the time, is that we don’t want to alienate the other person by telling them what we need. We fear that they might not be able to give it to us and so we’re not explicit. This is one of the skills that you need. What would it be for you to connect with what you might need and what would feel like mutuality and reciprocity, and to create clear agreements around that?
There is a skill of learning how to turn towards conflict negotiation skills. Learning how to understand and see other’s perspective, to share yours, and be creating a space to navigate your way to what’s right and to what’s true.
Most of us, in our approach to collaborations, are waiting for the other person to show up. To have a successful collaboration, you need to own the entire process. You can invite the other person to be a partner with you, but to be a successful collaborator, we need to each of us take not 50% responsibility; we each need to take a 100% responsibility.
What shifts if you stand in a place of taking 100% responsibility for the highest and best outcome of the collaborations that you’re in, to make sure there is alignment, to communicate needs and expectations, to create a space to invite others to share those, to create clear agreements, to navigate and turn towards conflicts?
We want to have this radical orientation of seeing things in the bigger picture, taking the long view, and being the bigger person and seeing other people ultimately have good intentions. We want to be generous in our interpretations with others or breakdowns or difficulties, and certainly, take care of ourselves, but really stand for the recognition that we ultimately need to join forces to play our biggest games.
You are a powerful creator of the future of your life, the potentials that you feel and sense and know in your clearest moments for your life, for your relationships, for your health, for your spiritual life, for your creativity, for your impact, for your contribution.
I want to invite you into an image of seeing and sensing a world where we are all standing together inside the orientation that we have the power to have a voice, to have a say. We can step out of being in reaction, we can step into being in creation.
Together, we are aligning with the highest possible future of our world. Together, we are expanding our circle of care to encompass the whole. Together, we are linking arms. Together, we are joining forces. And together, we not only have the power to shape the future of our lives, but together, by walking on our destiny path, by aligning with the big, “Yes, we will ignite nothing less than the highest future for a larger world for each other, for ourselves.”