Becoming Sovereign
PART 1: Discussing a word that often gets thrown into the ~spiritual word salad—and what our emotional pain has to do with it.
[part 1 of an essay that is beautifully spiraling out of control—keep an eye out for part 2 in the next couple of days! I am quite excited by this whole email list prospect because I can now give myself full permission to unapologetically unleash the contents of my brain. Welcome to this ride!😇😇😇]
Let’s talk about sovereignty through a spiritual lens. “Becoming sovereign” is a desire that I see tossed around quite often in the modern ~spiritual discourse,~ especially in relation to financial freedom [which is often re-branded prosperity gospel, but that’s a discussion for another post.]
Let’s get clear on this. To “become sovereign” is to enter into a state of being that can be either cultural or personal. In regards to cultural sovereignty, there is the principle of enabling peoples / nations the right to self-determination, in which a group of people / community / nation has total control over their own destiny. This is about cultural autonomy. But it’s collective self-governance that extends beyond political structures and into the sacred waters of ethnic identities, values, folk traditions, and spiritualities.
Personal sovereignty is also about autonomy—and it’s not quite the same for each of us. Personal sovereignty for one person could be about breaking intergenerational cycles of co-dependency. For another, personal sovereignty could be based in the experience of self-partnering and the exploration of open-relating/non-monogamy. And: personal sovereignty can absolutely be based in financial freedom as well; especially for POC in which financial freedom has historically been either a major obstacle, or nearly impossible. Personal sovereignty is about the lived-experience of freedom—whether it’s in the mind or in the body or in the world itself.
So then, what is spiritual sovereignty? Let’s return to a concept I discussed a couple of posts ago: Contrary to what our senses tell us, love / joy / pleasure doesn’t come from outer circumstance; these felt-experiences are the Inner Self [which is bliss itself] flashing forward because of outer circumstance. When this concept is integrated into lived-experience—when love is truly experienced as your own treasure—you are no longer dependent upon outside circumstance to access the feeling of love, pleasure, or joy. This may sound strange, but this is a very real experience that has been contacted and embodied by countless Great Beings throughout the ages and is accomplished through a combination of self-effort and Grace [keeping it brief here, folks.]
The more you realize that love is your own treasure, the less you need to rely on people or things outside of yourself to experience satisfaction. Thus: the attempt to discover and station yourself within your own inner treasure becomes a radical act—because this station of experience is one of sovereignty; true freedom from dependence. Not that we aren’t intrinsically interdependent beings who deeply need to support each other, but this is what is meant by spiritual sovereignty. In this state, outside circumstances absolutely remain beautiful, cherished, and awe-inspiring—but they lose their power over an individual because the individual doesn’t necessarily need them. [imagine the economic effects of more and more people accessing this state, eh?]
So…
…if that’s a possibility—what could a recognition of one’s Inner Treasure ultimately lead to?
A general state of being that isn’t dependent upon circumstance.
In my opinion, a goal of the spiritual path is to develop a state of being that isn’t dependent upon circumstance. This state is developed through the numerous moving parts of the spiritual process itself. The moving parts include [but aren’t limited to]—spiritual practices, ego-work, self-mastery, selfless service, intellectual study, mind-based renunciation, meditation, deep inquiry, etc. There is one very important aspect of this process that I’d like to talk about in this newsletter. A state of being that isn’t dependent upon circumstance is crafted and refined in the world. Not away from the world—in a monastery or cave. There’s nothing wrong with that approach—but it’s not an approach that is realistic or appropriate for most people who are interested in spirituality. If we want to strive for a state of being that isn’t dependent upon circumstance—we have to look circumstance right in the face and find ways to transmute it; to effectively metabolize everything we are confronted with in this lifetime. If we want to become more resilient to circumstance, we have to swim in the waters of circumstance. You simply cannot become a master of circumstance from a distance.
So…
…if we’re in the world, we need to become masters of our response to how the world makes us feel. And this mastery isn’t entirely based in dispassion or bypassing our emotions as we respond [imagine: the classic idea of the spiritual master.] Dispassion, through accessing “witness consciousness” can be massively helpful as we move through life. In my tradition, we call this affectionate detachment—this is when we lovingly embrace life and at the same time, detach ourselves from attitudes and identifications about life that may affect us adversely. This is the true yoga of the mind, folks. But this kind of healthy detachment isn’t the whole picture. The whole picture includes the acceptance of the full spectrum of human experience. The full spectrum of human experience includes joy, sorrow, pain, pleasure, ecstasy, agony, confusion, and clarity [just to name a few possibilities.] The whole picture is based in an approach that recognizes that we: can’t cut ourselves off from our most painful places without also cutting ourselves off from our most Divine places.
So, if we’re in the world, and want to become full-bodied expressions of the Divine—we need to find a way to consciously experience the full spectrum, because our resistance to the full spectrum is actually what is cutting us off from our Divine potential.
Alright friend, let’s get right to it. Where is our resistance to the full spectrum usually based?
In emotional and psychological pain.
Whether we like it or not, we craft our entire lives around finding, maintaining, and receiving love, and when that love [or a sensation that resembles love, like pleasure] appears to be missing, lost, or taken from us—we experience emotional pain. Obviously, this is totally normal. However… because of this—we end up spending a lot of time in fear, which acts intelligently as guard over our hearts. And so the cycle goes: The absence of love results in pain, so we live in unconsciously fearful ways in order to protect ourselves. This is actually the innate wisdom of our mind-body complex—because most of us aren’t equipped to handle these feelings in ways that are supportive of a larger process. It is totally sane to want to protect yourself from pain when you don’t know how to respond to it. & if that’s where you’re at, there is nothing wrong with that. But please allow me to plant a seed that there is another way.
[wanna know about the seed? to be continued in part 2 😇😇😇]
What’s happening in the organic.abundance-verse?
Join me for THE EGO 101 on Sunday, May 22nd ! [sliding-scale $15-45]
I’ll be answering three simple [yet HUGE!] questions:
What is the ego? Why is it relevant on the spiritual path? And how can we work with it?
You can sign up here. 😇
I currently have two spaces open for 1:1 mentorship—you can check out my website and fill out an application if you’d like to dive deeper into the spiritual process with me. 😇
Okay, that’s all for now !! Stay tuned for part 2.
Loved this distillation. It helped give words to feeling, for me.
I've been exploring on personal sovereignty of late as I unpack ways I've detach myself from exterior apparatuses of power/love/affirmation. It is really a radical act. For myself I've noticed concepts of Governmental Control, Capitalism, Gender Narrative, lift like vapor as I pursue a "lived-experience of freedom" as mine own sovereign. I am appearing with each new void.