Ceremony, Ritual, Fear, Loss, Peace, Power, Confidence, Compassion, Balance, Being, Existence and Selling at the Holistic Health Expo – Part 3

[[Note to readers – this is a continuation of my Ceremony, Ritual, Fear, Loss, Peace, Power, Confidence, Compassion, Balance, Being, Existence and Selling at the Holistic Health Expo thread. Part 1 focused on Ceremony and Ritual and Part 2 dealt with perceptions of fear and loss. Here we consider Power, Peace, Confidence and Compassion.
Enjoy!]]

Read through our testimonials, Quotes and Memes and other members’ blog posts and you’ll notice recurring themes of Power, Peace and Compassion (let me know if you disagree). There’re reasons for that and they’re based on what and how my teachers taught me.

The majority of my teachers weren’t physically imposing people. With the exception of one or two or three or four or five, you wouldn’t notice them walking down a street. Those you would notice weren’t so much imposing as simply eye-catching. Grandmothers Parvati and Apara, for example, were the essence of feminine godhood. You looked at them and they were Venus and the Madonna rolled into one. Little Bear was a short fireplug of a man and you simply knew not to upset him. Brother Jorge was a long drink of water, willow thin and close to seven feet tall who always managed to look you eye-to-eye. Moanu was physically imposing in the way any native Hawaiian would be; tall, massively muscular and with flame red hair, a true child of Pele.

And regardless of their physical stature, each exuded power and peace and (to me at least) peace came first. No matter what they were doing or who they were with, there was a sense of rest, of ease, of a deep internal peace that ebbed from them and put at rest all the concerns and confusions of those around them. Did they do this intentionally? I don’t know. If they did, the intention had long passed into a way of being such that being peace no longer required any thought on their part, it was simply who and how they were.

What I learned is that that kind of peace only exists when someone knows they have power and knows they don’t have to use it. That last part is key. Knowing without a need to demonstrate – to themselves or others – is an indication of confidence, a kind of confidence in their ability that gives them the power to act or not, do or not, in each situation and in each moment. In other words, they were never “on” as in on-stage. They didn’t change who they were or how they behaved based on who was around them or where they were. Long before the term WYSIWYG entered our lexicon, they were WYSIWYG incarnate. WYSIWYG people don’t demonstrate their strengths and they do use them as situations dictate.

That last part is where my challenge lies regarding some of the folks on the vendors’ floor. If you are confident in your ability, you don’t need to broadcast it. It’s good to have the witness and testimony of people, but not self-testimony. The purpose of testimonials and eye-witness accounts is for those who’ve not had direct experience with you to engage with those who have had direct experience of you.

And that leads us to compassion. When you have confidence in your abilities such that you are at peace with yourself and what you can do, you can have compassion both on yourself for those times you’re unsure if you should act, for those who do not have the confidence to act and especially for those who will benefit when you act on their behalf. Without compassion, regardless of what you can do, your act is self-directed, not other directed, and if self-directed then why make a show of it?

My opinion, that, learned from observing my teachers working with those who weren’t studying with them.

So what does this have to do with the expo we attended? First, I appreciate that everybody has to make a living, has bills to pay, needs to put food on the table, so on and so forth. Just so we’re all clear on the concept, the NextStage Expanded Awareness Society is intended to be a profitable business. On the way to being profitable, though, we actively use our training to benefit others when there’s no monetary gain and actively contribute to charitable causes (in fact, these latter two come before profitability (definitely not a good business strategy, that)). It’s that aspect of compassion that I found missing as I walked the vendors’ floor.

Let me share a personal example. A friend owned a wiccan shop. Susan and I were in there one day along with several other patrons. A woman walked in with some physical challenges. My spirit guides instructed me to ease her pain.

I went to our friend, the owner, and said, “Hire me” (a requirement in my training should I need to exercise my skills in someone else’s “house”). She didn’t ask any questions, although I could see she was confused and concerned, and said, “You’re hired.”

I turned to the woman, asked if she would be willing to let me hold her hands for a moment (she was), made some suggestions to her that allowed her to breathe more easily and relieved some spinal stresses, taught her how to do it on her own and suggested how long she should practice what I taught her, asked if she was feeling better (she was surprised at how much better she felt and thanked me). I bowed and went back to our friend. “Fire me,” I said, and she laughed. “You’re fired,” she said, and it was done.

No exchange of anything other than energies, no requirement other than someone’s need and the necessary permissions to act, no show of power except that required to heal a twisted body, and then back to looking at books and CDs.

Even when people started asking questions, I replied, “I’m sorry, I don’t work here anymore. You’ll need to talk to {our friend who owned the store} if you want any information.”

Confidence in using whatever abilities one has compassionately and as required, not necessarily as requested (except perhaps by the Spirits), and being at peace with being able to do, to act, and not having to repeat the act simply because other people want you to, is liberating in ways most people (in my experience) can’t imagine.