Power is taken away from a person, or persons, through division.
In my work with trauma healing, I can clearly see that people are divided by the impact of trauma. Their personalities, beliefs, physical bodies and energetic bodies become split (quite literally). What I also see is that when you are divided, your power is divided as well. I talk a lot about personas in my blog and so I want to use that as an example...
You are 6 years old. You create a persona of a person that needs to lie in order to get what you want/need because you aren't getting it otherwise. Maybe your parent keeps scolding you for your grades or behavior so you create lies to shift blame off of you. This is done due to fear of being reprimanded. This is part A. The other part of you, Part B, feels guilty or not good enough as you are because Part A is telling lies. Now we have conflicting behaviors and beliefs. This is a simplified version of a very real and complex persona building that occurs for everyone. I repeat... we all do this as children. Now, each of these Parts has 50% of your personal power and control over your actions and beliefs. The more Parts you have in play, the more division of that power and the more separate and conflicting you feel within yourself. Through the work I do, we bring those parts of you together so you can reclaim your power. This is overly simplified, but my point has been made!
So.. this concept translates over to society as well.
Whether we are talking about division of self or division of people physically, politically or by race, the division creates an imbalance within AND as a collective.
Think about how much division is out there being promoted on a regular basis:
Black vs. white
Democrat vs. republican (Trump vs. Biden, left vs. right, libertarian vs. conservative, etc.)
People who wear masks vs. people who don't
Rich vs. poor
Feminism vs. that toxic masculine
Empath vs. narcissist
Vaccine supporters vs. non-vaccine supporters
Politicly correct language vs. insensitive language
And these I have just pulled straight from my personal Facebook feed!
This concept applies to anything that creates an US VS. THEM mentality. If there is an us vs. them going on, either within yourself or among a group of people, power is being divided. In pretty much all cases, just like in the example I used above of a child, fear is the motivating factor.
Sit and think about the last time you judged someone because they believed something different from you. Will you be able to catch yourself the next time you do it?
In having this stuff come up, we are creating a further divide in our society. When you tell a story about your belief versus theirs, how you are right and they are wrong, you are causing the split to move further along in yourself as well as in the collective. And the more divided we are, the less power we have as both a people and as an individual.
In healing work, this is remedied in a specific way. We pay attention to where we are looking at things with great polarity. Where we are looking at something as black and white. We do our best to notice or bring awareness to times when we are speaking out against “this side” or “that side” and instead cultivate love and compassion for both sides, because both sides are valid. This is where we look within, we look at the part of ourselves that is making this polarizing claim. I will be honest, this isn't always an easy exercise.
For example.. Why do you hate that presidential candidate and judge everyone who supports him? What it is in this candidate that is triggering you? Can you love this Part? Can you love that candidate for who they are? Then we see what comes up underneath these judgments and feelings. Can we look at that fully and perhaps meet it with love and acceptance as well?
Only in seeing this perspective of both sides being valid, and in offering love and compassion, can we reclaim our power and be stronger as a collective.