Be Your Own Authority

This was the lesson for my Spiritual Study Group yesterday. Enjoy
 
Step 8 – Be Your Own Authority
Let’s be clear. Being your own authority does not mean being an authority for anyone else. It just means that you don’t let anyone else become an authority for you.
Everyone is free to choose, including you. And everyone is responsible for the choice that he or she makes. How else could it be?
Many people try to cross these clear lines of responsibility, but doing so only clouds their perception of reality. Don’t be a glutton for punishment. Honor these lines and you will honor each other.
First, understand that you are not taking responsibility for yourself when: 1, You let someone else make choices for you, or, 2. You make choices for someone else.
That is co-dependent. It is not empowering to yourself or the other person. It may appear to gain you a temporary advantage, but you pay for that advantage by forfeiting your freedom to choose your own life.
It is great to listen to others and learn from others. Intimate sharing is essential to your spiritual growth. It gives you feedback that you can use to expand your perceptions. But others do not know what you need. Even psychics and other intuitive persons cannot tell you what you need to know. They may supply an important piece of information or they may not. Either way, you are the person who must use this information to find your peace.
Understand that there are limits on what anyone can tell you that will be truly helpful. Those limits apply to what you can tell others. The most help you can give or receive from others is encouragement. Anything more than that is rarely helpful.
To be your own authority, you must let go of the concept that there is an answer outside of you. You must let go of the concept that there is something to achieve.
Authority comes directly out of experience. It says: “I honor my life. I accept what is true for me, even if it is not true for others.”
Inner authority is inconsistent with prescribing for others. As soon as you try to make others fit with your values and beliefs, you undercut the power of those values and beliefs in your own life. As soon as you need the agreement of others to honor your own life, you have lost touch with your inner authority.
Everyone has the right, indeed the responsibility to say “This is true for me. This works for me.” This is an important self-affirmation. For nobody’s life is exactly like mine. My experiences are unique, and should be accepted as such.
Anyone who attempts to deny me the integrity of my experiences denies his or her own experience as well. It is impossible to affirm oneself by denying others.
Conversely, I don’t begin to hear my own truth as long as I am more invested in the experience of others than I am in my own experience. Authority comes from within and stops at the skin.
My authority sets boundaries on my desire to choose when that desire infringes on the freedom and responsibility of others to choose for themselves. It also empowers me to choose for myself when others would make choices for me.
My authority is consistent with and equal to your authority. You cannot deny or overstep your authority without inviting me to do the same. In that sense, your fidelity to your own experience supports your innocence as well as mine.
Now, all of this said, it is clear that over-stepping and under-stepping our authority is part of our learning process here. It is part of our dance with each other.
Thus, it must not be our intention to end the dance, but to witness it. Witnessing the dance brings the movements in toward the center. It makes them more visible. As we become aware of our “over-“ and “under-stepping”, correction happens naturally. Witnessing helps us see and learn from our own behavior without judging it.
The authority issue is one of the most profound issues we will ever deal with. There is not one of us who will not puff himself up and beat himself into the ground. We do not learn our existential authority until we see the falsehood of our ego-based authority. The one comes from simple acceptance of ourselves and others. The other comes from a deep sense of inadequacy which we project onto others.
Those who have illusions of superiority over others often harbor unconscious feelings of inferiority. And those who consistently defer to the strength and wisdom of others often harbor unconscious feelings of superiority. Strangely enough, neither the person playing the superior role nor the person playing the inferior role has the willingness to stand alone with his or her convictions. In one way or another, both seek the support and agreement of others.
We must wake up to the fact that we can be too strong or too weak for our own good. Those who study I Ching will not find this concept difficult. Those who are too strong attract the weak and so become weak themselves. And those who are too weak attract the strong, and so become stronger through them.
Each uses the other to come to balance. Unfortunately this is not a conscious process, and so there is little understanding or gratitude for the exchange.
It seems important at this stage of our collective evolution that this process of “coming to balance” be a conscious one. That is why there is so much literature coming out on abuse and co-dependency. These exchanges, when they happen unconsciously, leave many unspeakable wounds.
Speaking about our wounds is healthy. It is our way of “owning” our experience and taking responsibility for our healing.
All this is about RESPECT, respect for ourselves and respect for others. Respect comes from the word “specere” which means to look. Re-spect therefore means “to look back, to see again, or to see differently.”
It is understood that first we will “see through glass darkly, and then face to face.” First we will misperceive and then our perception will be corrected. First we will make mistakes and then we will learn. First, we will trespass against one another, and then we will forgive.
This is a process repeated again and again and again. Respect for ourselves and others is something we gain by violating the law of equality. The awareness of our violation in and of itself draws us toward equality.
So when we say “Be Your Own Authority” what we mean is learn to be who you truly are and learn to see others as they truly are. Practice equality. Learn from inequality. Accept the process. Use it to align and to grow.
Hugszzz, Vicki