For a long time, the word power felt like something external to me. I associated it with positions, influence, money, decisions, hierarchies and with people who are able to determine what others may or may not do. Power seemed to be something one person possessed and another did not. Only much later did another side of this word begin to occupy my thoughts. I started to wonder whether there is a difference between having power and standing in one’s own power. Not in the sense of strength, superiority or assertiveness, but as an inner grounding that does not arise only because someone follows me, affirms me or grants me a particular place. The longer I thought about it, the clearer it became that these two forms can conceal something entirely different.
To have power means, first of all, to be able to exert influence. For me, there is nothing inherently negative in that. Every person holds power in certain situations. Parents have it in relation to their children, managers in relation to employees, teachers in relation to students, people with knowledge in relation to those who are currently seeking that knowledge. Attention, language, money and social standing can also confer power. What matters to me less is whether power exists than what it touches within us. I have noticed how easily external power can create a sense of security. When others listen to me, when my decision carries weight or when I can determine what happens, my own position feels more stable. Yet this is precisely where I began to ask myself how stable something really is when it remains dependent on others confirming my importance.
External power has a peculiar uncertainty of its own. What I can possess, I can also lose. A position ends. Recognition shifts. People turn away. Knowledge that once gave me an advantage becomes widely accessible. Influence can grow and disappear again. If my sense of significance is strongly tied to what I can control or bring about, the fear of losing that influence almost inevitably follows. I see a strange contradiction in this: the very power that promises security can create deep dependence. The more important its outward signs become to me, the more I need the conditions that sustain them.
It feels different to me when I think of power not as something I possess, but as an inner capacity. Then it is not about having power over someone else, but about being able to choose my own actions. I can say no without having to make the other person smaller. I can set a boundary without turning it into a battle. I can allow another opinion to stand without feeling that my own is threatened by it. This kind of power is less visible. It needs no audience and no special status. I recognise it where a person does not have to abandon themselves merely to gain approval. Perhaps that is why I like the expression “being power”. For me, it does not describe a state of superiority, but something already present when I take responsibility for myself instead of making my worth dependent on how much influence I can exert over others.
I know the opposite movement from my own life as well. There are situations in which I would rather influence how someone thinks about me than tolerate the fact that their perception is not in my hands. I might explain myself, keep arguing, try to correct an impression or provoke a response that feels better to me. The more closely I look at such moments, the more often I find not strength beneath them, but insecurity. The desire to control something on the outside then arises precisely because I do not feel secure within. I find this remarkable because outward power often looks exactly the opposite. Someone who decides appears strong. Yet not every act of asserting oneself comes from strength, and not every act of stepping back comes from weakness.
This difference also becomes very clear to me in relationships. There is a form of power that tries to bind, persuade, change or subtly steer another person in a desired direction. It can even appear as care. After all, I know what would be good. I only want to help. I want to prevent someone from making a mistake. I know such thoughts, and they can be completely sincere. Even so, the question remains where care ends and my need begins to retain influence over a decision that actually belongs to someone else. I now experience it as a far more demanding form of inner strength to allow another person their freedom even when I dislike their decision. Not indifference, but closeness without any claim of ownership.
I keep returning to the question of why external power can be so attractive to us. For me, it has a great deal to do with our self-image. Influence confirms us. Whoever is needed feels significant. Whoever is asked feels competent. Whoever makes decisions feels that they have an effect. All of this is human and need not be problematic. It only becomes difficult when I need that effect in order to feel myself. Roles can then emerge that are hard to leave. I have to remain the one who knows, the strong one, the helper, the one who has everything under control. And suddenly power no longer serves only a purpose. It begins to protect my identity.
That is also why this subject touches on so much of what I explore in New Reiki – Back to the Source. In my engagement with Reiki, I have increasingly asked myself what happens when spiritual experience is made dependent on external authorities. When someone believes that another person must give them access to something they could never experience directly for themselves, a particular power relationship arises. My own experience has led me increasingly in the opposite direction. For me, there is something essential in giving our own perception space again and taking responsibility for our own experience. Not because teachers, knowledge or guidance are without value, but because support is something different from dependence. Where another person leads me back to myself, I do not experience their importance as diminished. Quite the opposite. For me, this is precisely where a form of strength becomes visible that does not need to hold on to anything.
Today, power therefore seems far less straightforward to me than it once did. I no longer recognise it only by who decides, who speaks or who can influence others. I am often more interested in who remains the same without that confirmation. Who can tolerate an opinion they do not like. Who can let something go even though they could hold on to it. Who possesses knowledge without turning it into superiority. And I notice in myself too how different it feels to be able to assert something and no longer to need to assert it. Perhaps this is where a quiet boundary lies that is barely visible from the outside: between the power I have to hold on to and the power no one can take from me because it was never based on having power over someone else.