Deeply Connecting to Pleasure and Power

Speaker 1 (00:02): I used to think of power as this outer force that happened outside of me or even to me. But I'm beginning to realize that it's an energy that operates within. When I give my power away, I am actually giving my life force away. I believe personally that pleasure and power go hand in hand because when you're in your pleasure, you cannot help but be in your power. And I feel like this relationship between pleasure and power looks different for everyone. For me, my relationship to pleasure and power is forever changing, growing, expanding, and contracting depending on what season I'm in in my life. With each life cycle, my relationship to both transforms, which reveals more and more of who I am without pleasure or power, I honestly wouldn't feel the ebb and flow, the weaving in and out of all the different flavors of pleasure or even power. And I do believe that each have a different flavor and flow to them throughout your life. And if you wanna go on a micro level throughout your day, think of it this way. (01:56): When you feel the most powerful in your day, what are you doing? Who are you with? What environment are you in? What does your surroundings look like? You don't always have access to your power throughout your day. It comes in, it comes out. You might have a moment where you lose your power in a situation. Let's say it could be as small as someone cuts you in line at the grocery store and you react to it in a way that causes you to lose power. And how do you lose power? In my experience, whenever I can feel the power draining out of me in a situation, it's usually when, I do something that causes me to experience shame or guilt afterwards. Anything that causes me to contract or causes me to feel less of myself, like the core of myself, is when I am no longer in right relationship with my inner power. And in that situation, I have willingly given my energy and my life force away. Now, don't get me wrong, there are situations where I am perfectly fine with that energy being like being given away because I'm angry, I am frustrated. And a lot of times that situation that angered me or frustrated me will stick with me for days, weeks, sometimes years. (03:57): And there is a point sometimes where I have to like say, okay Casey, how long are you gonna allow this situation to hold your energy, your time? How you know, how long are you, how long are you going? How long are you going to allow this situation to live in your head, your mind, your energy, rent free? Right? And those are times when I have to sit down and be like, oh, okay. I really need to sit down and, you know, forgive, forgive myself, sometimes forgive someone else. And in that act of forgiveness, I call my energy, my life force, my power back to me, and I get to get back into right relationship with it, which allows me to create an even deeper relationship to power. Same thing with pleasure. There are situations throughout my day, throughout my week, throughout my year that allow me to experience pleasure on this deep, fundamental bodily like experience. (05:19): And then there's times where pleasure feels honestly a little vapid, <laugh>, like it feels shallow. It feels like I am giving myself permission to do things that I actually shouldn't be doing. Like for example, I have a sugar. I love sugar. If you know me, you know that I love sugar down to my core. And sometimes I will use pleasure to indulge in a sugary treat when I know that I should stay away from the candy, right? <laugh>. And so these are situations where we get to really understand what our relationship is to pleasure, to power, how they interconnect, how they work together, how they are constantly giving us opportunities to grow within ourselves and to really understand, you know, where we currently are in our life. And how pleasure and power play a huge role in those, in those two, and how pleasure plays a role in our everyday lives. (06:48): And how power plays a huge role in our everyday lives. Honestly, I, I feel like I would be stuck in a cycle that would no longer serve me or take me to the next evolution of my being. If I didn't allow pleasure and power to have, like, have my own experience with pleasure and power, that doesn't feel constricted to me just always doing the right thing there. Cuz there are times where, like I said, I'm okay with <laugh>. After I have a situation, I realize I lost energy time, you know, which is a part of, to, which is a huge part of like my personal power. And I'm like, okay, what's the lesson? And maybe I don't get the lesson for a while and that's okay. I know personally this is a discovery I made when I became a mom. I thought my relationship, particularly with pleasure, had come to an end. (08:11): And honestly, if I really think about it with power too, because honestly, if I wasn't like in a, a relationship with pleasure, I feel that I wouldn't be able to fully access my, my personal power, my personal agency and my sovereignty, which is a part of my personal personal power. because someone else needs me constantly, and needs me to survive. Not just, you know, oh, they need me. Like he needed me to survive. And I was so afraid that becoming a mom would take away from my opportunity to make choices for myself. And what I found is that it was really only the, the beginning. It was the beginning of a really beautiful relationship. And I realized recently that in the past seven years, I have really spent a lot of my time picking up disregarded, abandoned pieces of myself, pieces of myself that were long forgotten. And as I begin to put the pieces back together, I have begun to paint a more full picture of who I am. And I'm stepping into the full spectrum of who I want to be and who I'm becoming at my core. (10:04): And every day I collect new pieces and I place them in their rightful place. And the picture becomes clear and clear, but it's not just a picture I am piecing together, but a roadmap, a roadmap of self to better understand not where I've been, but where I'm going. And this process has led me to a deeper understanding of my pleasure, of my relationship with power. And it's a process that has taken me out of my head and has led me more into my body. You see, so many of us have been operating off of other people's roadmaps, people from the past, situations from the past, and also the present. (11:05): And we hope that by operating off of someone else's roadmap, that it will provide clarity to our lives and make sense of everything that we're experience experiencing or have gone through. And we hope that by breathing life into other people, uh, other situations, that we will feel a little less lost. So we breathe life into our partners, our children, our jobs causes. We deeply believe in thinking that they are a whole, like the whole picture and <affirmative>, when in fact they are just a peace. We place power and authority of our being outside of ourself and in the process giving our life force away. (12:16): And as we do, our power and self-esteem becomes wrapped up in who we are and what we do instead of who we are being. And once we have that realization of just how much energy we have place outside of ourselves and hopes that this thing person or cause could give us a glimpse into or tell us who we are, we may come to realize the version of ourselves we've created. The one staring back at us in the mirror isn't necessarily one that is true. A true reflection of who we are and coming to this realization can feel very lonely and very isolating. But it is also just the beginning of creating a true path of healing and collecting all the fragmented pieces, calling back all the power that you have given away, allowing pleasure to create space for you to call these pieces back so you can begin to put the puzzle back together and see the full picture of who you are. (13:48): And once you begin to see the full picture of who you are, even if you just like see a piece of who you are and you're like, oh my gosh, yes, I remember this, or oh my gosh, I am capable of so much. I am possible, I can create, look at who I am. Really, truly, you can begin to just see how beautiful you are and as you put the pieces back together and create this roadmap of where you desire to go, where you desire to be, who you desire to become life, and everything that you've ever gone through begins to get clearer and clearer and clearer. And that, my friend, understanding the whole of you at your core is the most powerful thing, the most loving thing you can do for yourself. And you can walk through this world with more ease, more grace, more flow, and with a sense of sovereignty. And more importantly, power.