When we go to an equipment auction, a silent auction at a fundraiser, or even to web auction sites such as E-bay, we bid on those products or services that we hope to obtain. If our bid is high enough we get the opportunity to buy what is being sold. If our bid is too low we do not get it but may be able to make a better bid on the next item. The trick to winning is to bid just right, not too little, and not too much. Bidding for power has much in common with this practice. When we feel we are ready for a new experience of power we put in a bid for it. Perhaps we want a raise at work or a promotion. Perhaps we want to upgrade our car or house. Maybe it is time to upgrade relationships or change our requirements for what we need to evolve, learn, or grow. It could be that we want to go back to school, have a baby, get married, or simply upgrade our rules for living so that life feels better than under the old rules. There are so many ways to bid for power, yet in each case something is required of us, a type of bid. The bid may indeed be financial, an investment of time, energy, risk, or all of the above. The bid may require dedicated study, testing, or filling out an application or writing an essay. Sometimes the bid requires getting a recommendation or letter of reference. In some cases the bid involves directly speaking with certain individuals or setting the record straight in a difficult situation, a tough conversation. The bid for power could be practically anything at all.
You can bid for power anytime you want but if you want it to be a successful bid you must be prepared in every way possible. You must be sufficiently healthy, mentally focused, psychologically stable, emotionally prepared, mature enough to handle the responsibilities, be sufficiently educated, spiritually aware and so on. If you are not then your bid will be too low and you will fail to attain what you bid for. If you sacrifice too much in your bid and you bite off more than you can chew, then you will also fail in the long run. The key then is to make your bid for power when the timing is just right and although you might be a little anxious, you feel that you are relatively certain you will succeed. This is how it is when a couple decides to have a child as opposed to one just showing up. Both may succeed but knowing what you are doing is always a better idea.
Examples of bids for power
Let us take some examples of bids for power and see how they might play out. Let us say you have grown tired of relationships that seem to take, take, and take and don’t seem to give back to you very much if at all. People were always asking you for favors but never seemed to be around when you need help. Perhaps you have been afraid to call them on this because you are so desperate for friendship that you do not want to risk them leaving you. So you accept the terms of relationship even though they are rather undesirable. Eventually your self-esteem and confidence built up to the point that you are ready to overhaul the rules of relationship and see who made the cut. So you determined to examine your rules to see what needs a shift.
Taking courage you decided to look straight at the situation. As you look it occurs to you that you have the same philosophy and experience as your mother and your sister who always seem to be walked on, abused, and getting the short end of the stick. You recall your mother saying often, “People just take, that’s the way it is. If you want to have friends you have to compromise.” With shock you see that you have adopted this belief and it has become one of your rules of relationship. So you determine to renegotiate this rule. The new rule will be, “Relationships are about give and take. I always receive as much as I give or more.” Armed with this new rule you make a bid for power and begin to ask people to do things for you and of course you continue helping them. Those that return no favors you withdraw from contact and those who reciprocate you actively continue to see. Because every bid for power comes with a test or initiation some of your old friends may attack you for no longer contacting them and you find you must clear the air with them. You have made your bid and are no longer afraid of the consequences even though the situation is uncomfortable. You politely tell them you cannot continue relationships that have been one way. You may even take responsibility for having fostered this with them.
You have passed the test and your bid is successful. You have successfully transformed your relationships from imbalanced to balanced. Part of your success has had to do with the fact that you had to take responsibility for refusing people’s help before. You had to turn that around and start welcoming it. That meant that you had to learn that you were worthy of it. That is a lot of learning required by this bid for power. In addition you had to face some other tests. Some new people came into your life that began the same old pattern. What did you do with them? You get the picture here. A bid for power comes with some homework. Are you ready and willing to do it?
Bids for power often require that you leave something behind. In the case of the last example it was relationships that no longer work according to the new rule of reciprocation. There is a death involved, the relinquishing of the old for something being born. Transformation and change involve a letting go of the old and an embracing of something new.
Let us say you have desired to change your employment for a long time now. Perhaps you work at something that is stable and consistent and that you are perfectly competent at. Maybe it is something that you once enjoyed but now find boring and deadening. Maybe you are a programmer or a supervisor at a laboratory. Maybe you are a welfare worker or work at installing plumbing or new roofs on homes. On the other hand perhaps you see that you actually have talent working as an agent booking talented artists or musicians and you have done some of that informally on the side. Maybe you have always yearned to tell stories through documentaries or writing scripts. Perhaps you are an excellent teacher or, bored with teaching you yearn to invent apps or technologies that help people with disabilities.
Remote Shamanic Healing
Each month, around the new and full moons, Jose, Lena or Anna leads a remote shamanic healing session. These approximately 30 minute sessions are designed to be experienced in a quiet, safe place free from distraction. Even if you cannot join live they can be very powerful, and always include a good clearing and beautiful icaros. These are live webinars where you cannot be seen or heard. You can hear the practitioner and see their altar for that evening. Recording access is included for 48 hours afterwards. See the product description for dates and times.
Your bid for power involves bravely setting out to make the change in what you do as your true work. So maybe you dabble a little but are always too busy doing what you dislike. Maybe you even see a few clients on the side but are too scared to make the leap into doing it full time. Something has to give. Something’s got to go. Are you ready to proceed? Do you have your skills prepared? Have you done your research? Are you psychologically, emotionally, spiritually ready to act? Some people can say yes to all these questions but they become paralyzed with fear. This suggests that there is still homework to do. What is the old set of rules? What is the fear of? Whose fear is it? Is it really yours or just a hand me down from Mom or Dad?
The price of power
A bid for power requires that you step up. There is a price to pay. No one said it was going to be a piece of cake. And yet that does not mean you have to struggle. It means that you need to have the courage to look directly at your fear without identifying with it, without a big emotional reaction. You must be like an electrician inspecting where the short circuit is, where the crossed wires are. If there is a spark and you scream and fall off the ladder you will not resolve the problem and you may hurt yourself to boot. You need a measure of calm, certainty, clarity that you are on the right track and that you know what to do. Some people complain, “But I don’t have any idea what to do to make this happen.” That is never true. You may not know every detail of what to do but you always know a baby step you can take, and then another, and then another. These baby steps lead to a journey that reveals itself as you go. Only those willing to take baby steps realize their bid for power.
I have seen a number of cases where someone was waiting to retire to make the leap to another more rewarding interest. They never got there. Death intervened. The urge to do something new and more rewarding comes from Essence. Essence does not want the personality to be miserable working away at something totally unrewarding. Essence wants vitality, inspiration, creativity, freshness, and so on. If you don’t listen to the urges that Essence is giving you, Essence may decide to pull the plug on the current life. Believe it or not, Essence can get bored dealing with a paralyzed personality. Essence is excited by bids for power because those are the ways that Essence grows.
What if you are not ready?
Sometimes a bid for power fails. Maybe you decide to run for mayor or some public office. Maybe you want to run because you have something to prove to your parents or to your colleagues. So you martial a whole lot of finances and run on a thin platform and you become mayor. Perhaps you become the worst mayor the community ever had because you just wanted the position for the wrong reasons and you had no idea how to be a good mayor or you had no good ideas for the community. Instead you just embezzle the communities’ money and end up getting caught and sent to jail. That was a bid for power however it went very wrong. You did it for the wrong reasons. You did not have talent for it and you had no vision. In other words in actuality you were totally unprepared. You were not ready. You failed. Failure is not so bad. Failure teaches the hard way. After a string of such failures you eventually wise up and start doing things for the right reasons. You slowly learn. To some degree we all learn that way.
Knowing what to bid for successfully
So how do you know what to bid for? Knowing what to bid for makes all the difference in whether you will succeed in your bid for power. Here are some hints: Bids for power based on the ego’s needs and wants is a recipe for disaster. Sometimes the outcome affects only you and sometimes it affects the whole world like Hitler’s bid to become a world dictator. One is minimally painful and the other is horrendously painful considering the karma collected. Bids for power based on Essence interests are always eventually successful. How do you know which it is? Simple. One feels good and the other is based on fear. Bids for power based on the Four Trues are usually successful. What are the four trues? True work, True Study, True Rest and True Play. How do you know if it is a true for you? Easy. It feels good, not just good but really good. You are good at it and it feels right. When you do it other people remark at how natural it is and how they like seeing you involved in that. When you do it windows of opportunity open for you to do it more. Lets take some examples.
Let’s say your True Work involves teaching young people the joys of listening to and making music. When you do it you not only love it but you achieve good success. The young people flock to you and all the parents are happy that you are teaching their children so well. Doors open and you surge ahead in this work.
Let us say your True Study is studying the mythology of the ancient Incans. You love to study this and pursue opportunities to travel to make arcane discoveries in this highly interesting endeavor. You love it so much that you meet highly knowledgeable people who invite you to study with them. Eventually you make some discoveries that make an important difference in how people understand the Incans and what their culture was all about.
Perhaps your True Play is sailing small boats. This activity rejuvenates you after long days of hard work as a computer programmer. You are able to return to work with renewed vigor and you make some good friends who like to play with you in this fun and active hobby.
Maybe you discover your True Rest is bird watching and you spend many happy evenings and weekends peacefully watching for the migrating birds that sail through the countryside. Not only are you physically rested with this activity but it gives you important mental and emotional rest from a busy life as a high school teacher. Nothing is quite as restful as this activity for you.
Any bids for power in these areas are more than likely to be successful. For example if you determined to go bird watching in Costa Rica or Panama then you will quite likely be successful in finding the funds and the time to go. The same would be true for buying a new sail boat, traveling to Peru to study the Incas or acquiring new equipment or instruments for your students to play.
More than anything a bid for power is not calculated so much as it arrives at your doorstep as the next natural step in your journey. Essence delivers it to you. Sometimes the ego personality is the one with the agenda and these pursuits are usually not worthy bids for power.
Bidding for power is a huge subject and only part of the overall topic of the nature of power. Should you want to know more about the larger topic, I recommend reading a book I wrote several years ago called “The Power Path” available on Amazon books or any other online book retailer. You could say it is a real education on the nature of real power. Many Blessings!
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José Stevens
José Luis Stevens, PhD is the president and co-founder (with wife Lena) of Power Path Seminars, an international school and consulting firm dedicated to the study and application of shamanism and indigenous wisdom to business and everyday life. José completed a ten-year apprenticeship with a Huichol (Wixarika) Maracame (Huichol shaman) in the Sierras of Central Mexico. In addition, he is studying with Shipibo shamans in the Peruvian Amazon and with Paqos (shamans) in the Andes in Peru. In 1983 he completed his doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies focusing on the interface between shamanism and western psychological counseling. Since then, he has studied cross-cultural shamanism around the world to distill the core elements of shamanic healing and practice. He is the author of twenty books and numerous articles including Encounters With Power, Awaken The Inner Shaman, The Power Path, Secrets of Shamanism, Transforming Your Dragons and How To Pray The Shaman’s Way.
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