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Discovering
and
Manifesting Your
Potential Do you recall hearing someone in your life tell you "you’re not living up to your potential?" Maybe it was a counselor at school, a teacher or perhaps a friend or parent. I sure do! For me it came in the little notes scribbled on report cards or in feedback from parent teacher conferences. The problem was that I never understood what this thing called potential was let alone how I could "live up to it!" So, as the saying goes, "you teach what you want to learn." I’ve spent many years looking at what potential is and learning how to help myself and others bring it forth into the world. So what is this thing called potential? If you look it up in the dictionary you’ll find that it stems from the Latin root, potentialis which means power or potency. Potential is further defined as something that is capable of development into actuality. Could we say then that "living up to our potential" means coming to terms with our power and manifesting it in the world? Could we say that "living up to our potential" is the process in which we remove blocks that prevent us from expressing our full power? What prevents us from expressing this power or potential is individual to each of us. We all have ways of blocking life-force energy from flowing through us; blocking our power and potential from manifesting fully. As a professional astrologer and counselor I see this so vividly in my work with clients. The brilliance of astrology is that it can really help a person connect not only with their gifts but also with how they tend to block or distort the power that is available to them to manifest those gifts in the world. In other words, to be able to manifest the gifts of our birth we must release the blocks that restrict the flow of essence ("higher" power) through the vehicle of our personality. Dane Rudhyar, the father of the psychospiritual approach to astrology, has said that our "essential nature is represented by the patterns of energy produced by the angular relationships between the ten planets." These angular relationships or aspects, particularly the more stressful ones, can be vitally helpful and can actually inform us on how to act in order to actualize our potential or power. By understanding and accepting the challenging aspects in our charts, then, we can begin to experience the power and dynamism that is hidden there. Each of the challenging series of aspects is a literal call to action; a powerful dynamo of energy that demands us to pay attention and work on ways of resolving the conflicting needs of the planets involved. It is through the call to action of the challenging aspects that we really begin to tap into our power or inherent potential. By
understanding and accepting the conflicting needs of the
planetary energies we can begin to dis-identify with the
more problematic manifestations and identify with the
transformative power inherent in them that wants to manifest
in our lives. To me, this process of resolving the blocks to
manifesting our power is an expression of our willingness to
let the "higher" power flow through us. As we become clearer
channels for this "higher" power we become more capable of
expressing and manifesting our unique gifts in the world.
Although this can be challenging work, as we may have to
confront aspects of ourselves that we may find hard to
accept, I believe that the rewards of greater aliveness and
being more able to fully express our power and potential are
well worth the effort!
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