The Power of Power
In Charles Fillmore’s seminal Unity classic, The Twelve Powers, he likens the creative faculty of “power” to the divine ideas of dominion and mastery. In Fillmore’s view, the power of power is the capacity to have dominion over one’s experience and also the potential to achieve mastery over that experience.
Fillmore places the power of power energy center in the throat area, specifically, the voice box. It is with the power of our word that we engage the wheels of Creation itself and whatever we “bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever [we] loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” [Matthew 18:18] In the creation story of Genesis, the power of the word comes into play almost immediately with the words “Let there be light.” With the creative power inherent in the sound of those words, the creation of the universe was set into motion.
The Power Is In The Word
Virtually every religious and spiritual tradition acknowledges the creative power of sound and words. In the Hindu creation story, Brahma, the Creator, revealed himself as a golden embryo of sound, a vowel resonating outward from his center, resonating off the embryo walls, echoing back upon itself and becoming water and wind. In the Toltec tradition, great emphasis is placed on being “impeccable with your word.” Words and sounds have power and they create both positive and negative effects depending upon how we use and direct them.
In Sanskrit, this power is called “Matrika Shakti,” the inherent creative energy in the sound of the letters that make up words. In the Sanskrit alphabet, each letter has a corresponding sound vibration that resonates in our body’s subtle energy channels and also in the cosmos. In each tradition, the creative power that is implied is the same power that Charles Fillmore calls the power of power, one of the twelve creative faculties of humankind.
The Power Of Dominion & Mastery
When working to intellectually understand the power of power, or indeed any of the twelve powers, it is useful to maintain awareness that each one only represents a potential power. It will always remain our personal responsibility to achieve mastery or dominion over our own experience. No one can do it for us and mastery is not guaranteed. The potential of our creative power is a given. However, the mastery of our power is always a matter of personal choice.
At the level of consciousness, dominion and mastery over our own experience means that we have assumed the personal responsibility to exercise executive management over the thoughts, feelings, beliefs and attitudes that reside in our own consciousness. When we engage the power of power, we use our words to communicate the thoughts and feelings present in our consciousness. If we have a consciousness of conflict, we use words of fear to criticize and divide. If we have a consciousness of peace, we employ words that affirm our fundamental unity.
The Power Of Synergy
Like the other powers, the power of power works interdependently with the other powers creating a synergy of blended powers. It does not achieve its potential if used in isolation or to the exclusion of the other powers. To fully engage the creative power of power, we must fuse it with the harmonizing power of love, inform it with the twin powers of spiritual understanding and discernment, clothe it in the dynamic power of our imagination and galvanize it to action through the executive power of our will.
The remaining powers, including strength, zeal and renunciation also play unique roles in the effective expression of the power of power. While mastery and dominion may not be guaranteed, it is reassuring to know that we are equipped with the limitless creative potential to accomplish them. After all, if the power of the word is enough to set the entire universe into motion, it is likely powerful enough to help us to achieve our own comparatively smaller creative dreams and visions, even world peace.
