Power to withdraw strengthens our souls

Each week I like to contemplate a soul strength. This week's inspirational card is the Power to Withdraw. It says, "What started out as a good idea may not turn out as well as we expected.

Perhaps, we're having second thoughts about involvement in a situation.

The power to withdraw gives us the internal strength to change our mind, terminate our commitment when it's no longer in alignment with our values or our sense of what's right and our deepest truth.

Where have you invested your energy where you might be thinking, "Ooh, I'm not sure I should go on with this?"

If there's anything like that going on, it's interesting to think that part of the strength of our soul is the power to say no, to say, you know, it just really is not congruent with who I am as an individual, and so here are some of the pitfalls that we can have.

The first one is clinging on to fear of having nothing or no one, mediocrity, co-dependence, addiction, blind obedience for the wrong reasons, or weakness. We don't want any of that going on, do we?

Let's think of how we can mentally release this, so we say, "We release all fear of being true to ourselves," and you can breathe and release.

We can set ourselves free of situations we've now outgrown, breathing in and releasing. You can give yourself permission to withdraw from a situation or circumstance. and you can release all bindings and attachments that are not right for you as a human being living into your light. So just take a deep breath and release.

It's a nice thing for us to be contemplating, isn't it? Where do we need to just withdraw our energy because it's just not serving us? Have you ever been in a situation where you end up rescuing people?

One of the traps with rescuing is that whilst we feel like we've really got to help them, they often resent our help, and one of the reasons they resent that help is because the energy with which we give the help is we're frightened.

"I'm frightened you're going to hurt yourself. I'm frightened you're going to fail and that if I don't help you, something terrible is going to happen so I have to help you. I don't have any choice." My fear is actually entering into whatever that person is doing.

Part of our spiritual strength and one of the ways I use it to call on Mother Durga, who's the goddess of strength and courage.

I call on Mother Durga to help me lift my consciousness to a place where I try and think, "What would love do now?

What would love do now?" It's love for the person, respect for the situation, love of self, and the other people in my life who I also may have commitments with, so what would love do in that balance of all of the considerations and factors?

If we can help with love, then we're probably doing the right thing.

If we're terrified and doing things because fear is driving us, then down the track, it can lead to complications, including that the person who we're rescuing resents being rescued and then starts to persecute us, starts picking on us, starts shouting at us because they don't like something about what we've done or it just gets very complicated.

Shakti Durga