The Wizard of YOU
A: The Daily Groove blog in its entirety is essentially the elaboration you are asking for! Especially any posts I’ve filed under “Self-Empowerment.” And in particular, my post on Authentic Power.
Inner/Authentic Power doesn’t “look like” anything in particular because it’s inner, not outer. You know you’re connecting to it by how you feel. Authentic Power feels good! The feeling of Authentic Power is authentic pleasure, which you feel when your thoughts, words, and actions are in alignment with your heart’s desires.
Your heart’s desires, and your alignment with them, are all inner phenomena. But people get confused about this because they’ve been trained to be conditional: allowing this alignment to occur only when certain outer conditions are met.
Rather than finding your Inner Power, it’s more accurate to say that your Inner Power will find YOU. Your Power never left you; you left it when you went looking for it outside yourself.
The shift from looking without to looking within is the ultimate message of the classic 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy and her friends believe that only the Wizard has the power to grant their wishes. They’ve essentially given their power away to him. The Wizard, who turns out to be a fake, exploits their belief in his power by agreeing to empower them only if they meet his conditions: kill the Wicked Witch. They jump through his hoops, but he can’t deliver on his promise because he has no real Power. His ruse is exposed and he leaves Oz without granting Dorothy’s wish, and her friends receive only symbols of their own Inner Power.
Finally, the good witch Glinda arrives and teaches Dorothy that she had the power all along, symbolized by her heart-red ruby slippers. To access her Inner Power, she has to align her thoughts with her heart’s desire by chanting, “There’s no place like home.” Home is the place where she experiences unconditional love, so it represents her Authentic Self. Suddenly, she’s back home, and we discover that her journey of separation from, and reunion with, her Power was only a dream — a mere illusion.
Significantly, Dorothy does not conclude that the illusion was bad, only that the truth is better. The illusory land of Oz and its Wizard are as wonderful as ever. The adventure is fun so long as you don’t forget Who You Really Are.
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