Sovereignty
Recently, the word sovereignty has been resonating with me on a very deep level. I’ve spent the past couple of years doing so much for other people that I’ve struggled to find space or time for myself. For my own well-being.
Like many people, I’ve been working like a hamster on a wheel. Telling myself the more I work, the more I can pay my bills etc.
And while we all need to pay the bills, I know there must be another way. A way of intentional presence in our daily lives.
This is why the word sovereignty has taken on deeper meaning for me. It speaks to this inner knowing that life is about more than paying bills or climbing the corporate ladder. Sovereignty means that everything - from your dreams to how you respond to life’s challenge - it’s all up to you. The sovereignty of your own divinity. The sovereignty of your choices. The sovereignty of your light. The beauty of your soul. And what you do to cultivate it because wholeness begins from the inside out.
Serendipitously, the more the word sovereignty resonated with me, the more I started to see it being used across social media by other people in the yoga and health communities to mean the sovereignty of your soul. The sacredness of you.
Often when we think of sovereignty, we think of countries or nations. Not of people. And yet we see it all the time, people, especially women, giving up their own inner sovereignty, their sacredness to outside forces.
A healer I met in Switzerland once told me that the word “sacrifice” used to mean “to make sacred” - and yet we have somehow found a way to turn it around into meaning “less than,” injecting this nuance in our modern world where “sacrifice” somehow means giving up something of ourselves. Yet this is not really what it means “to make sacred”.
To make sacred does not deplete you. It is giving from a place of your own inner abundance. It is helping someone because you can and because you want to. It’s that feeling you get when you are connected to your most authentic and clearest center - when you are doing something for someone else that makes you happy - where you have more peace, more calm and more energy.
We only feel depleted when deep down, we really don’t want to do something. When it does take something away from us energetically. But usually this is because we have not asked ourselves why we are really doing something. Is it to please someone else? Is it out of obligation or fear?
You may not want to do a certain task, like go to work, but you want to have a roof over your head, you want to go out to dinner on a Friday night. You want the outcome.
When you feel heaviness in your heart or a reluctance to do something, ask yourself why you are doing it. And follow the trail of this why? Then ask yourself what do you really want?
In remembering your intention, the understanding of your experience can come through. You can see if how you are spending your time and energy either aligns or doesn’t align with your highest values. Does it support or take away from your well-being? Does it help you reach your dreams, or does it simply help someone you care about which honors your highest calling as a mother, daughter, sister or wife.
Remember the sovereignty of your experience. The reverence of your choices. And each day, ask yourself, does this honor the sovereignty of my being, of my well-being, of my life on this planet. If it doesn’t, you’ll know what to do. And if it does, relish the knowing that what you are doing is aligned to the truth of how you want to live your life.
Sometimes, when we look at things differently, the things we look at change and we find a new perspective. Even taking a few minutes to catch your breath and ask yourself “What is my intention?” can shift the choices you make.
- by Kara Fujita Jovic