What Is the Meaning of Spiritual Power?

What Is the Meaning of Spiritual Power Beyond Identity and Performance

What is the meaning of spiritual power?

For many people, power has been associated with intensity, visibility, dominance, or control. It has often been experienced as something that inflates the identity, destabilises the nervous system, or pulls a person out of their centre. Yet spiritual power, in its truest sense, is something very different. It is not loud. It is not brittle. It is not hungry. It is not something that needs to be proven.

The meaning of spiritual power is coherence.
It is the ability to hold influence, presence, and depth without being overtaken by them.
It is power that the body can rest inside.

There was a time when I could not trust myself with power. I had been starved of it for so long and had played small for so long that when power finally came close, when it finally touched my shoulder, I did not know how to hold it lightly. Power became identity. It became intoxicating. It became something I merged with rather than something I inhabited.

I lived in an unsustainable octave.

Spiritual Power in the Elemental Body

What I understand now is that I was living almost entirely in the element of fire, with some air. Fire and air awaken, stimulate, and activate. They open perception. They create vision and movement. But they are not meant to be lived in continuously. Fire without water burns. Fire without earth becomes wildfire rather than hearth. Air without grounding becomes dissociation rather than inspiration.

For a long time, visibility felt unsafe in my body. And when visibility increased, I unconsciously allowed it to become who I was. From there, it is easy to become performative. Easy to begin moving from the wound. Easy for influence to become compensatory rather than embodied. Much of my strength then came from force and from portraying toughness. This locked me into the warrior archetype, hypervigilant, armoured, and braced. It was exhausting to the feminine nervous system and ultimately unsustainable.

This is the difference between hungry power and seated power.

Hungry power is like a fire that must constantly be fed. It requires fuel, attention, validation, and reaction to stay alive. At its root is insecurity. It is loud because it is uncertain. It is dominant because it is afraid of collapse. It does not feel safe within itself.

Spiritual Power When It Is No Longer Hungry

When we ask what is the meaning of spiritual power, the answer begins here. Spiritual power is not the fire that must constantly consume. It is the hearth that warms without destroying.

I stopped needing to prove, perform, or posture when power became embodied rather than aspirational. When it moved out of the identity layer and into the body. When it was integrated through lived experience, nervous system regulation, and self knowledge. I unconsciously completed a cycle that I later recognised as the full elemental cycle, the medicine wheel of fire, air, water, and earth.

Too much fire burns indiscriminately. There is a difference between wildfire and hearth. One destroys. One nourishes. One consumes without containment. One warms, feeds, and protects life.

There is also a difference between being activated and being embodied. Between being stimulated and being regulated. Between being awakened and being integrated. One enlivens. The other stabilises. One opens. The other holds.

What Is the Meaning of Spiritual Power in Nervous System Regulation

This is where the meaning of spiritual power becomes somatic rather than conceptual. You know you can be trusted with influence when power no longer feels like identity. When it no longer hijacks the nervous system. When it no longer becomes the place you derive your worth from. Influence becomes something you steward rather than something you seek. Motivation shifts from self serving to service, from compensation to coherence, from hunger to responsibility.

Integrated power does not short circuit the body. It does not inflate the crown or harden the solar plexus. It flows through the system, balanced by water, grounded by earth, ventilated by air, and animated by fire. Power no longer pulls you out of your centre. It deepens you into it. This is embodied authority.

This is also why archetypal intensity can coexist with softness and ordinariness. When you are no longer over identified with a single archetype, the warrior, the mystic, the sovereign, the dark feminine, you can move between them fluidly. You are not possessed by one role. You are not collapsed into one identity. You are in relationship with your own cosmology.

I wrote about this depth of archetypal sovereignty in The Dark Feminine: You Are Safe to Be Unfathomable, where power is no longer something to be simplified for safety, but something that is held with dignity, regulation, and self trust.

Power as Quiet, Integrated Authority

Quiet power is often the most integrated. When power no longer leaks outward in search of confirmation, it recycles inward and becomes more coherent. More stable. More trustworthy. This does not mean expressive or visible power is wrong. It means that when expression arises from integration rather than hunger, it carries a different frequency. It does not deplete. It does not overwhelm. It does not create dependency.

This is where nervous system safety becomes central to the meaning of spiritual power. Power that is not regulated becomes intoxicating. Power that is regulated becomes anchoring. In Healing Your Nervous System Gently: Returning To Power Without Forcing, I speak about the difference between forcing transformation and allowing the body to receive it in safety, which is essential if power is to become sustainable rather than destabilising.

Spiritual power is also relational rather than dominating. When you enter into relationship with the mystery rather than trying to control it, power becomes something that moves through you rather than something you wield. This kind of power entrains rather than overwhelms. It regulates rather than intimidates. It brings coherence to the nervous systems it touches.

This is why calling power back does not need to be a war. In Calling Your Power Back Without War, I explore the difference between reclamation through force and reclamation through sovereignty, which is the difference between power organised around survival and power organised around safety.

Power in Sovereignty Without Armour

So what is the meaning of spiritual power, truly?

It is power that no longer needs to defend itself.
Power that no longer needs to posture.
Power that no longer needs to dominate.
Power that no longer needs to prove.

It is power that can be soft without collapsing, visible without inflating, and influential without overriding. It is power that can hold intensity and tenderness at the same time. Power that can be archetypal and ordinary. Power that can be mystical and grounded.

The warrior is always armoured. The sovereign is not. The armoured system is organised around threat. The sovereign system is organised around safety. This is the great shift from survival based power to embodied spiritual authority.

When power is seated in the body, when it is regulated by water, grounded by earth, and ventilated by breath, it becomes something life can trust. It becomes something that can lead without wounding. Influence without intrusion. Presence without pressure.

This is the deeper answer to what is the meaning of spiritual power.

It is not dominance.
It is coherence.
It is not intoxication.
It is integration.
It is not force.
It is safety.

And when power becomes safe to hold, it no longer burns the one who carries it, nor the ones who come into its field. It warms. It steadies. It nourishes. It becomes a hearth rather than a wildfire.

Further Reading

For a scientific understanding of how regulation and safety underpin authority and influence:
https://www.nicabm.com/topic/polyvagal-theory-explained/

For a depth psychology perspective on embodied leadership and nervous system coherence:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00643/full