This is a conversation that came up, that I wanted to share a piece that I feel passionate about.
It was a conversation questioning if I was passing judgement on a situation where I felt a person who was in a leadership position was making choices that were causing hurt. Calling my beliefs of how people in power positions need to behave, judgmental and needing compassion. I personally don’t see it as judgement, but instead discernment. It’s the discernment of years and years and years of building deeply engrained principles around power dynamics to do my part to dismantle power systems that are used in abusive ways. Both big and small, both overt and covert. I’m fighting for safety… physical, mental and emotional safety for everyone! So I see it as integrity, holding a very solid boundary on how people in positions of power treat others and utilize their power.
If you take on a position of leadership, it comes with power. Obviously there is a vast degree of levels of leadership and power, but it shouldn’t matter… power is power. This case being a person who owns a healing business and holds various sessions/activities/events that has them as the leader. A member of the spiritual healing community, while doing said work, has treated people less than acceptable when struggling with their own emotional regulation/healing journey. Has done this on small scales in meetings and larger to clients at events in front of groups. Lots of times and ways, it was definitely a pattern. Followed by not taking accountability or acknowledging they have their own work to do… work that was pouring out of them during times of leadership and impacting those who they were in a position of power over.
For me, it’s an absolute no. Leaders don’t get compassion, they get accountability. What I mean in saying that is taking a leadership role gives you power. If you are stepping into that, you have a responsibility to hold that position with deep integrity. While in that role, you don’t get to show up. If you have power over someone, your shit is not welcome to come into that interaction. That’s what it means to be a leader… it’s not about you anymore, it’s about the “us”. As a leader, if you need compassion for your choices during leadership, what needs to happen next is the accountability that you’re not in a place to lead. You need to take accountability for your actions, step down, and go do your work. While you are doing that work, you don’t maintain your leadership. It’s your duty to know when you are not capable of being what is needed of you, and humbly accept that as a leader who has integrity. When you are done doing said work, then you come back to your leadership role asking for compassion. And it’s not just given back either, the compassion needs to be earned through showing change and giving assurance of said thing never happening again in the future. If you can’t do that, then you need to start by leading yourself first.
We all need to shift to have very high standards of our leaders. We need to all learn about power and start having conversations about how it covertly shows up in our world. All leaders need to be doing shame work before they are allowed to lead, this is a MUST. Any unprocessed shame is going to come pouring out of you the second you get into the position of power over. Walking into a leadership role without knowing all your wounds and shame makes you absolutely dangerous. What will be coming out is the darkest parts of you… and ALL humans are capable of being ugly. Our soulful side keeps us anchored in lighter choices, but we also have our human side with an ego that thrives off power. It especially loves power as a way to fight shame, to be better and stronger than shame. And it will be better and stronger than shame, and will do it at any cost. The more power it receives, the more insatiable it will be because nothing is better or stronger enough for the ego. Before you know it, you are all the way human and the soulful is gone. I personally believe spiritual leaders are actually the most dangerous. Anyone who does spiritual work as a leader, who hasn’t address their shame, will develop a spiritual ego. Not only do they have the ugliness of the ego, but there’s a spiritual component that has them believing their God. Imagine being in the depth of ego but believing that you are the holiest spirit. Yikes! 😳
For this reason, I highly encourage everyone to be very discerning about anyone they follow as a spiritual leader.
It’s a sad reality, but there are more spiritual leaders leading from a place of meeting their own needs, then there is who are genuinely safe healing spaces. And, the more wounds you hold, the more deeply impacted you will be by wounded spiritual leader. This is really a big thing if you are moving through safety in the body, as you will create more safety wounds by working with them.
The key to knowing who is safe… who is doing their own work. Who accepts all pieces of themselves and shows both darkness and light. Can they tell you about the things they are struggling with? Where are all their edges… all the places that they can’t help you with? Are they calling on you to be the leader of your healing, or are they the hero. Are sessions leading you to feel you need less support, or are you building a relationship of dependence on them? Do you feel like they are as human as you, or is there a feeling of them being better or above clients? Is there anything involving touch that doesn’t start with asking permission from you and your body (obviously this is different if you go for a service directly involving touch like massage or reiki)? Is there flexibility and individuality to the services… is it meeting your needs or just a robotic service that meets their needs?
I wish we lived in a world where everyone was safe, and all versions of safety (mentally, emotionally and physically). But we don’t, and in order to get there we are all going to keep to need to have a zero tolerance to anything power and control.