04. You’re claiming your power

Hey friends,

In this episode, we dive deep into the concept of personal power—how it manifests, how we can embrace it, and why it's crucial to acknowledge the power within each of us. I reflect on my own journey of stepping into my power, realizing that much of the time I self-sabotaged out of fear of what my full potential could look like. This isn’t about being better than anyone else; it's about recognizing that we *all* have a unique power sourced from universal energy.

We'll explore how to spot opportunities in the small moments and how the energy of the Ace of Wands and Ace of Swords can help us find balance between fiery passion and logical thinking. I share insights from a recent tarot reading, where these energies work together like layers of a cake, to help us integrate the emotional with the intellectual.

We also talk about the obstacles standing in our way—whether that's societal conditioning, a past influence in your life, or the overwhelming state of the world—and how we can navigate these challenges without losing hope. I encourage you to seek out role models who embody personal power, even if it looks entirely different from the mainstream idea of "power." Whether it’s a spiritual leader or a musical artist like Little Simz, it's important to find what resonates with you.

Ultimately, this episode is about empowering you to connect with your personal energy, trust your unique path, and break free from the template of what success "should" look like.

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I use the Queer Tarot Deck by Ash & Chess

Transcript

Hey, welcome back to the sunflowers and stars podcast, intuitive Tarot for the collective. My name's Fiona Fletcher Reid. I'm here to give you an Energy Update, but before that, thank you so much for the positive response to the last episode where I told you a bit about my Patreon. All the information about that is in the description, when I get to 10 members on Patreon, I am going to give all the Patreon members a bonus episode. So if that's something you want to be part of, feel free to join. I know that loads of you have been loving these readings, so if you want to support me, make it easier for me to continue to do these readings, then feel free to join.

But today, as I promised in the last episode, I felt called to talk about power, to talk about finding your power. Because in the last episode, we spoke about healing. Healing is resistance. Was a really interesting reading. From my perspective, we spoke a lot about oppressive forces and why external systems don't want us to heal, because I think a lot of the time that can be, that can be blocking us to progress in on our healing journey. It's not actually, I think, I think it was quite a comforting message, because there was some validation that you're kind of a salmon swimming upstream, because there are a lot of forces working against your highest good. So I thought talking about finding your power would be something that would be helpful, because I know for me, over the last few months, I've started to to feel my own power, that I wouldn't have been able to start this podcast if I hadn't been able to acknowledge the power that is within me. And it's that's not a brag, that's not me thinking I'm better than anyone else. We all have it. You have it. You have a power within you. I think that everyone's power. I think it's a universal energy that comes from source, and how it manifests in your life is going to be unique to you, and what your soul purposes and what your skill set is, and where you what kind of groove you fit into, where you really thrive. But I think we all have this power, and I had a really powerful journaling session a few months ago where I didn't really it was it was like a channeled message. I didn't really understand what I was saying. I just acknowledged and in that journal entry that a lot of the time I self sabotage because I'm almost scared to see how powerful I can be.

Like, I kind of recognize behaviors where I wasn't given 100% or I was like an Oh, like, interviews, job interviews in the past, practicing, but not not practicing as much as not practicing to the point where I would be my best self, and it was like, when I dug deeper, I realized that's because I'm kind of scared. I'm like, it's almost like I know I'm intelligent, I know I'm powerful, but I'm not allowing myself to fully be that way, because somehow I'm scared that it's going to offend people or it's going to isolate me. So that's just a bit of background on my my kind of experience with this concept of personal power.

But when I pull the cards, the Energy Update just now really interesting, because the energy, current energy for the last episode was, if I remember correctly, Ace of Swords. And the aces are all about opportunities, the beginning of a new essentially, the universe coming in and giving you an opportunity. And it might be something really small. Might be like an invitation to go on a date with someone. It might be bumping into someone you've not seen for a while, maybe seen a poster for a arts and craft class in your local area. And it's these kind of small opportunities that can lead to long term life changes, or you've been set into a new path and a new timeline. And the energy in the last reading was it was ace of wands, which is really passionate.

It's about finding a new passion, new motivation, new kind of lust for life and and today we've got ace of swords. So it seems as though you're applying you're applying your intellect, you're applying your logic to this new this sense of feeling motivated and. Feeling this fiery energy inside you. So that has, that energy has definitely, it's not even that it shifted. It feels as though that that fiery energy is still there, if you like. We imagine it as like a cake. It's like that is the layer, that's the sponge layer, and then this ace of swords, kind of intellectual energy as being icing on top.

So it's they're working together all the all the suits in the tarot. They all complement each other, and they all come together to create a whole image, a whole, a sense of wholeness, and in life and in the world, and so fire and the sword energy are working together. And this is feels like something really new for you. I think that you have a tendency to be overwhelmed with emotion, or have kind of periods of your life that are really high, high energy, really passionate. You're doing creative things, you're challenging yourself, and then you have a dip, and then you maybe go into the more logical mindset, where you're focused on learning, and then you're focused on working on your mindset and doing online courses. So it feels like you've, maybe in the past you've you've not been able to find a way to get these two energies to work in harmony. So the energy just now definitely feels like you're making plans, you're absorbing a lot of knowledge, you're looking at those around you for guidance and advice.

And I think when we talk about this in terms of finding your personal power, finding your power, I think we quite often feel in the spiritual world that we're supposed to just know how to do this stuff. You know, I've read a lot of books that say, just smash through your limiting beliefs. And actually, that's that's quite a complex thing to do on your own, and a lot of the writing around it suggests that if you just intend to do it, if you just think, okay, I want to manifest this thing or change this thing in my life, that you can just switch your mindset. It's really not that easy.

So I think you're on the right path of doing your research and reading books and listening to podcasts and watching YouTube videos and really looking to those who aren't they're not any better than you. They just have different ways of thinking. They have different life experience, and they're perhaps have got ways to communicate what it is that you need to hear in order to access your personal power.

This could it doesn't even need to spiritual things. It could be that you listen to a specific artist, you've deep dived into a specific musical artist, someone like someone that has really inspired me over the last few years as Little Simz. She's a rapper artist. I feel like she's someone who really embodies her personal power, and I've kind of listened to a lot of her music and just seen how she's done things differently, and how she's been quite bold in her choices. And sometimes, I guess, it depends on what your depends on what it is that gives you that life force power.

What fills up your cup? Is it going to an art gallery? Is it playing sport? Is it working out at the gym? Sometimes these are the people who are able to communicate and speak in your language. So if you're into working out like maybe you're going to start reading books about athletes, maybe that's where you're going to find your personal power. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to find it through a spiritual guru who is talking solely about spirituality.

So find the people who to you have embodied personal power, and this is it's just something that you'll feel it's not everybody's personal manifestation of their power looks completely different. For some people, it might be working in the finance department of a charity. For some people, it might be singing on stage at the Grammys. It's, it's, that's the amazing thing about it, is it's completely unique to each person. So it won't look a certain way, it will feel a certain way. And that in itself, you're going through that process of reading people's energy and saying, yeah, that person seems like they're in their own power. It's different, a different energy of being powerful. Some people are powerful and they have power. You know, people in positions of power.

So a lot of people will think, oh, a female, CEO, they're in their power. They might not be. They might have had to put on a show and denied parts of themselves in order to pursue this dream. So you'll know when you feel that someone is in their power and that you can listen to how they speak. You know, watch YouTube videos of them being interviewed, and you'll get to know about their habits and their mindset and how they deal with rejection, how they deal with failure, all that stuff, I think, is part of this energy at the moment, of you really, almost just getting curious, getting curious about maybe you don't, maybe you don't believe that you have power within you.

Maybe you're feeling really powerless just now, totally understand that based on what's going on in the world and the societal conditioning that we've all experienced in our lives. So just treating this as curious, okay, hypothetically if I did have power, if I did have power, let me go on this journey of trying to find, find, trying to find people who are already embodying their power. I think it can be a really helpful exercise. And I pulled two cards to ask about the what are the blocks that you're experiencing at the moment in regards to this personal power? And the first card I pulled was the king of swords. And this is the, this is the extreme of logical, logical thinking. I think the King of Swords is very logical, very precise and very accurate in his communication, he's very calm. He's measured. He knows very much who he is, what he wants, and how to get it.

And there might be some people in your life, there may even be definitely a masculine energy, but that doesn't mean it's a man and but there's definitely someone in your in your life, or even in even in your past, who is still influencing the way you see things. There's somebody who has made you feel that you're not good enough and that your power is somehow something that you have to control and keep small you may not even realize that this person has had this impact on you.

You may see them as really strong, really quiet, and therefore you're you're taking their their calmness and their quietness and their kind of measured approach to life. You're taking that as you're reading the message that that's how you have to behave, too. And perhaps your power. Perhaps your power lies in being a public speaker or being really chatty to people, being able to speak to anyone.

Maybe your power lies in spontaneity, whereas this, this masculine energy, their power lay in patience and planning and moving quite slowly towards progress. So this, this pair, this masculine energy, hasn't they've figured out their own personal manifestation of power, and it's really important for you to see that that is not what your life has to look like. So it could be a parental figure, it could even have been like a lecturer at uni or a teacher, or it could be someone in your life just now, maybe someone in the workplace that you really, you know you really idolize. Or I'm thinking of someone like, is it Steve? Steve Bartlett, like he's quite, quite measured and seems quite like he thinks quite a lot about how you communicate. Communicates and how he presents himself, and that's maybe that's his form of power.

But you can't just and this is the issue with social media at the moment, is that everyone wants a template. Everyone wants a tried and tested, step by step method to success, but when you take like a tracing of someone else's process and then copy it, it's never going to be as good as you adapt in it based on your intuition and your skills and your experience and your energy and your soul's purpose so so the obstacle yet is to let go of this, this image of what you think a successful person looks like, and be open to figuring out what your version of success looks like.

And I spoke about this before, but, you don't even need to have an image of what that looks like. You just need to feel into what your what your body feels like energetically when you're in alignment, and when you keep making choices that bring you back into alignment, no matter what the outcome you will you'll feel successful, because you'll have been in alignment, and that's always the best place to be. And the other blocker to you find in your personal power at the moment is the tower. The tower card is just that everything is crumbling. And this is certainly how it feels in the world at the moment. It feels like everything is toppling. The world feels like a complete dumpster fire. It feels really scary. There's genocide, there's bombs, there's a lot of fear in the workplace. There's redundancies. I don't want to dwell too much on that, because as much as it is real and it is very much happening, there's always the risk that that fear can leave you feeling powerless, and that's not what we want. So just to acknowledge that that is happening right now, and it is very overwhelming, and I'm not here to tell you how to manage that mentally.

I do think that we have to stay connected to the news. I think we have to stay engaged with what is happening, but only you will know when that starts to become detrimental to you as an individual. So it's just something to bear in mind that just to notice when you're allowing the energy of some of the things that are happening right now. Because as much as there are terrible things happening in the world, there are also good things happening too, and the more, the more light that we can put out into the world through our power, the more chance we have dealing with the darker energies that are causing so much harm. So just to bear in mind like when, when is that becoming overwhelming? At what point am I no longer being a compassionate witness.

At what point am I now immobilizing myself with fear? I also wanted to pull a card to ask about how we can see the signs of the colonized mind in this context, because I think I certainly don't know a lot about colonization, but it's something that I'm interested in, and I'm I feel very aware of when I myself perpetuate colonization in my everyday life, like something simple, like believing that there's a hierarchy to humanity, that some people have more power than others, and therefore they are better than others, and accepting that there has to be a hierarchy for the world to function, that someone has to be in charge of all the money, and then they distribute it to everyone, that someone in an office decides who gets a home and who doesn't, all that kind of thing. And I'm not saying that I agree. I don't.

Obviously I don't agree with that stuff, but I've become a lot more aware of where I just accept it as normal. And actually, I'd like to be able to get to a point where I can fight back against that stuff, and I can remind myself that hierarchy isn't human and that we are all equal and that we all deserve the same rights and the same access and the same dignity as everyone else. So anyway, I pulled the Hanged Man card and the sign of the colonized mind, and mind, in this sense, is the waiting for someone to come and hand you your power a lot of the time, especially women, were brought up to, or I certainly was brought up in a time when the aim of the game was to find A man. The aim was to find a man who could I could settle down with, and that would give me security and safety and would also validate me as a woman, because being in a couple, you know, as a teenager, I didn't have a lot of male interest.

They probably all knew I was a lesbian somehow. But to me, I felt I wasn't. I was lacking in something because I hadn't been claimed, quote, unquote, by a man. I felt like I needed a man to come and hand me like some sort of certificate that said, Yes, you are attractive. Yes, you are a woman that is has the right. To exist. And when we talk about personal power, think a lot of you are waiting for someone like, maybe you're going and getting tarot readings, or you're going to a medium, or you're looking for signs. You're like, Okay, if I see two to two today, that means I should definitely go and learn more about this subject that I'm really interested in.

And it is fun to look for signs. It is fun because it allows you to connect with the universe and realize that there is an external force working in your favor and that is in cahoots with you. But ultimately, we don't need to wait for those signs. They've got that power like that, the universal power that we are looking for. We're looking outside to be like universe. Coming show me a sign. You are the universe. The power inside you is the power of the universe. Yes, you have to live in on Earth, in a 3d reality. So things aren't magic. Things, take time and take work and discipline and patience.

But patience should be a part of your process after you've realized that you have the power to make the change, to go after the thing you want, to get back into alignment, to protect your own energy waiting for someone else to come along. So for example, going to a medium and hoping that a medium will tell you that you should start your own business. Oh, in your future, I see your business. Guess what? You have the power to decide that now you have the power to see that future for yourself.

And the colonized mind here is saying, no, but how will I know if I'm How will I know if I'm good enough unless someone tells me, because we've been brought up to pass tests and exams and get degrees, in order for someone to tell us that we are qualified to do a certain thing, and of course, we want all our doctors to Be really qualified, but there's but to make that decision, to go after something, to step in a new direction, to open up to being your true, authentic self. I'm not I'm not going to lie and say that I found this easy being with a partner. For me has been really a healing experience. Being with a woman and having a woman encourage me to be my whole self in so many ways has been such a healing experience.

But ultimately, I've realized I could have been doing this all along, if I had just allowed myself to see my own power, to see that if I wear this t shirt that I think no one else is going to like as long as I like it, that's all that matters. To be so self assured that no external opinion can really touch the strength and the energy that you've cultivated within. That's the goal. So don't be waiting around for someone to give you permission. Yes, take time to think, take time to reflect, take time to do the research and the deep dive that we spoke about. But don't wait for someone to come along and tell you that your power is within you. Don't wait for someone to come along and say you would be really good at playing guitar. Just decide that you that you have the power to do that. You have the power. It's not to say that you'll learn overnight, but you've got the power to learn. You've got the power to raise the money for lessons.

You've got the power to be disciplined, to practice every day. Everyone does. Everyone has that power. And actually, some something that's really interesting, car doesn't come up say that all the time, don't. It's really interesting. But everything this is interesting to me. The whole process is fascinating. Asked, what, what does your power feel like? Because this is something that I'm still figuring out. I don't know if I can really articulate what my power feels like. I think it's probably, for me, it's a self confidence, but it's, it's a self confidence that I can survive no matter what happens. It's not a self confidence that is outward. It's a self confidence in being able to pick myself back up no matter what happens. For you, it might feel different, but I've pulled the devil card, and what your power might feel like to you may actually be closely linked with some of your unhealthy coping mechanisms. So for example, if you're someone who likes resale therapy, you like to spend money. You like to buy new things when you're down, when you're happy, that's something that you always gravitate towards.

That's something to explore a little deeper. It's not given as the cars aren't given as much more than that. They're just they're just saying that your power is kind of hidden underneath that. Your power is hidden underneath the coping mechanisms that you know don't. Serve you. So I'm not going to be the one to say that your recreational drug use or the amount of alcohol you drink is an unhealthy coping mechanism.

That's up to you to decide what you feel is an unhealthy coping mechanism, and the invitation is to explore that further. Maybe you want to do it in therapy, maybe you want to do it in your journal, maybe you want to meditate on it, but to think about why and when you gravitate towards those behaviors. Is it when you're sad, is it when you're angry, is it when you're overwhelmed with emotion, is this something that kind of brings you down and kind of numbs some of the feelings?

Because I'm getting the sense that in those feelings and that experience that you would have if you didn't turn to the thing that kind of tones down your emotion. If you just allowed that emotion to come out, you would find your power in there, I'm getting the sense that you're not allowing yourself to feel things fully, because you're scared. You're scared that if you feel loved too deeply, it'll be taken away. If you feel sadness too deeply, you won't be able to come back from it.

So I think your power is going to feel like it's going to feel emotional and it might feel hard at first. I think this is one of the reasons why we get we get blocked, or we or we struggle so much to tap into the power, because it takes us to an emotional place that we've been scared to go to before, but that, I'm not going to say it only happens once, but it gets easier, and it's almost like a kind of initiation of, okay, you're going to feel this for the first time ever. You're going to feel the strength of emotion, and it's your job to hold your ground and to not look for ways to block it out, not look for ways to numb it. How can you experience that motion?

Because that's going to take you to another. It's going to take you to this new level of spiritual evolution, because you've almost unlocked these doors that have been locked in you for so long. And as you unlock them and let this emotion flood in, flood into your soul and into your body, there's going to be other things in there too that you haven't seen before that you haven't accessed, um, we've pulled the nine of wands here for the final card, which is the action step. I was like, What? What? Because this is all kind of very conceptual stuff. We're talking about, talking about power, you know, it's such a vague concept, and something that can can be so different for every person. So the action step is the nine of wands. And this is really an acknowledgement that you have been through a lot emotionally, and that you as as a collective, we've all been through so much, especially in the last four or five years. We've all personally been through a lot as a result of collective experiences like the pandemic. On the collective we've we've been physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally tested, and that has played out on the individual level differently for everyone.

Some people found it great, well, their partners found it terrible. Some people lost, you know, lost family members, and what added, and the nine of wands is really saying it's, it's all, don't want to say it's all going to be worth it, because that didn't have, I don't think that had to happen in order for us to get here. But it's just, it's just telling us you have been on a really long journey, and it's totally understandable that you're weary and that you're tired and that you're exhausted, but if you can just keep going, if you can just push on a little bit further, and that doesn't mean pushing yourself to burn out and working long hours, it just means can you make the promise to yourself that you're going to tend to your wounds and you're going to get up, stand up, and you're going to try again, you're going to keep going. This isn't about moving fast. This isn't about throwing yourself into shadow work and stopping all your coping mechanisms at once.

This is about tending to yourself like a little sick baby, soothing yourself, wrapping yourself up and staying warm when you need to take in your flu meds, you know, getting yourself well again, so that you can feel able and feel strong enough to then go back out into the world and have another good go at whatever it is you feel focused on at the moment, and there's no there's no rush here, but there's definitely a sense that you're close, that you're close to achieving something or energetically moving into a space where you do feel relief. You feel. Know that you succeeded, that you can look back on the hard times and be like, wow, I've survived a lot. I did it.

There's a sense of pride coming that you won't see coming. You won't think you're entitled to but you are. You are very much entitled to being proud of how far you've come. And part of that, part of that pride will be you knowing your power and not being scared to show it, not being scared to use your power for yourself and for the collective so that is today's reading. I hope you found it helpful. If you'd like some extra resources to help you on your spiritual path, consider joining my Patreon. There's some really good journal prompts in there. There's some rituals and stuff that you can do under the moon cycle, so the new moon and the full moon.

And there's some guided meditations in there too, I know are really powerful. And remember, when I get to 10 members, I am going to drop a bonus video for all, sorry, not a video I'm going to drop off. I'm going to drop a bonus episode for all the members. So I'm pre recording this, so hopefully we're not too far off the 10 members by now, but thank you so much for listening.

Love you. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

Fiona x