A friend of mine who lives in California recently sent me a picture of a Haboob that obliterated the sky for two days. (Haboob is an Arabic name for a type of dust storm.) It reminded me once again how powerfully nature can make a statement. The dust storm came on the heels of a beautiful rainbow that my husband and I had just witnessed here in North Carolina. We had felt kissed by nature while my friend felt blasted by nature. But really, nature was just expressing his/her power in both ways. One was the power of the air and the other was the power of the water.

I have found that people often respond to their powerful creations in the same way my friend and I responded to nature. They either feel threatened or blessed. But really, each happening is just an opportunity for a person to express their heart’s inner intent in an external way. The outside just gives a person the intensity level needed to propel their heart forward.

Unfortunately, people often view the outside as the holder of power when they are hit with a blasting of words (air), or a torrent of emotions (water). When these elements come from someone, they are just opportunities for your inner power to step forward. It is a chance to speak a truth or share a feeling that needs exactly the amount of intensity offered by the outside. For example, a friend got really upset when her daughter came home from overseas for a one month stay and chose not to stay at her mother’s home. My friend had a lot of feeling about the rejection. But instead of using it to punish her daughter, she used it to redefine what really exists in their relationship. The redefining empowered honesty.

By letting your internal power use the situation to express something real, you will no longer need to fight, run, or hide. No longer will someone’s behavior determine how you will proceed. Yes, you may protect yourself from a verbal dust storm by covering yourself, but not because it is bad. You will simply seek cover because their mental intensity is giving your inner truth the intensity to understand that walking away is a powerful expression.

Just as using an umbrella when it rains is a form of powerfully dealing with nature’s creation, the same holds true when someone is in a flood of emotional intensity. Your umbrella in those situations would be to cover yourself with the heart energy the other person is emotionally reaching to find. In other words, you don’t have to chase after the dust storm or go running through the rain to prove you are powerful, because power is not about overcoming outside forces. Instead power is using the intensity of a happening to activate something inside you that your heart wants you to act upon.

As you learn to own your power by looking for your heart’s intent in every situation, outside happenings will no longer be the judge and jury of your power. So when watery emotions, or dusty air, threatens to block your heart’s intent from expressing, just remind yourself that power is expressed from the inside out, not the outside in.