I Am: The Only Power We Truly Hold

Mainely Mystics | Substack

I don’t watch the news.

I remember being in fifth grade when a teacher casually mentioned that she intentionally avoided it. When she asked who else did the same, I raised my hand. I was the only one.

Ten-year-old me felt something click — a quiet camaraderie. I carried that conviction forward.

Four decades later, avoiding “the news” is nearly impossible. It lives in our phones, scrolls across our feeds, pulses through conversations, and echoes in the collective nervous system.

And let’s be honest — what we are witnessing right now is unsettling.

Fear is thick.

Rage is loud.

Blame is everywhere.

We point fingers at government, institutions, religion, corporations, leaders, systems. And while some of that critique may be justified, something deeper is being revealed.

Recently, someone close to me wrote a public official asking, “What can I personally do to help ease the fear in our state?”

The response was long. Detailed. Defensive. It outlined everything she had done.

But it never answered the question.

What can I do?

That question is the wound.

We want someone else to fix it. We want someone in power to solve it. We want a villain to remove. A monster to defeat. A system to topple.

But what if the mirror being held up to humanity right now isn’t asking us to fight harder…

What if it’s asking us to look inward?

Our rage is real.

Our fear feels justified.

But reacting from those places keeps the loop alive.

Here is the uncomfortable truth:

The only real power we own is how we choose to respond.

Our reactions reveal what is inside of us — the conditioning, the programming, the inherited fears, the narratives we absorbed without questioning. The unconscious agreements we made with systems built on control, war, division, and scarcity.

We can blame governments.

We can blame generations before us.

We can blame each other.

But until we face the mirror, the cycles continue.

Band-aids over infections.

Distraction over integration.

Outrage over responsibility.

We are in a profound transitional era. You can feel it in your bones. Old systems are cracking. The illusions of power are dissolving. What was hidden is being exposed — not to terrorize us, but to wake us.

This isn’t about pretending atrocities aren’t happening.

This isn’t about bypassing pain.

This isn’t about spiritual denial.

It is about sovereignty.

It is about recognizing that if fear is contagious, so is coherence. If rage spreads, so does regulated presence. If darkness can amplify, so can light.

The real work is internal.

We must enter the inner temple.

We must face our shadows — ancestral, societal, personal. The parts of us that judge, react, shame, collapse, attack, hide. The parts that feel powerless. The parts that secretly crave control.

Integration is not glamorous work.

It is uncomfortable.

It is humbling.

It dismantles ego.

But from a healed and integrated place, we vibrate differently. And that vibration influences the collective more than any angry comment thread ever will.

When we ask, “What can I do about the fear?” the answer is both simple and radical:

Stop feeding it.

Witness it.

Regulate yourself.

Choose response over reaction.

Have hard conversations without dehumanizing.

Refuse to dehumanize yourself.

We cannot surgically remove the “bad humans” and expect the illness to vanish. This isn’t a tumor we can excise.

It is a lifestyle shift.

And change is always met with resistance.

Here is what I have come to know:

The Great I Am is not a distant force. It is not outside of us. It is not reserved for the powerful.

It is within you.

Within me.

Even within those we disagree with.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience. And while this human chapter can feel overwhelming, our essence is not extinguishable.

So we are left with choice.

Feed the beast of fear — and watch it grow.

Or turn inward, tend to our shadows, and strengthen our light.

You are here during this transition for a reason.

You are not here to panic.

You are not here to numb out.

You are not here to scream into the void.

You are here to hold light in the dark.

I am because you are.

You are because I am.

And perhaps the most radical act available to us right now is to use our free will not to divide further, but to evolve consciously — so that the world we leave behind reflects the integrity we claim to value.

This is the work.

Welcome to Mainely Mystics.