These quotes are from the Power Deck, which
can be found at most bookstores of good quality. The cards have
meditational pictures on the backs, and are just flat out interesting
and wonderful. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. And I highly
recommend buying the cards, not because I have any vested interest
or connection with the company, but if you've enjoyed them on this
page, then you'll enjoy keeping them forever.
We are all pilgrims on the path to the unknown. We sit in awe and wonder at the architecture of power. Ripen the receptive void within you, like a womb accepting a seed. Open yourself to the unknowable, to what is unfamiliar to you, so that the energy of what you need in order to be whole can flow into you. When you think of yourself as an entity separate from power, you will obstruct the current, and the power will defeat you. Identify the form of power you want -- what you want to accomplish, build, create, or be -- and become that, so that there Is no separating you. | The structure of your daily spiritual life must be built on a strong foundation in the physical world, like a pillar of selected shaman's stones balanced carefully one on another. Take care of your body through diet and exercise. Express your strength in acts of power, and bring greater awareness to the exchange of money. Protect and nourish your family, and express your integrity by bringing balance into society and nature. Then you will be prepared in the physical for higher spiritual learning. Your being is like a spirit lodge, the foundation of which is rooted in physical manifestation -- strong against the storms along the trail to higher consciousness. To take power, make your spirit available. Take your power and bring your physical and spiritual natures into balance. | You need commitment to focus on your target, take aim, pull back the bow, and then shoot your arrow, knowing you will hit the bull's-eye with every shot. To hit the bull's-eye requires total commitment of your spiritual and physical being. You need only the commitment to walk down the path through the gateway into your true destiny. It is a process of gathering. You gather your emotions, your mental strength, and your abilities as you would gather sheep. It can be a long process, but your commitment gives you endurance. It is the next step after defining your act of power. Materialize your dreams and begin to live them. Build that magnificent dream lodge within you with total commitment. |
Every day of our lives we take from Mother Earth our energy for life. We forget the ancient tradition of the sacred giveaway. Take a moment to sit in silence and count the magnificent things you have in this life, even if only the wonderounsness of being given life. Reflect on the Great Mother, Mother Earth. Ask yourself; "What have I given back to her lately to heal her?" Then think of the higher vision of life and balance on this earth, and realize that the greatest gift you can give this earth and your fellow humans is your own enlightenment. In this way you tear away the veils of ignorance and present the magnificence of your being to everyone who experiences you. Everyone around you is lifted and inspired. This is your offering. | You can never really teach a warrior with words about the unknown; you must use experience. But if you look into the eyes of a woman of power, you may catch up with her a little. She has years of truth ahead of you. Her eyes can quicken you like a river heading toward the rapids. Open yourself with love, not with understanding. You cannot love with your mind. Listen from your heart. If a camel is walking down a path and another camel passes him, the first camel will go faster to keep up. This is how power works. Don't learn everything with your mind. Quicken your spirit by letting go of attachments and move to a stronger vibration of power. | The flower of your being begins to bloom when you move with the flow of life. This is a process of letting go, of moving your consciousness out of your mind and into your body-mind, which is an inch or two below your navel. Feel your receptivity as you become still. Watch the river flow as if you were a mountain high above. Be serene, at ease, and totally within your power. Then let the waterfall of life work for you, as you become like a twig carried on the surface of the rushing water. Become one with the river, dissolving the sense of mind and living totally in your instinctual nature. Let go, and relax into the eternal flow. |
In love there must be trust. Without trust, there is no love. Jealousy is an illness of the mind and heart. Trust lives in the lodge of your innocence. The heyoka is a warrior of the Native American tradition who goes into battle backward on his horse with a broken lance, knowing that the Great Spirit will protect him. It is this kind of trust that you need. The imbalanced aspects of patriarchal history reside like stone carvings within each of us. Welcome the new aspects of feminine power in your being even though they may seem foreign. Trust in the ways of power and the Great Spirit. Know that you are made of power, and live with trust in your heart. | We are the only ones who can heal ourselves -- sometimes with assistance, sometimes without. Our energy or chakra system corresponds to the energy flow from the earth. If you listen and feel, the earth will heal you as you heal her -- with the nurturing force of timeless give and take. Prayer enables you to take power out of the mind and place it in the hands of the deities of the earth and sky. Try to see through the mirage of social barriers that cloud the eyes of women and men the world over. Nurture your dreams. Act in your dreams as you want to act. Find the guarded kivas and sacred places where you have hidden your heart, and nurture your spirit. | A boat can represent your voyage toward the islands of higher consciousness. That boat is made from your treasured innocence. We are all born wild and innocent, like a blue heron. To live in civilization, at a very young age we become like sheep trying to fit in with the crowd. To maintain your receptive innocence is to listen to your own inner voice. Know that the powers of the universe are within you. |
Expressing your highest nature through your work is sometimes easiest when work is not exactly as you wish it to be. There are hidden gifts within friction. Therein lies the secret way to a graceful life. You are not what you do. Your work is a higher mirror, providing a reflection from which to learn in your evolutionary process. Then work becomes a higher skill, and you begin to fine-tune not only your physical self but your spirit. A Zen garden expresses the essence of life and a highly perfected skill. Come to the inner truth that produces true skill. | Are you living your truth? Your being is like a spirit lodge. Within this sacred place is your realization and the divine light of your creation. Live in your spirit lodge surrounded by peace and joy. Outside your lodge is the great wilderness where the rest of the world lives. That wilderness can become a battleground stained with the blood of ignorance and earthly pain. To have lasting power in the world, you must earn the trust of those around you. Most people live without a sacred place within, without a spirit lodge, and they do not know how to enter the spirit lodges of others. Live within your sacred truth. | Virtue is one of the passive qualities of power. When you pull back the bow, preparing to set the arrow and define your target, you use the strength, the will, and the focus that you have collected within that part of yourself called virtue. Virtue is where you find inner truth. It is a place of illumination, and as that radiance grows within you, it becomes integrity. Without virtue, there is no inner balance. Virtue comes from the unknown, quiet things that you do for the world and other people. With each act, your spirit shield becomes stronger and more beautiful with the symbols of your inner life. Like the deer, they are quiet symbols. Virtue marks your path on the other side. Like the one who walks last, the virtuous person is in a position of power. Power often comes quietly. Walk in beauty and virtue. |
The world is bereft of feminine consciousness. To bring Mother Earth back into balance, we must bring back our awareness of her. Language is a barrier between us, but woman has always communed with woman in an unspoken language. Her roots are entwined with the essence of Mother Earth, for she too is feminine. Woman is the Keeper of the Planet and must not let her energy be rerooted by the male systems within woman or man. We are all in need of world harmony. Mother Earth has been misunderstood, but she is the universe. She is the womb for all that lives. Feminine consciousness is the energy that embodies the wisdom you need at this moment. | Exploring the wilderness of your own soul through contemplation brings you to the altar of your imagination. To have a circle of imagination in your being, walk with the untamed, wild, instinctual side of your nature, all the time knowing its power, like a woman aware of her own pregnancy and yet moving through the round of daily tasks. You need not focus on the unborn life for its nature to continue to grow. Remember always that inspiration often comes after reflection, after the seed of creativity is planted. When you actually begin your creative work, the energy of the universe comes to you and imagination flows. | The power of your intent leads you around the sacred wheel of endeavor. Begin today with trust and innocence in the early hours. Imagine a quiet pond, and see the reflection of your true self. At noon take a moment to close your eyes and dream. Image the transformation that this day offers you. Seek the strength and wisdom, through your ability to love, to bring this transformation into action and into the words you speak. At night give thanks for the illumination you have found. Know that the form of your intent leads you to the power of transformation. |
One day you will remember the Great Dream, and the way will become known to you. You entered into life through the veil of the Dream, because your reason for being here must be kept secret from you until you find your way home. You don't know who you are, but one fine day you will remember. It is like creation looking for itself. You are in oneness with all life, though you are not aware of it. You will awaken from the Dream. Let the Great Mother rest within your spirit. She is the universe. She is the womb of all life. She is the light that shines from your eyes, illuminating your daily dreams. The possibilities you dream of will become your reality. | Dream your passion. Fly away. Go through the hoop of your innermost fears and desires. Meet them and conquer them. What pain from childhood have you not dealt with? Move into the wound of your most secret fears, and find the seeds of wisdom that are planted there. Face what upsets you the most; it is a great teacher. Give away whatever is holding you back -- insecurities, ego, fear of failure or of not being loved, fear of being alone -- and be reborn into a new state of perfection. | A shaman can teach you about power. A magician can train you to become strong in spirit and competent in your endeavors in life. But to describe how a miracle happens or how you came to be a powerful magician is to try to explain the mystery. You can talk around the secrets of power, but if you describe them directly you lose that power and you destroy the mystery. Welcome the mystery, and allow the miracle of existence to emerge from the darkness and transform you. |
Grief deepens you. It allows you to explore the perimeters of your soul. Grief is the only gateway to certain levels of consciousness, and it is a hard taskmaster. Through grief you can explore every aspect of your dark side -- anger, pain, abandonment, terror, loneliness; and these are aspects of the sacred wound that in our daily lives we usually try to ignore. Grief forces you to look at those parts of yourself that are not yet healed. If you can look at grief as a teaching, you will grow. The pain of grief is not the only teacher in this life, but if looked at properly, with awareness and an open heart, it is one of the greatest teachers of all. The seeds of wisdom and enlightenment are planted within the wounds of grief. What is lost can only come back to us again in higher ways. | Harmony lives in the lodge of balance and involves equilibrium between the physical and spiritual aspects of your life. For there to be harmony, there must be balance. Imagine yourself as the hub of a sacred wheel, standing in the center. This wheel must function every day of your life. If you imagine that the south is your physical self, the west is your emotional self, the north your spiritual self, and the east your mental self, you see that you stand in an ancient wheel of truth. Consider whether you spend as much time in the physical (south) as you do in the spiritual (north). Are they balanced? Are they in harmony? Reflect on whether you spend more time in your emotions (west) than you do in your mind (east). Adjust your daily life by being aware of your actions and behavior patterns to incorporate equal effort in all the directions so that your wheel will function in perfect harmony. | Ecstasy is a buoyant state of joy. One of the finest ways to maintain a state of joyousness is to examine the dark side of your being, that instinctual nature most human beings repress in civilized life. Within your instinctual nature are the seeds of ecstasy. We tend to live in our minds, in our emotions, occasionally in spirit, and almost never in our instinctual depths. We are born as wild as mountain lions but live most of our lives like sheep, forgetting and denying whole parts of ourselves. Sit on the earth with your back against a tree, and get in touch with your roots, which move deep into middle earth; this will restore your joyousness and balance. Each day, listen to your body-mind and your heart. What are they telling you about a given situation? Ecstasy is like a windhorse waiting to be ridden -- the last wild ride before your passage into enlightenment. Take courage and live your passion in ecstasy. |
Before making a decision of power, move into that place of silence and serenity deep within you. Sit anywhere. Close your eyes and follow your breath in and out. On the third inhalation, take the breath down into your belly and locate your place of power just below your navel. Visualize your place of power holding the golden sun, a disk of radiant brilliance within you. Observe the silence like a deer in a meadow. If you are in pain, use your consciousness to find where the pain lives within your body. Then move into that pain and beyond it until you find the sources of silence. In this silence lives your sacred witness, that which sees all and knows all and is all that you are. Power is born within the silence. | From the left side of your body comes your female energy, whether you are a man or a woman. Within this femaleness, this feminine consciousness, lives your intuition. Intuition is the intelligence of your body-mind. You feel what is true with your body-mind, rather than what you know what is true with your mind. Intuition does not have the clouds of accumulated knowledge to distort your vision. Intuition simply sees what is the truth. With intuition you can feel the source of your being without reasoning it away and being filled with doubt. Doubt destroys your intuition. Find your power always in balance between mind and intuition. | Force lives in your will and comes from your intent. Life is a process of pulling back your bow, aiming your arrow, choosing a target, and shooting. The degree and quality of the force with which you choose your target and shoot determine your power and your success. Force is built through your integrity of purpose, your physical tuning, and your balance of spirit and mind. By naming your act of power, you create force. Follow your innermost passions in life. Empower your will and your strength of force by manifesting your secret dreams. |
Move into that place of perfection within you, that place of truth, responsibility, competence, and intuition. Collect your discipline, like a Buddha meditating in a garden of snow. Impeccability is an area of strength that continues to flame within, maintaining your power and intent. This flame burns in your center always, indicating the level of your capabilities and your effectiveness in bringing events into being. Impeccability is tended by the attentions of your sacred witness -- that person within you who observes the target. Gather your power with impeccability. With the intensity of a rubber band pulled and held at its breaking point, gather your intent and focus on your impeccability, for the job about to be done. | This life is like the fulcrum on a scale of balance. Your past and future lives determine the need for gathering strength in this life. There is a reason for all the pain. As you gather knowledge from the infinite sea of consciousness and life experience, you begin to evolve. You fill the gourd of your spirit with knowledge, so that one day it can be emptied and you may begin to gather wisdom. Become one with all life, and consider the true importance of what you are gathering. | The person who upsets you most in your life is one of your best teachers. If that person can get inside your head, turn you around, and confuse you, you know that you still don't understand what you are doing. You need more strength. Learn by seeing that your life is a teaching. Like the red lotus healing its pain in inner solitude, gain strength from entering your wounds, and learn from them. The magician remembers the trail and takes a different one, even if it is more difficult. In this way, you build strength. |
Never leave your center. Count your bad points as well as your good. What is good and what is bad are most often purely relative. If you sense a weakness within yourself, explore it. It may become the source of your greatest strength. As you sit like a sacred Buddha amid the pandemonium of your life, always remember that the situation or person who has the ability to upset you the most, to pull you off center, is your greatest teacher in the process of centering. Such negativity can become your addiction. Center yourself in your power, and release your need for constant distraction from your center. | Take a stone in your hand and meditate on it, or use the stone surface pictured on the card. Go into the stone. Experience her quiet soul. The stone welcomes your visit. Let her experience the inside of your heart. See how you are each an enduring mirror for the other. You are everywhere, mirroring everything. The stone absorbs you, and you absorb the stone. How can you be alone if you are part of everything? You are the totality of enduring existence. Therefore, nothing in existence can upset you. | Action takes courage. We often feel like fish out of water, separate and different from the world around us. Fish out of water can learn to swim in a new air of consciousness with a new purpose in life. Perhaps it is identification with objects and clinging to addictions that keeps you feeling separate and keeps you from finding the source of your power: not only dependence on drugs, sex, or alcohol, but also addictions like fear of failure, the need for approval, or fear of desertion. Discover your own power and meaning by having the courage to give up your addictions. Then live your power with courage. |
When the shield carrier reaches the top of the mountain, she never seeks approval, because approval is based on doubt. Your strength and wisdom are celebrated in your unique ability to view the experience of life with new vision. Power lies in individuality and the ability to see yourself through your own eyes and not through the eyes of another. To be in power, you must take your power and exist within your own individuality. | If you are always addicted to the process of becoming, there are storms on your horizon. This is because if suddenly there is nothing left to become, you are filled with terror; suddenly you are face to face with your own empty being. Find the sacred space, a sanctuary of pleasant stillness in your heart. To know that you are truly alone is the first step on the long journey to self-discovery on the path to power. The final step is to learn that you are linked with the universe, that you have already become part of everything and already live in all the lodges of the universe. This is wisdom. | Aspiration stimulates power. It is your aim spiritually and physically in the world and involves the totality of your being. Without the balance between the physical and the spiritual, aspiration is a hollow accomplishment. It is like a spirit lodge at the dome of which are your ceremonies and rituals. But the spirit lodge must have a strong foundation of capability, trust of those around you, and responsibility. Aspiration is what builds the spirit lodge of power. It is the architect of your accomplishments and sits at the feet of power, as the deer stands before the remnants of an ancient and powerful civilization. Keep your heart open, kind, and loving, so that the energy of the universe can move freely through you. It is difficult to aspire without judgment, but judgment limits you and puts a fence around your consciousness. Give much consideration to all your choices in life and a free flow to your process of aspiration. |
Much of what you see in life is an agreement that something is in fact true. To develop power, focus on one aspect of your life. This could be your career, a sport, or some endeavor that you have a passion about. Become an expert. In the process of becoming an expert, you fine-tune your whole being. You collect the important parts of yourself, and you begin to live the life of a warrior. Rid yourself of attitudes that are not essential to your task. Collect your energy and focus your power on wondrous and magical acts: let the shell of your consciousness rise out of the ocean of your subconscious mind. It's just a matter of focus. | What is time that it has such power to change all that exists back into dust? What is this unseen force like the wind that can shape the land and our lives. Learn to play with time. Time is surreal, like fish swimming in treetops. A person of power knows how to arrange time. Put on your watch and be aware of the time at which you do everything. Watch the sun, the moon, the transit of the stars. Find out the time that Venus is lowest in the sky before dawn. Be aware of your cycles -- when you get hungry, when you sleep. Our society is obsessed with time, so now "become" time. If you're obsessed with something, it is better to explore it than to deny it. Then it is possible to give up your obsession and let a concept like time take its proper place in your life. Your power depends on your use of time. | If you do not believe in magic, your life will not be magical. Magic, like the power of Stonehenge, is part of the unknowable -- that which you cannot describe, but which exists and makes your life extraordinary. It is part of the goodness of your spirit. It is that mysterious and intriguing part of your spiritual life. Magic is what we are all looking for, but if you try to hold it and name it and describe it, you will lose it. You must talk around magic, describe what led you there, and give thanks for that part of the universe that is unknowable and full of color and strength and magic. Out of relationship comes magic. Out of the friction of forgetting and remembering comes magic. Out of the mists of dawn and the mysteries of creation comes the magic that we call life. Out of your passion for existence comes magic. |
As darkness comes, the mirrors of your spirit reflect different images. It is the time when the world changes and you being begins to glow. Reflect on the new vision that has been living on the perimeter of your consciousness. An idea is stalking you and awaits your invitation, a place within you to begin life. The totality of your creativity comes after you have begun your work on the sacred painting of your life. It is then that the muses of inspiration surround you like eagles and cheer you on to illumination. Take responsibility for your work and your life, and then illumination will follow. | Life is like school. We move through it learning many things. cloaking ourselves in environmental knowledge. You are on the warrior's path toward enlightenment. You must one day peel away accumulated knowledge like layers of an onion and move back into the source of your power. When contemplating a Zen garden, you find that the source of your power is the essence of the Great Spirit. We come onto this earth-walk like a giant piece of smashed mirror, every one of us reflecting the light of our god. The experience of life is a process of piecing together these scrambled fragments into one great mandala, reflecting the one source of all being. Like the center of a cyclone, we sit at the one point of stillness, the pandemonium of life circulating madly around us. Choose equilibrium, not frenzy. Live life from your center. The essence of you and the essence of the primal moving force of the universe are one. | Your act of power is the key to your destiny. Like a sacred flute player enticing your truth of spirit out into the light of day, own your power, because you are made of power. An act of power comes from a place of passion within your deepest being. It is an expression of your totality, of who you are in the world. To find your act of power is to live your dreams. What would you do if you could do anything? Discover what that is, and then do it. To find your power is to find your destiny. |
Your creativity is like a story; it needs a voice, a way to be heard in the world. Creativity has moved into your hut. Creativity is part of your future life. People think that creativity is like stories, that it is outside of them, like truth or power. But it inhabits you like your own life force, and it animates your being. Creativity is within the crystal palace of your mind. You are about to go on a long journey. It is called your life. You will learn to heal the evil forces of darkness. You are a warrior in the fight against ignorance. The dark sorcerers in life are created within each of us when we live a life of unexpressed creativity, when we live someone else's truth and not our own. Define your own creativity and live that creativity in the world. | There are times when you will have less vision, and because of that dimness you will become unbalanced in your seeing; you will see everything -- every stone, every machine, every tree -- as dead rather than alive. As your vision grows, sit still within the city,, and begin to develop and to see that stones and plants and even machines are alive. Even the dead trees have passed through the gateway in the west. Their spirit carries the Dreaming Shield. Begin to see the life within every object. Begin to see the sacredness in things, their energy, their colors, their luminous forms -- their shadow beings. Then you will become strong. See power all around you;it is you. You have developed true vision. | Anytime you are possessed by an emotion that you cannot control, know that it does not belong to you. Someone is sending negative energy toward you. Imagine that the negative emotion is muddy water pouring down through your hands, legs, and feet and into the earth. Or take that emotion into your hands and release it like a hawk -- let it fly away. We tend to hold on to fears and negative energy in an addictive way. Release your fears and let her power come into you. Create a welcoming void within, through the power of release. |
Carrying your gift of consciousness from the heart of woman, of Mother Earth, trek toward the summit of higher knowledge. Because of male and female imbalances, the earth is in danger of dying. Remember that the power of the masculine explodes as the power of the feminine implodes, and a sacred spiral of life is set into motion. One cannot live without the other. The masculine God is in search of the feminine Goddess. He brings gifts of driving force to her powers of intuitive, creative receptivity. Both are equal warriors in the fight against ignorance. Balance your masculine and feminine energies through meditation and awareness of when you are carrying a male or female shield. This is your struggle in life and a great source of power for you. | Live in your sacred witness. That inner place of silence and observing is your true identity and therefore your true power. It is all you really have when all else is gone. Like monoliths in an ancient valley, they observe and remember the passage of the ages. The answers that you find through the timelessness of spirituality and the innocence of nature offer the infinite. Each human being is on his or her own path, each different from yours. Answers to your questions are rarely found in another human. Answer your own questions by reflecting on nature and conversing with your own sacred witness. | Humor, fear, and anger awaken the power of your will. In the juxtaposition of realities, find truth, as in the primitive positioned in the wilderness of an urban setting. See how you have chosen your illusions, as others have, and seek to feel the laughter that holds together your daily dream. Self-importance blinds you to the source of joy and humor. Awaken the power of your will, and find your joy and your laughter. Awaken your sense of humor. |