Essence of Type Eight – Strength, Power
Imagine that we each come from one of nine lands, the land where the essential quality to which we are sensitive reigns supreme. For Eights, this land is one of strength and power.
Type Eight is called the “Challenger”. In their souls, Eights are sensitive to the power and strength of Being. Above all, they want to live in a land of vitality, where every being is intensely alive and robust, naturally strong and powerful.
To enter Eight Land, imagine a Garden of Eden where there is a vibrancy and intense aliveness in every dimension, all beings are strong and powerful. Your soul knows that you too are part of this powerful expression of life.
To understand the experience of Eights in the world, imagine the “fall” from this Garden of strength and aliveness to a realm of defeat, of being born into a world where things seem dull, weak and washed out, where there is a sense of resignation, and everyone is dragging themselves through the dust. For type Eight, expulsion from Paradise feels like being cast into a world of dreary weakness and collapse.
Understanding The Essence of Stength
Understanding the quality of essential strength or power is challenging for us in the sense that we are so familiar with the distortions and abuse of power in the world. We need to distinguish true strength and power, which is universal and inherent to Being, from this distorted version we usually experience.
We know that life has force, there is a vital quality to life that is very close to simply existing. We are here, in our bodies, alive. Nothing could exist without a power source.
We say that God is “all powerful.” Being the most powerful, supreme being is part of the definition of God, to be the creator and ruler of all requires ultimate power. We conceive of anything that exists as having some sort of force or power, so we give God, the '“All Mighty,” the ultimate power. We don’t have to believe in God to understand this idea and it reveals how we experience power - it seems inherent to existence.
More scientifically, consider that the universe began with a Big Bang - an explosion. The sun burns with the energy we need for life on earth - sending us 44 quadrillion watts of power per year, which is equal to 44 million electric power plants. We ourselves need to ingest and burn calories. So, in a basic sense, we know that there is a need for energy and power for the universe and life to exist. And we can sense the heat and expansive force of this power.
We humans experience our power in our bodies as aliveness, forcefulness, strength, vitality, expansive intensity and so on. We did not come into the world to float around in a weak, enervated state - we came into our bodies - temporal, with appetites and instincts. The poet Alfred Tennyson called nature “red in tooth and claw” and this has come to mean the violence of nature - but we can think of the pure instinctual strength required to survive and thrive in nature. We humans are also animals with survival, social and sexual instincts.
Perhaps you can remember feeling fully alive and glorying in your strength as a child? Our earliest memories tend to have this immediacy - when we first realized we were alive in the world in our own skin. Maybe you have watched small children play and appreciated how physical and vibrant they are, how undiminished and mighty. Or you may have watched a kitten climb the drapes, or a puppy demolish a toy. This is essential strength - it is big and full of life. It is not wimpy. It is plugged in to the power source of life.
So far, strength and power sound like essential and positive forces, which is true. But in ordinary reality, power is usually used as “power over” and contrasted with the weak, who are downtrodden. We have all experienced being overpowered as children because we are truly dependent, and our parents or caregivers are towering figures who control everything. We continue as adults to experience and witness strength and power being used as aggression and violence. Power becomes frightening, abusive, arbitrary and we are often forced to react with fight, flight or freeze.
Because of all this distortion, many of us resist experiencing our own strength. We fear the impact on our relationships. We don’t want to feel our power or aggression, we are afraid of separation, or that we will become obnoxious or alienate others. So much that is scary and negative is associated with power that many of us prefer to be weak - consciously or unconsciously. This is also cultural as women are conditioned to be the “weaker sex.” But true, essential strength or power is inherent to all life and is not relative - strength is the natural endowment of all beings. So, we need to distinguish the false uses of force to understand the essence of strength and give ourselves permission to sense our natural power.
The best way to connect to the essential quality is to sense it within ourselves and in our bodies. In this case, strength and power tend to be located, at least initially, in our bellies. Sensing into your grounded belly, there might be a feeling of heat, expansion, capacity, bigness, fullness. Strength is so fundamental that we can also locate it simply by sensing our aliveness throughout our bodies. For some people movement and exaggeration might help with this - standing tall, stretching, making yourself big, roaring, stomping your feet. Loud music and dancing, for example, can stir the bodily energy of strength. Then just noticing and staying connected to strength while quieting and becoming still can help you find your essential power that is an aspect of your Being.
On a spiritual level, the strength essence is sometimes called the “red” energy. A. H. Almaas, creator of the Diamond Approach, explains how the Red essence supports us when we feel it’s just too difficult to continue doing our inner work: “It gives us the sense that ‘Yes, I can do it, I’ve got what it takes’, so we don’t feel overwhelmed and give up.” So, Red energy is a sense of strength and capability that serves a spiritual purpose - it supports us in doing the difficult work of self-awareness. It helps us defend ourselves from inner critic attacks. It helps us show up and stay on our path.
We can really understand the goodness of essential strength when we notice this - it is far from damaging. It will arise when we need to be tough, to persist through difficulties and challenges. It doesn’t have to be esoteric - it is common to refer to and call on our “inner strength.” You are using your strength right now to persist in this work.
There is nothing to do or accomplish with your strength, there is nothing you need to go to battle with - you can simply be fully alive. You can use your power as fuel in life when it comes from within in a pure essential way - this is the strength of Being that Eights are sensitive to, and it has nothing to do with domination.
Helen Keller
She,
In the dark,
Found light
Brighter than many ever see.
She,
Within herself,
Found loveliness,
Through the soul’s own mastery.
And now the world receives
From her dower:
The message of the strength
Of inner power.
