Luminous Power
How we access inner power, super-ordinary states of consciousness, and how to midwife a person through egoic power.
This past week, I have been involved in an ongoing conversation about power, volleying ideas between me and a close friend over my favorite messaging app, Signal. Our discussions are about how power shapes and then reshapes the world around us. Both of us curious about how to navigate our shared sense of feeling unsteady and concerned about how we can use our own power, the ways power is being wielded around us, and to what end. It feels like a great unraveling!
I once asked my therapist, through tears and snot-covered lips, how many times a person could unravel before there was nothing left. Without even pausing, he placed a sunflower seed in his mouth and responded, “Forty-two times,” as if watching me unravel was as equally captivating as watching a Braves’ game.
This discourse on power has inspired me to look more deeply at my own experiences of witnessing and wielding it. I feel particularly drawn to the ways that power manifests in moments of great vulnerability, specifically for women as they enter and emerge from the vestibule of labor and birth. And then how does power operate within me, as a midwife entrusted to guard with scientific understanding and guide with wisdom?
photo Memphis, Tn. 2013
What I understand about power now is that, like people, it is never just one thing—and it is certainly not static. It shifts and transforms like water, sometimes rushing forward with a force strong enough to carve through the earth, capable of disappearing our soft bodies; other times, it cascades past blades of grass or holds us gently afloat with healing buoyancy. The impact of our accessible power seems to depend largely on ideas drawn from our friend Freud’s concept of the ego and what I will call magic concerning our inner self.
photo Jack Prudhomme snorkeling in the ocean with GoPro 2017
Oh, that illusive inner self, capable of generating the most immense power. The term I decided to use to describe this is Luminous Power—a generative force that illuminates like the moon, exponentiates our energy, magnifies our strength, and emerges only when the mind, body, and spirit are fully integrated. Luminous Power, also known in psychoanalytical terms as integrated power, is directly connected to and nourished by the animating energy of the universe. It allows us to be fully present in a moment, a sensation, an experience—while being guided by our intuition. I believe that it is the most powerful force that we can access.
photo was taken in the late 1970s by photographer John Divola
When I nourish myself with love and practice ways to remain grounded, I maintain my own integration of mind, body, and spirit. In this state, Luminous Power is at my command. I cultivate this through disciplines that I have found work for me. By sustaining my own integration and access to Luminous Power, I am able to remain rooted in ordinary consciousness when I am with women. Maintaining a clear awareness of when my ego or my inner self is guiding a person as they access their own inner power, activating within themselves a holotropic super-ordinary state of consciousness—and this is where Luminous Power becomes truly extraordinary.
When a woman feels secure enough to completely surrender to the sensations of her labor and birth, she ceases to be concerned with anything external. Instead, she dives deep within, entering a state of transcendence—a consciousness shift otherwise accessible only through disciplined grounding practices such as long-distance running, painting, meditation, music creation, or Kundalini yoga and certain types of breathwork. There are shortcuts, of course—plant medicine and mind-altering substances—but their effects are fleeting, lasting only as long as the chemicals remain active in the body, often leaving depleting consequences.
photo Brooke Prudhomme Memphis, Tn. 2010
Luminous Power is virtually invisible when things are harmonious. Yet, for those attuned to it, it is recognized as a wild quantum leap into the super-ordinary. It is primal and untamed. Time bends to the moment, slowing or quickening as needed. Words dissolve into resonant sounds. A dreamlike defenselessness seems to take over, and the person is no longer negotiating with the experience—she becomes the experience. When Luminous Power fills a space, it pulls everyone into its current. A rooted midwife, however, remains in flow without entering their own altered state, able to hold the container for the birth, guarding the birthing sanctum. Let me be clear: accessing Luminous Power does not mean everything unfolds as planned. It means that, no matter how the story is written, the woman stands in her own power, confident in each potential version of her reality as it unfolds.
As with everything that exists, the inverse of integrated power also exists. When the integration of mind, body, and spirit falls out of alignment—whether through lack of discipline, substance abuse, or trauma—disintegration occurs. This is what we are seeing emerging in our society, where another kind of power takes over: Egoic Power. Thank you, Freud, for helping us to understand the ego with compassion.
Egoic Power is activated when we do not feel safe. The ego, in its effort to protect us, inflates itself and takes control. As a midwife, I recognize Egoic Power because it is rooted in self-interest, in attachment to what we think we need and want, in resistance to what is. The woman, in her vulnerability, remains hyper-alert, talkative, and self-judging of her experience. Egoic Power grips, isolates, and separates us from our ability to surrender, it creates suffering. These labors require constant vigilance, unrelenting dialogue, and reassurance that the ego is not needed—that the person is safe. A laboring person in the grip of Egoic Power risks exhausting themself. But if they can find their center, if they can listen to their inner voice, Luminous Power can take over and heal in the ways most needed.
So, what does all of this have to do with the Signal conversations with my dear friend? What does it have to do with our sense of unease, our concern about how power is being wielded all around us? Everything.
Because personal and political activations of Egoic Power are both symptoms of a fractured system. One, an individually fractured internal system, and the other a collective and societally fractured system. When societies fall out of integration, people begin to focus on what separates them rather than what unites them. Their response? To annihilate the “other.” Those operating from Egoic Power become hyper-vigilant, constantly seeking offense, consumed by their judgments, exhausting themselves and those around them, caught in an endless cycle of reaction and revenge.
photo Brooke Prudhomme. Statue Memphis, Tn 1996
The only way to hold space for reintegration—for healing this fractured collective spirit—is through consistent effort to understand one another. Even when it seems impossible. Especially when it seems impossible.
Egoic Power is reinforced by shame and judgment. And here’s the thing: the ego does not distinguish between real and perceived threats. It simply reacts, often with force, seeking to disappear whatever it perceives as dangerous.
But if we are to mend ourselves, our society, and our world, we must resist the seduction of Egoic Power. It is a temporary, false sense of security. We must choose the discipline that it requires to access Luminous Power instead. Let me be clear, that does not mean that everything will go as we hope, but it means that no matter how a story is written we will be standing in our own luminous power, confident in each potential version of our reality, able to respond spontaneously and in perfect alignment with our inner voice.
I encourage anyone reading this to get curious about your neighbor. The ONLY way through this current experience of our reality and into something more whole is to remember, like Adrienne Maree Brown says in her book Emergent Strategies, “Small is all.” We must put in the work to root ourselves into our Luminous Power and midwife the world that we desire. It requires all of us, even those who are fractured.