You can give away your authority but never your responsibilities. The only way to take on these two essential things is by owning your personal sovereignty. Amy Killingsworth delves into this second pillar by explaining how close this individual power is to God’s own sovereignty, which never stems from rebellion and lording over others. She discusses its immense impact on our free will and decision-making, emphasizing why it must not be besmirched with thoughts of blame. Amy also presents the concept of Ho’oponopono, centered on forgiveness instead of giving in to hate.

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Take Back Your Power by Embracing Personal Sovereignty

You can give your authority away but you can’t give your responsibility away. We see this a whole bunch in our world now with all of the gurus, influencers and experts. Often, we give our authority away to an influencer, expert, pastor or guru instead of doing the hard work of critical thought and responsibility for our own lives. In this episode, we’re talking about pillar number two, sovereignty. What is sovereignty? Do you have it? Have you kept it? Have you given it away? To find out, let’s tune in to the show.

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I’m super excited because we are talking about pillar number two, sovereignty. I hate that it’s pillar number two, even though I’m the one that made it pillar two because it is the most important pillar. These are not necessarily in order of importance because if they were, sovereignty would be pillar number one. It’s important for you to have a solid understanding of identity before we go forward with sovereignty because these concepts and precepts build one on top of the other. Identity underlies it but sovereignty is the linchpin on which the entire thing hinges. Without further ado, let’s talk about it.

 

What is sovereignty? As far as the definition goes, sovereignty is supreme authority or rule. It’s also the idea of self-governance. When a country is sovereign, it has the ability and is within its legal capacity to rule and reign itself. Even the monarch in a country is often called the sovereign. That’s the one person that is in charge of making the decisions for the country. Even the CEO could be the sovereign of a company. Sovereignty is part of being human. It’s an element of being human. Anytime we’re talking about humanity or the human experience, it’s helpful to look at the archetype. That is God. We are created in the image and likeness of God. Our sovereignty is a reflection of our creator’s sovereignty.

Sovereignty is the exercise or the combination of authority and responsibility. Click To Tweet

Sovereignty Of God

Let’s talk about the sovereignty of God. We’ll talk about how our sovereignty looks like that and maybe differs a little bit from that. The sovereignty of God is the fact that he has supreme authority, control and rule over all that is in the entire multiverse. All that exists is under the authority, control and rule of God. If you’ve been in church or around religious institutions, I’m sure that you have heard the saying, “God is sovereign.” We usually say that when he does something that we don’t understand or didn’t want him to do. That’s a great thing to say because his ways are higher than our ways. He sees and knows things that we don’t. He doesn’t need our permission. He acts the way that He acts in the way that He needs and wants to act. He is well within His sovereignty to do so.

God has made us in His image and granted us free will. Free will is the seat. It’s where our sovereignty resides. God’s sovereignty supersedes our sovereignty. Even though we have sovereignty, God’s sovereignty is the overarching sovereignty over ours. An example of that is, let’s say that I wanted to develop a nuclear weapon and blow up the world. If it’s not in God’s plan for the entire world to blow up then he’s going to interrupt my sovereignty with circumstances that block what I’m planning. I find a lot of comfort in that, in the fact that God’s sovereignty supersedes man’s sovereignty. Not only is He concerned about the whole planet, at the same time, He’s concerned about your individual life. You can trust Him to handle what is not yours to handle or what you’re not able to handle, which is other people’s free will choices and sovereignty. This is going to be important and tie back in when we get to the radical responsibility piece. That’s what sovereignty is.

Let’s talk about what sovereignty is not. Sovereignty is not the ability or the right to lord over others. When the princess or the prince gets a hold of sovereignty, they like to take it and be like, “I’m the boss. I’m sovereign.” It’s more of a rebellion. Sovereignty is not rebellion. We can use our sovereignty for the purposes of rebelling but the exercise of sovereignty by itself is not rebellion. It’s important again to look at the nature of God. In God’s kingdom, there is authority. God is the ultimate authority and then we come under God’s authority. We exercise our authority over what we’ve been given to rule and reign over, which for these purposes, for the discussion of sovereignty, is ourselves.

 

Sovereignty is self-rule. When we’re in rebellion, we’re not like God. We’re like the devil. Rebellion is a characteristic of Satan and not God. An example of this is to be like, how many of us find ourselves in rebellion, like eating something that we’re not supposed to eat or doing something that we know is not something that we’re supposed to do? That’s rebellion, not sovereignty. I want you to get that juxtaposition because sovereignty is not, “I can do whatever I want to do.” You can and that’s your free will choice but sovereignty is the exercise or the combination of authority and responsibility. It’s the very opposite of rebellion. You can rebel. You can use your sovereignty to rebel but rebellion itself is not sovereignty. It’s something different.

Autonomy And Personal Power

Sovereignty is also autonomy and personal power. This is important. It’s a combination of radical responsibility and authority. A follow-on concept to that is that, “You can give your authority away but you can’t give your responsibility away.” We see this a whole bunch in our world now with all of the gurus, influencers and experts. Often, we give our authority away to an influencer, expert, pastor or guru instead of doing the hard work of critical thought and responsibility for our own lives. When you do that, you can give your authority away and do what the expert told you to do to take that medical therapy, eat that or abstain from that. You can do that but the resulting action or circumstance that that action creates is your responsibility.

You can give the decision-making or the critical thought process away, but you can't give the consequence away. Click To Tweet

If you take a medical intervention because the CDC said so or because you saw it on the news that that’s what you’re supposed to do and you have a reaction and you get sick or maybe even die, that responsibility is yours. That effect your choice, of your giving away of your authority, is yours. You can give the authority away but you cannot give the responsibility away. Another way of saying that is that you can give the decision-making or the critical thought process away but you can’t give the consequence away. That’s a discussion of God’s sovereignty. What ours is in relation to that is that God has made us in his image and created us with free will. He has granted us free will. We can use our free will to choose to give our sovereignty away.

Giving Sovereignty Away

When we give our sovereignty away, the king or the queen abdicates the throne. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I covered this in a lot of detail in the last episode. Episode one of season two is all about identity. We talked about this concept that there are four potential identities. Three of them are the lower nature or the flesh. That’s the prisoner, the slave and the prince or the princess. One of them is the manifestation of our authentic divine self, the king or the queen. That’s our true nature and who we were created to be. If you don’t understand those concepts or haven’t read episode one, go back and read that because these build one on top of the other.

This idea of the throne is that the throne cannot be empty. The throne always has somebody sitting on it of those four. If the king or the queen abdicates the throne by giving their authority away then one of the other three is going to take the place of the king or queen. That’s almost always going to be the slave. You can see that because of victim energy and blame. When the king or queen has abdicated the throne by giving their authority away, the slave takes place. There’s the victim mentality and the blame to prove it. Since sovereignty is our power then giving our authority, sovereignty and power away.

In Rise to Reign speak, I often say, “Take back your power and take the limits off your life. Take back your power and live life without limits.” In Rise to Reign, it’s a process of taking back our power and walking in sovereignty. The identity piece is the rise. If you think about going from the prisoner to the slave, to the prince and princess, the king and queen, that’s the rise up through the different identities. Sovereignty is the reign. Sovereignty is reigning over ourselves, kingdom or queendom, realm or domain. With Rise to Reign, we take back our power, walk in our authority and stand in our sovereignty. It’s helpful to know how we know if we’ve given our authority away.

The way that you know that is I’ve already alluded to it is you find yourself in blame. You find yourself constantly blaming, like looking for who or what is at fault instead of using your energy to solve a problem or be at effect. It’s like the difference of being at cause versus being at effect. Blame is the enemy of sovereignty. What is the opposite of blame? It’s radical responsibility. Radical responsibility is a firm commitment that you’re not going to engage in blame. The sovereign or the king or the queen takes responsibility for everything in their reality, even when it’s not their fault. This idea of blame is hardwired into the human experience and human consciousness. Most people, if they’re honest, will see that they have an addiction to blame. It’s part of our nature but not our true nature. Part of our lower nature is steeped in blame.

 

Blame

What is blame? Let’s unpack the concept of blame so that we can see it, shine a light on it and hopefully, begin to dismantle it. Blame is the assignment of fault. Fault denotes failure, a mistake, wrongdoing, defect or error. When a fault is assigned or accusations are made, it automatically triggers the feeling of shame. Shame is the most intolerable feeling to humans. Humans absolutely cannot house shame. It’s the worst, most awful feeling. What we all automatically do is try to get it off of us as fast as we can. That is the process of blame. It’s taking the shame and throwing it on you or a circumstance. Another way of saying this is projection. We’re going to talk about projection in another episode. It’s a psychological term. That means that I’m taking what I’m experiencing and dealing with. I’m projecting it onto you. I see it in you but the source of it is from me. That process of projection is blaming. It’s the taking of our feelings of shame and throwing them onto another person or a circumstance.

If fault denotes failure, a mistake or wrongdoing, a defect or an error, responsibility has the burden to respond or being called to account and being at cause instead of being at effect. When you’re blaming, you’re at effect is saying that circumstance or that person is, “Why I did that? Why that happened to me?” It’s a lot of useless energy. When you put your energy into blame and assign blame, you’re looking for who or what is at fault. Responsibility focuses the attention and effort on the issue, solving the problem, acknowledging it and taking action. Taking responsibility for everything regardless of fault is how we take back our power and exercise our sovereignty.

Responsibility Reset

I have an awesome tool that I created that helps us take responsibility. It’s called the responsibility reset. When you find yourself in victim energy and blame, the responsibility reset helps you identify that and make a different choice. The responsibility reset goes like this. The equation goes like this, “Reality plus blame equals fault.” Whatever is going on, the circumstance, the issue, plus blame equal fault. “Reality minus blame equals responsibility. Acknowledgment plus action equals proof of responsibility.” This is the idea of repentance. Repentance is simply making a different choice and realizing, “That’s not working. Let’s do this instead,” and changing your ways or approach. The responsibility reset is, “Reality plus blame equals fault. Reality minus blame equals responsibility.”

Reality plus blame equal fault. Reality minus blame equals responsibility. Click To Tweet

Ho’oponopono

To have proof of responsibility, you have to have acknowledgment. That is, “This issue exists. We’re in the situation. This is going on,” without assigning blame but then taking action and then you have proof that you’ve taken responsibility. When you’ve acknowledged without blame and you take action then you have proof of responsibility. I have a tool. I didn’t create it but I have a tool that I have found useful in helping me remember to take radical responsibility for what is going on inside of myself. We’re talking about self-governance. We’re talking about, “What is going on with me? What is going on inside of me?” There is a Hawaiian concept called Ho’oponopono. It’s a saying when you are triggered or when you find yourself in a situation or circumstance. You say, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.” This is highly offensive to a lot of people when they first hear it.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say that you’re driving along on the freeway and somebody cuts you off in traffic. You have to slam on your brakes. Maybe your purse flies off the seat and everything falls out on the ground. You get super mad. Maybe you flip that person off, honk or say some choice words and get angry. With Ho’oponopono, you would then notice yourself reacting that way to the circumstance. You would then say, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.” That’s when people get offended by this. It’s like, “Wait a second. He cut me off. Why do I have to say, ‘I’m sorry?'” Let me be clear. I’m not talking about codependency or taking responsibility for somebody else’s actions or words. That is another show for another time. We’re going to talk about codependency and boundaries. What I am talking about is taking radical responsibility for what’s going on inside of you.

It is said that hard times or difficulties don’t create a person. They reveal a person. When you have something come up against you and it bumps or triggers you, what comes out of you at that moment was already there. It’s stemming from a wound, trauma or something you have internalized that needs to come up and out and be processed and healed in repentance. A change of ways needs to take place in that area. If somebody cuts me off in traffic and what I have inside of me are righteousness, peace and joy then righteousness. Peace and joy are all that can come out because that’s all that’s in there. If I have anger, blame and bad feelings about people and I get bumped and that’s what has come out, that’s what was in there. It’s very useful for me to see that, take a look at that, acknowledge it, take responsibility for that and heal it. We’re going to talk about how to do that as the episodes go on but for now, I just want you to get this idea of taking radical responsibility for what is going on with you.

 

When you say in that situation, if I were to Ho’oponopono the guy that cut me off in traffic, I would say, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.” Am I sorry for him cutting me off? No, I can’t be sorry for his behavior. That was his choice and behavior. What I’m saying that I’m sorry for is, “I’m sorry for judging you. I’m sorry for maybe flipping you the bird. I’m sorry for saying curse words, calling you a name, seeing you in a negative light or dishonoring you. I’m sorry for how I reacted. I’m sorry for my part. I’m sorry for how I interacted.” It becomes if you notice yourself going to, “If he never cut me off then I would have never gotten mad.” Remember that mad was lying in you dormant because if it wasn’t, a guy cutting you off in traffic couldn’t bring it up.

This is how we see ourselves. This is how we’re able to take a look inside ourselves at what needs attention and what needs to be healed because those things are the things that are holding us back. Those are the things polluting the well. Maybe you’re feeling a sense of boredom with your life. Maybe you’re feeling stuck, angry, depressed or anxious. There’s a cause and reason for that. There’s something in you that’s polluting the well. The process of healing is getting those things up and out, processing through those difficult emotions and healing them. You can’t know that they’re there unless something bumps and teases them to the surface. That is why these things happen to us in life.

Another example and I’ll close with this. A lot of you will be able to relate to it. As a mother, I find myself feeling protective and defensive of my kids. That is completely normal. It’s healthy but it’s also an opportunity for introspection, radical responsibility and healing. I have a daughter and she’s in middle school. If you have daughters in middle school, you know that the mean girl dynamic is well alive. It is going strong. Sometimes she will come home and she’ll tell me something that was said to her or that transpired at school. I will find myself in a blind rage. My immediate reaction is wanting to hurt middle school children, which I don’t do because I’m not in jail. I haven’t followed through on that, thankfully.

That’s often my initial response when she tells me something awful that was said or done to her. I see red. I fly immediately into unbelievable anger. There’s that protective instinct of the mama bear. I want my daughter to be happy and treated well and it’s wrong if she’s not. There’s that sense of violation of justice but it’s deeper than that. It’s unhealed trauma and wounding from my own time in middle school. I know that because of the work that I do. The way that I see it in clients and workshop participants over and over again is that that is evidence that I have something inside of me that still needs to be lovingly addressed and healed. That adversity isn’t creating their reaction in me. It’s revealing what’s already there. That is a linchpin of healing, growth and emotional intelligence.

When we say that we want something, I think everybody is on some level looking for their purpose or place in the world. Maybe you feel like there’s something important that you want to do and want to be significant. You want to have an effect on the world. Maybe you’ve even said a prayer that you’ve asked God to reveal to you like, “Show me why I’m here on earth. Show me what I’m doing here.” When you pray those prayers or put those requests out there whether consciously or not, what you get is a process of healing and development that prepares you to carry that calling and walk it out. To do that, you have to learn sovereignty and take responsibility for everything that pertains to you and everything that is going on inside of you.

Hard times or difficulties don't create a person. They reveal a person. Click To Tweet

There will necessarily be triggers that tease those things to the surface not because God is mean or wants to trigger you, aggravate you or toy with you but because he wants you to heal. If you take that response and hurt and cast it away from you with blame, you have not gotten what it came for. The cool thing is, in the school of healing, you don’t ever fail. You just get to take the test again and again. If you find yourself in similar situations over and over again, maybe it’s time to analyze and say, “What I’m doing isn’t working. Let me try it a different way.” I would like to propose to you to try sovereignty. Take back your power to take your authority. Exercise radical responsibility by refusing to engage in blame, becoming curious about what’s going on inside of you and going on with you and becoming radically responsible for that. I’ll remind you of the Ho’oponopono process of, “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you.”

We’re going to go a lot deeper into these concepts. I’m building the foundation so that we can start framing it out and hanging it on the different concepts. We take these seven pillars. We finished pillar number two, sovereignty. Identity is pillar number one. Identity was in the last episode. We’re going to go through the seven pillars and then we’re going to apply them to seven categories. The first category is the body. If we take sovereignty and apply it to our body, that means that we exercise authority and responsibility where our body is concerned. With bodily sovereignty, a forced medical intervention would violate our bodily sovereignty. We need to know about sovereignty and how it relates to our body so that we can live that life of the combination of authority and responsibility.

Remember, you can give away your authority but you can’t give away your responsibility. It’s important in the times that we’re living in that we all know that we’re wide awake. We exactly know what we’re doing because we’ve given it critical thought and we’ve taken responsibility for everything that is going on in us, around us and with us. Sovereignty has never been more important than it is now. We’re never more like God than when we are exercising sovereignty. I hope you take this concept and apply it to your life. We’ll be back with another episode. We’ll be covering amnesty, which is a process of radical forgiveness and they all go together. That’s it for this episode of the show. As always, thank you so much for your time. I will see you in the next episode.

Important Links:

• Episode 4: Are You a Queen, Princess, Slave or a Prisoner? – Previous episode

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