11 Superpowers You Didn’t Know You Had

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Extra-ordinary things don’t happen by chance.

They happen to people bold enough to believe and attempt them.

Dear Ordinary Human,

You may have believed the fairy-tale that life is a constant struggle to get what you want, in a continuous state of  neediness, all the while trying hard to tame your inner wild creature, in order to fit into a normalized (or may I suggest, bastardized?) society.

You may have even successfully adapted to this Matrix and feel like you have somehow “made it” — into an imaginary hierarchy of worthy humans, usually measured by the amount of objects they possess and how far on the materialistic hall of fame they have advanced.

But Truth is a resilient warrior and it keeps crashing into us at the most inconvenient times. It knocks — gentle, smart, motherfucker and firm, at the door of our delusion. It’s easier to hear its voice early in the morning, before the world wakes up to dim your vision — or late at night, when you can’t sleep with so much unattended demon growling in the closet. And it’s uncomfortable. Can’t even use a pillow.

Truth pushes you down the stairs of your perception and locks you in the basement of your heart, and in that brief five desperate minutes, between the darkness and the dawn, suspended over everything you wish for and everything you think you are, you get dim flashlights of a life you’ve never tasted, but then why does it feel more real than this one?

This is one of your many first encounters with your abnormal, extraordinary, truest nature. The Person, Living Breath that came before the Thing, the Subject born before the Object. 

Awakening to your true nature is like a gentle hurricane.

You have no idea where it originated or how it found you — you just wake up one day in the burning heart of paradox, under the clear realization that you’re not a mere guardian or administrator of your life anymore, but the Co-Founder and only CEO of it, the Chief Executive Creator. And you can make things come and go, appear and disappear, fly or stay. Nobody, nothing owns you anymore.

Superhero science has taught me this: Entire universes fit comfortably inside our skulls. Not just one or two but endless universes can be packed into that dark, wet, and bony hollow without breaking it open from the inside. The space in our heads will stretch to accommodate them all. The real doorway to the fifth dimension was always right here. Inside. That infinite interior space contains all the divine, the alien, and the unworldly we’ll ever need.

– Grant Morrison 

The reason why we’re fascinated with superheroes is because they are a metaphor of our own selves.

Everything  we love and  hate is a reflection of something we already are — in fact or in potential. Our brain is incapable of taking in that which it cannot comprehend. In order to understand anything, anyone — from the simplest concept to the most complicated person — you first need to “make it yours.” Every cognition is but a re-cognition. Every thought is in part an appropriation.

Every You is already a bit me Me and every Me is, in part, You.

So, when we become acquainted with the life-altering truth that we are connected to the creative motor of the universe, that we’ve been given a brief piece of living canvas to leave our unique footprint on, and that we are in fact the saviors we’ve been waiting for, here’s what the trailer of our lifetime movie sounds like:

In an ordinary, tired world that worships plastic, nature-killing things over heart-beating creation; that crowns flesh puppets with absurd, meaningless, made up titles which somehow give them the right to control our reality, redistribute our natural wealth and misuse our personal power… In a world that bows and pledges superficial allegiance to psycho alien robot icons that pass for people — scrolling itself to sleep on pixel pills, seduced by brain-washed entertainment and addicted to mutant “food”…

In this seemingly hopeless worn-out, agonizing world, an ordinary group of  people with extraordinary powers will rise to rage against decay, and jump off the cliffs of insanity with creativity as their only parachute. They will refuse to support the soul-sucking Matrix with their time, effort, money, mind, voice and dreams. Instead, they’ll each, in their own way, help build a world that doesn’t need to be controlled or saved, seduced or manipulated. Because, just like them, it will run on its own, implacable, supernatural, intrinsic power.

And by the way, there’s nothing you can do to stop them… but you might find it hard not to become them. 

Now playing at your local mental theater.

To watch, click on your eyes.

And here are the top superpowers we, Homo Sapiens Creatives, have just realized were ours since the beginning of the world, which we can use both ways, in peaceful self-defense, as well as to creatively rebuild a life that doesn’t run on death.

The following list is just an excerpt, quoted from our Superhero Manual I managed to get my hands on, to aid with this investigation. For a more comprehensive version, check with your Higher Self.

1. The Power of Awareness. Open your eyes. Look at yourself. Notice the world around you. Observe life. Study aliveness. Breathe in your raw, individable essence. Stare at a wall until you find a way through or around it. Your full presence is the only state in which you can accomplish anything worthwhile.

2. The Power of Choice. You don’t work for anyone other than your higher self. Other hierarchies are just imitation. Slavery begins in the mind and it consists in choosing to believe that you have no choice. Choice is the on/off button of our power. Every second of our life is really, just a choice to live it one way or another. There is no ultimate reality. We choose that reality time after time, based on one belief or another, which we also have the power to choose or un-choose.

The molten lava at the heart of life is nothing but raw energy. It’s up to us the way we let it burn us.

3. The Power of Originality. Whatever you do, “there’s no one you-er than you.” So don’t try to be Batman if you were bitten by a spider. Your ultimate power resides precisely in being faithful to your own essence. You can only touch the extraordinary with your own fingerprints. Don’t compare yourself to other superheroes. If you are here, it means there was a universal demand for you.

Scientifically speaking you are as improbable as it gets. This type of alignment doesn’t just happen. You are the universe expressing itself in flesh. You haven’t happened before and you will never happen again. Don’t underestimate yourself.

4. The Power of Purpose. We are meaning-making machines. We have the extraordinary ability to create purpose (and pretty much everything else) out of raw energy. And this purpose generates meaning, and this meaning helps us make sense of our life, and it connects us to the whole and helps us realize how we fit in the bigger picture, along with other superheroes. And  this power can be used as a flashlight too, when crawling through our darkest tunnels, because what won’t kill us, will help us generate in turn, more purpose, meaning and more reasons to create. So what’s your manifesto?

5. The Power of Honesty. This is a tough one, dear Hero, because it runs on courage. You can’tface your own truth and as a result save yourself, let alone others, without the courage to see yourself for what you are, in both your glory and your misery, your darkness and your light, the entire, indivisible whole equation of You. Look in the mirror. Put your demons on the table. Love what you see and use it all to your benefit.

6. The Power of Spirit. You don’t have to be religious to be spiritual. There are all kinds of faith to match each and every superhero in us. The point is, find your god. Whatever it is, whatever form it comes in, find your holy ground. It must be greater than you, enough to make you fall down on your knees and weep and be in awe, and realize you’re great but small, and you cannot survive even one day without the greater power running through your veins.

There’s vulnerability in Spirit. And there’s Spirit in you. Don’t let cynicism eat you alive. It’s when Spirit is free to move through you that miracles are free to happen.

7. The Power of Beauty. Superheros don’t dig this one. During the first years of following their call, they love to wear masks. They think they’re being cautious and protective of their mission, but really, they’re afraid. Greatness is worse than ghosts. It scares the shit out of our people. This is every superhero’s weakness — not kryptonite or anti-heroes — but their own beauty. I know you are embarrassed to even say the word out loud.

I wish you understood that beauty saves. Authentic beauty awakens the beauty in others. I wish you removed your plastic face and showed me both, your dead scars and your glory. We are liberated by contemplating our magical reflection in other imperfect mirrors. Your not-enoughness might be good enough for me.

8. The Power of Healing. You are your own doctor. You’d think this would be obvious by now, but so often Superheroes like us, doubt their own powers and rely on superficial charlatans, gadgets or artifacts to save them from themselves. A true healer helps you heal yourself. And you do so by first becoming aware of that Self (go back to #1 — all roads lead back to Rome). Sickness (of mind and body and spirit) doesn’t happen by chance. It’s not natural — health and aliveness are. So if you’re sick the first thing you should look for is the cause, not kill the symptoms.

Your pain is a messenger. Don’t silence it. Instead, stare back into the darkness and fix the real problem. You already come equipped with this self-healing superpower. Your body knows exactly what to do. You just need to give it the space and time it needs to get itself together. Just remember the Bullshit Test for Healers found on page 1,943 of our Superhero Manual:

Whoever guides you along your road to healing, must, in the same breath, guide you back to yourself. Ultimately, only you can switch yourself back to life. 

9. The Power of Resilience. You can’t give up on something that your heart is still rooting for, no matter how hard the fall is. Your heart is your ultimate master. It knows the things the mind doesn’t yet have an answer for. It leads the way out of your darkest moments. It’s your one and only Chief of Staff. You are built to thrive under the worst of circumstances as long as you use your heart as a compass. You’re not a victim, not even a survivor, you’re a creator, damnit.

10. The Power of Creativity. Creativity is our operating system. It’s a free and essential app that came with our original superhero software. It’s our intrinsic individual ability to face and respond to the uncertainty and mysteries of our existence. Our essential human birthright, our fuel for rebelling against decay, our irregular heartbeats and our mind’s engine. It is the basic force of life, right after love. You are creatively responsible for the effective use of all your other superpowers.

11. The Power of Love. Yes: love. “At the risk of sounding ridiculous, let me say that real revolutionaries are guided by a great feeling of love,” said once El Che Guevara. All your superpowers are worthless without kindness. If you can’t see the God in others, it means you’ve missed it in yourself. Love is perhaps the first and foremost superpower. We like to leave it for the end, so we remember.

Love is the most primordial revolution of the spirit. It’s the first breath of life, our first true state of being. It saves, mostly because it is the only element in the universe that exists in and of itself. Everything else has a reason, a point, a purpose, a plan to get your Superhero ass from A to B. Love’s ultimate reason is “Because.”

Unlike all the other superpowers you’ve been gifted, love is the only one that has no possible logical explanation or whose deepest essence cannot answer to Why.

“It believes all things, hopes for all things, waits for all things and endures all things.”

Do you know when exactly you stop being a child and sweep your superpowers under the rug of disbelief? The moment you cease to believe that you are loved and as such, capable of anything. They call this sad realization adulthood, but really, it’s just death, disguised as seriousness…

Your inner child understands that life — which runs on love and feasts on creativity — is on your side, and the whole universe conspires with you, not against you, to help you spread that wild, messy, crazy love through your own story.

I say it’s time to understand that our inner superhero hopeful child never died, and he or she still owns powers more useful and life-changing than flying or shooting spiderweb around. Powers that, if understood, practiced and used, can shatter our stagnant perception of a victimized reality and help us re-create ourselves from the inside out.

In any case, dear Extraordinary and Abnormal Human Thing with Eyes,

The point is that you’re needed, wanted, missed on Earth…

I’m just a wordy messenger they sent to ask you

to put your cape back on and come the hell back home.