Standing Above the Lion: Reclaiming the Power of Being Fully Human

Across cultures and centuries, a single image keeps returning: a sovereign figure standing calmly above a fierce animal rather than being consumed by it.

The animal is never banished. It is allowed to live in its full power—roaring, vital, instinctive. Yet it remains underfoot.

Decisions are made from a higher vantage, not from the surge of its primitive impulses. This is not merely mythic poetry. It is one of the most practical and hopeful teachings our species has ever received about what it means to be fully human.

Every one of us carries an inner animal.

It is the raw life-force of emotion, instinct, desire, protection, hunger, and passion.

When we try to starve or shame it into silence, it does not vanish; it goes underground and returns as numbness, sudden explosions, chronic anxiety, or a quiet deadening of the spirit.

When we hand it the reins, we become driven by every reactive impulse—outrage, craving, fear, tribal loyalty, the demand for instant relief. The result is a life (and eventually a culture) ruled by the most primitive parts of ourselves, or by external forces that know how to activate them.

The Wisdom traditions of the world, each in their own language, insist on a third way:

Let the animal live fully, yet refuse to be driven by it.

Decide from the height.

In doing so, we reclaim the full measure of our humanity—neither diminished nor reactive, but alive, self-directed, and capable of navigating from our own deepest knowing.

Mesopotamia: Ishtar and the Commanded Lion

In the art of ancient Babylon, the goddess Ishtar stands upon the back of a lion, often holding it by a leash.

The lion is her own martial and sovereign power made visible—fierce, beautiful, dangerous.

She does not wrestle it on the ground. She stands above it.

From that elevated place she moves with elegance and authority.

The same ordered lions once strode along the Processional Way to her gate, declaring that wild force can be directed rather than denied or surrendered to.

Norse Insight: Odin Above the Wolves

Odin sits on the high seat Hliðskjálf, seeing into all the worlds.

At his feet rest the wolves Geri and Freki, embodiments of devouring appetite and battle-fury.

His ravens bring the long view.

The intensity is fully present and claimed, yet the Allfather remains seated above it.

Sovereignty is the refusal to let even one’s own fierce nature make the final decision.

Native American Wisdom: Eagle Sight and Power Animals

In many Indigenous traditions of North America, the eagle flies highest and sees farthest.

To receive that perspective is to gain an overview no longer trapped in the heat of the moment.

Alongside it stands the relationship with power animals—the mountain lion or similar fierce beings.

The medicine person who truly carries such power does not become possessed by it.

They walk with it, honor its strength, and still choose from the center.

Polynesian Resonance: Mana, the Hawk, and the Shark

Polynesian cultures speak of mana—spiritual power and authority that elevates.

The Hawaiian hawk, the ‘io, soars in the heavenly space and sees across the land; high chiefs were compared to it.

The fierce counterpart appears as the shark or the taniwha—powerful guardian forces related to with respect and directed relationship rather than fear or surrender.

The sovereign acts from elevated mana while remaining in right relation to that intensity.

The Teachings of Jesus: Kingdom Perspective Over Impulse

Jesus faces the full force of hunger, ambition, and fear in the wilderness and refuses to be ruled by them.

He addresses anger and desire at their roots.

Again and again he orients his listeners toward the Kingdom of God—an elevated reality that reframes present circumstances.

Emotion is not denied, yet it remains under the direction of a higher loyalty.

The invitation is to live in the world without being driven by its reactive currents.

Hermetic Clarity: Rising Above the Pendulum

Hermetic teachings describe the higher Mind as the pilot of the soul.

Without it, a person is carried by pleasure, pain, and irrational impulse like an animal.

The Kybalion is explicit: the swing of emotional rhythm continues, but the Master rises to a higher plane so that the pendulum passes beneath. One becomes a mover rather than a pawn.

Kabbalistic Ascent: Mastering the Animal Soul

Kabbalah speaks of the yetzer hara—the raw, instinctive inclination linked to the animal soul. It is not to be destroyed but mastered and refined.

Consciousness is called to ascend the Tree of Life, moving from denser emotional and material planes toward clearer alignment.

Even the visionary chariot carries the face of a lion: intensity is present, yet the journey is upward and ordered.

The Moral for Our Species

These traditions do not contradict one another.

They converge on a single, demanding truth about the human condition:

We are a species that possesses both an inner animal of tremendous vitality and a capacity for higher perspective.

Our flourishing depends on the relationship between the two. Suppress the animal and we lose aliveness, creativity, courage, and authentic power. Surrender to its primitive impulses and we lose agency, wisdom, long-term vision, and the ability to live together without constant escalation.

In today’s world the stakes are higher than ever. We inhabit systems engineered to keep the inner animal either sedated or permanently aroused—algorithms that reward outrage and comparison, economies that monetize impulse, narratives that encourage us to outsource our judgment and self-navigation to external authorities.

The consequences are everywhere:

Polarized societies that treat every disagreement as existential threat, widespread burnout and emotional exhaustion, attention fractured into fragments, and a growing sense that we are being moved by forces we no longer command.

The ancient image remains the most practical medicine available to us.

Let the inner animal live fully.

Feel its heat, its instinct, its fierce loyalty to life.

Then stand above it.

Choose from the higher vantage—the overview that sees beyond the next notification, the next wave of feeling, the next tribal trigger.

In that stance we stop ceding our destiny.

We reclaim the capacity to know what is right, what is good, and what love looks like from within our own being. We become fully human again—not diminished, not reactive, but self-directed and alive.

If We All Walked This Way

Imagine this posture becoming the widespread human norm.

The effects would cascade across every scale of organization.

Far fewer people would be chronically hijacked by fear, outrage, craving, or tribal impulse. Daily decisions, relationships, and public forums would more often arise from longer-term perspective. Interpersonal conflict would quiet. Impulse-driven consumption and status competition would lose much of their fuel. In politics and public discourse, polarization would thin. Movements and leaders that thrive on activating the most primitive emotions would find less fertile ground.

Conversation could remain passionate, yet more often hold complexity and consider consequences beyond the next news cycle. Governance itself might tilt toward durable outcomes rather than immediate emotional payoff. Citizens less driven by impulse are harder to distract or manipulate. Economies and technologies optimized for addictive attention or compulsive extraction would face natural pressure as demand shifted toward what genuinely supports flourishing.

Innovation would continue, but more often guided by clarity of purpose than by the monetization of base instincts.

On the largest stages—conflict, cooperation, and shared global challenges—the threshold for reactive escalation would rise:

• Collective action on long-term threats would become more possible because urgency could be felt without panic or denial dominating.

• Societies would retain passion and intensity, yet operate with greater underlying stability.

• The constant low-grade emergency atmosphere of contemporary life would ease.

• Institutions dependent on a population remaining either sedated or chronically inflamed would encounter corrective force from the inside out.

The world would not become perfect.

Disagreement, scarcity, and difficulty would remain.

Yet the baseline texture of human civilization would change.

We would live with fuller aliveness and greater self-direction—the practical foundation of a more resilient, less manipulable, and more genuinely human global society.

This is not a call to become less human. It is a call to become more fully human—alive with the full power of the animal, yet free because we are no longer driven by it. It is how we restore humanity to the human experience itself.

The lion is real.

The height is real.

The choice, always, is owned; only ever having been ours.