What is the Nature of Authentic Power?
Real power is not the ability to exert your will upon another person. There is no inner security in that kind of power. That kind of power is an attribute of time, and as time changes, that changes, too.
If you are not at home in the world, you live in fear, so you can never truly relax and enjoy Life. Is this power? There is no power in fear, or in any of the activities generated by fear. There is no power in a thought-form of fear, even if it is supported by armies. For example, the armies of Rome disappeared more than a millennia ago, but the force of the life of a single human that the Roman soldiers put to death continues to shape the development of our species. Who had the power? Real authentic inner power is the energy that is formed when a personality aligns itself with the intentions of its soul. It is light shaped by the intentions of love and compassion guided by wisdom. It is energy that is focused and directed toward the fulfillment of the soul's assigned tasks upon the earth, and the development of the personality as a physical instrument appropriate to those tasks. ~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~ External Power The competition for external power is generated by fear. When perception of the physical world is limited to the five-sensory modality, the basis of life becomes fear. Power to control the environment and those within the environment appears to be essential. This idea of a need for physical dominance produces a type of competition that affects every aspect of our lives. It affects relationships
It disrupts the natural tendency toward harmony between nations and between friends. For example: Brothers and sisters quarrel for the same reason that corporations quarrel - they seek power over one another. The power to control the environment, and those within it, is power over what can be felt, smelled, tasted, heard or seen.This type of power is external power. External power can be acquired or lost, as in the stock market or an election. It can be bought or stolen, transferred or inherited. One person's gain of external power is perceived as another person's loss. Anything we fear to lose...
is a symbol of external power. What we fear is an increase in our vulnerability. The result of seeking power as external is violence and destruction. Competition for external power lies at the heart of all violence.
The perception of power as external splinters the psyche, whether it is the psyche of an individual, community, nation, or the world. There is no difference between the agony of a splintered soul and the agony of a splintered nation. When a husband and a wife compete for power, they engage the same dynamic that humans of one race do when they fear another race. From these dynamics, we have formed our present understanding of evolution as a process of ever-increasing ability to dominate the environment and each other. This definition reflects the limitations of perceiving the physical world with only five senses. It reflects the competition for external power that is generated by fear. After millennia of brutality to one another, individual to individual and group to group, it is now clear that the insecurity that underlies the perception of power as external cannot be healed by the accumulation of external power. It is evident for all to see, not only with each newscast and evening paper, but also through each of our countless sufferings as individuals and as a species, that the perception of power as external brings only pain, violence and destruction. This is how we have evolved until now, and this is what we must leave behind. No understanding of evolution is adequate that does not have at its core that we are on a journey toward authentic power, and that authentic empowerment is the goal of our evolutionary process and the purpose of our being.
We Are Evolving We are evolving from a species that pursues external power into a species that pursues authentic power. We are leaving behind exploration of the physical world as our sole endeavor, because the consciousness that results from an awareness that is limited to the five-sensory modality is no longer adequate to what we must become. We are evolving from five-sensory humans into multi-sensory humans. The perceptions of a multi-sensory human extend beyond physical reality to the larger dynamical systems of which our physical reality is a part. It is in this invisible realm that the origins of our deepest values are found. From the perspective of this invisible realm, the motivations of those who consciously sacrifice their lives for higher purposes makes sense, the power of Gandhi is explicable, and the compassionate acts of Christ are comprehensible in a fullness that is not accessible to the five-sensory human. All of our great teachers have been, or are, multisensory humans.They have spoken to us and acted in accordance with perceptions and values that reflect the larger perspective of the multisensory being, and, therefore, their words and actions awaken within us the recognition of the Truth. For example: We, as a species, have been asking the questions... Is there
a God?, for as long as we have been able to articulate questions.The time has now come for us to expand into a frame of reference that allows these questions to be answered. The larger frame of reference of the multisensory human allows an understanding of the distinction between the personality and the soul. Your personality is the part of you that was born into, lives within, and will die within time. To be a human and to have a personality are the same thing. Your personality, like your body, is the vehicle of your evolution. The fearful and violent emotions that have come to characterize human existence can be experienced only by the personality. Only the personality can feel...
Only the personality can judge, manipulate and exploit. Only the personality can pursue external power. The personality can also be loving, compassionate, and wise in its relations with others, but love, compassion, and wisdom do not come from the personality. They are experiences of the soul. Your soul is that part of you that is immortal. Every person has a soul, but a personality that is limited in its perceptions to the five senses is not aware of its soul, and, therefore, cannot recognize the influences of its soul. Your soul is a positive, purposeful force at the core of your being. It is that part of you that understands the impersonal nature of the energy dynamics in which you are involved, that loves without restriction and accepts without judgment. If you desire to know your soul, the first step is to recognize that you have a soul. The next step is to allow yourself to consider,
When the energy of the soul is recognized, acknowledged, and valued, it begins to infuse the life of the personality. When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic inner empowerment. This is the goal of the evolutionary process in which we are involved and the reason for our being. Every experience that you have and will have upon the earth encourages the alignment of your personality with your soul. Every circumstance and situation gives you the opportunity to choose this path, to allow your soul to shine through you, to bring into the physical world through you its unending and unfathomable reverence for and love of Life. ~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~ What are the characteristics of an authentically empowered person? Humble. An authentically empowered person is humble. This does not mean the false humility of one who stoops to be with those who are below him or her. It is the inclusiveness of one who responds to the beauty of every soul. It is the harmlessness of one who treasures and honors and reveres life in all its forms. A humble spirit walks a familiar world. People are not strangers to it; they are its companions upon the earth. Humble spirits are free to love and to be who they are. Harmless. What does it mean to be harmless? It means being so strong that you need not harm any creature. That is what it means: you are so able and empowered that the idea of showing power through harm is not even a part of your consciousness. Without genuine humility, you cannot have this kind of power because you lose power when you do not give each situation that you are in, and the people you are with, respect and appreciation. Noncompetitive. An authentically empowered person does not compete for external power. They have no artificial standards to live up to. They are not drawn to the symbols of external power. If the something that you aim for is prestige or notice or a gold medal, it is your personality that is motivating the competition. You are striving to empower yourself at the expense of others, to assert your superiority over another. You are striving for external power. By striving for this external reward, you ask the world to assess and acknowledge your value before you can value yourself. You place your sense of self worth in the hands of others. You have no power even if you win every gold medal that the world can produce. Forgiving. Forgiveness is not a moral issue. It is an energy dynamic. When most people forgive, they do not want those they forgive to forget it. This kind of forgiveness manipulates the person who is forgiven. It is not real forgiveness. Real forgiveness means that you do not carry the baggage of an experience. When you choose not to really forgive, the experience sticks with you. It is like agreeing to wear dark sunglasses that distort everything, and it is you who are forced every day to look at life through those contaminated lenses. You are looking through the lenses of your own contaminated love. Real forgiveness means that you do not hold others responsible for your experiences. Because if you do not hold yourself accountable for what you experience, you will hold someone else accountable. And if you are not satisfied with what you experience, you will seek to change it by manipulating that person. Complaining, for example, is exactly that dynamic of wanting someone to be responsible for what you experience, and to fix things for you. Complaining is a form of manipulation, but you are free to move beyond it to sharing at any time. The issue is the intention behind the communication. When complaining or blaming is used instead of sharing, that is what becomes negative. When you assume responsibility for what you experience and share it to increase your understanding of that responsibility, that is the same as forgiveness. When you hold someone else responsible for what you xperience, you lose power. And the perception that someone else is responsible for what you experience underlies the idea that forgiveness is something that one person does for another. How can you forgive another person for your decision to step out of your own power? When you really forgive you release critical judgment of yourself, as well as of others. You lighten up. You do not cling to negative experiences that resulted from decisions that you made while you were learning. Clarity. An authentically empowered human being is clear in his or her perceptions and thinking. Clarity is seeing with wisdom. It is being able to perceive and understand the illusion. It is being able to see beyond the activities of the personality to the force of the immortal soul.It is the ability to recognize nonphysical dynamics as they appear within the world of time and matter. It is being able to see the role of responsible choice and choosing accordingly in each moment. Clarity brings forth true compassion. It allows the energy of the heart to flow, because wherever clarity looks, it sees the hand of God. Clarity allows you to experience your fellow humans with compassion instead of with judgment. It is the ability to see the soul in action in the physical world. Clarity evaporates fear. It allows you to choose the vertical path and stay on it. It allows you to choose consciously. Clarity allows you to see the world of physical matter for what it really is: a learning environment that is created jointly by the intentions of all involved. Loving. An authentically empowered person lives in love. Love does more than bring peace where there is conflict. It brings a different way of being in the world. It brings harmony and an active interest in the well-being of others. It brings concern and care. It brings Light. Love is not a passive state. It is an active force. It is the force of the soul. It washes away the concerns of the personality. There is nothing that cannot be healed by love. Love is the energy of the soul. Love is what heals the personality. In the Light of love, there is only love. |
Gary Zukav, graduate of Harvard and winner of the 1979 American Book Award in Science, explains that we are evolving from a species that pursues power based upon the perceptions of the five senses, external power, into a species that pursues authentic power—power that is based upon the perceptions and values of the spirit. Using his scientist's eye and philosopher's heart, Zukav illustrates how the emerging values of the spirit are changing marriages into spiritual partnerships, psychology into spiritual psychology, and transforming our everyday lives.
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