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What is the Nature of Authentic Power? What does it mean to be a truly powerful human being? 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 secondary gain behind...
* ideological conflicts, such as capitalism versus communism,
and
* religious conflicts, such as Irish Catholic versus Irish Protestant, and * geographical conflicts, such as Jew versus Arab, is external power. 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. 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,
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. What are the characteristics of an authentically empowered person?
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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.
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 * anger, 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, "If I have a soul, what does my soul want? What is the relationship between my soul and me? How does my soul affect my life?" 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. |
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