Using Your Power

We've looked at power in many different ways in this blog; but because it's such an important topic, it deserves many new looks -- so let's do one of those here.

In your life, you have a great deal of power; much, much more than you probably think. You don't need money, status or political anything in order to have power.

Everytime you engage another person -- whoever they are and whoever you are -- you are entering a power zone.

This is where you internally decide how to engage the other person. Will you do so politely? Will you do so openly? Will you avoid or refuse to react to the other person's misuse of their power? For example, perhaps someone has been rude to you -- or something negative like that.

You STILL have your power. Will you misuse it the way that they are?

Don't let other people choose how you use your power; because you are answerable, in the final sense, to yourself; not to the other person.

Use your power very wisely.

Power

Many of us tend to think of "power" as something belonging to a select few; say, leaders of countries or CEOs or folks who have a lot of influence in one form or another.

However, this perception of power -- that it's coveted by a precious few -- is quite...well, it's quite wrong.

Yes, those people do have power -- and we can't deny that. That's not the wrong part.

The wrong part is the belief that only those people have power, and "the rest of us" don't. This is just not the case.

It doesn't matter what you do, how much money you have, who you know, or anything remotely connected with your personality or what you currently identify with (e.g. your job, your status, your whatever). You have power.

Want proof?

Go into a little store or a coffee shop, or anywhere else "ordinary" that you've been to a hundred times before. When you hand your money over to the clerk, you are exercising your power. You can do it -- hand the money over -- very miserably if you want to. You can be rude or even hostile. You can be....well, you can be a real jerk!

OR

You can hand your money over with a smile, with gentle eye contact, with a simple "thanks" or whatever else springs forth from you that is simply a more evolved use of your power.

Every day you have numerous opportunities to use your power. But because you don't see it as power -- you don't see that when you order food at a restaurant, you are expressing a kind of power -- you miss the opportunity. And, as such, you may use your power very incorrectly; you may use it to dominate, to humiliate, to "put people in their place" or any of the other awful -- but very common -- uses of power.

Remember: power doesn't corrupt. Some people are already corrupt and power simply activates that corruption. Why blame power? Power is just energy. Power is like the sun. If the sun shines on a scene of one person harming another, why blame the sun for "lighting" that scene? It's the people -- not the sun.

Same goes for power.

Starting NOW, be more aware of the power you have in your life. It could be (and likely is) power over a family member -- say, a child or maybe even a spouse. Or at work, you may have power over some of your colleagues -- maybe the ones that you don't consider "important" to you and your career. How do you treat these people? Do you treat them with contempt? Would you treat them like this if, say, tomorrow they became your boss? Or would you change...

Be aware of how much power you REALLY have in your day -- you will be amazed at how much there is. More than you ever thought possible!

This Just In: Knowledge ISN'T Power

Decartes may have had the best of intentions when he concluded that “knowledge is power,” but that doesn’t absolve him from the fact that he was utterly wrong. Ironically, he lacked a piece of knowledge that would have informed him, fully, that knowledge isn’t power at all.

Now THAT’S ironic, isn’t it? Much more than rain on your wedding day or some good advice that you just didn’t take.

What Decartes “missed” was that power doesn’t come from knowledge; all that comes from knowledge, really, is fear and confusion. Hence, the most knowledgeable people in the world are usually the most frightened (just walk into a hospital or university and stare into the faces of the people who work in them – if these places aren’t terror factories, I don’t know what is).

The plain – and rather ordinary – reality is that CLARITY is power. Clarity is the ability to understand a situation…well, clearly. Sometimes knowledge is helpful to achieve that clarity, but only sometimes – and then, when it is, it’s not totally helpful. Knowledge is based on memory, and memory is always based on the past. Either facts that have been stored and remembered, or “projected” into the future in terms of probabilities.

Clarity is real power, because clarity is an authentic response to reality. Clarity doesn’t bring old, dusty facts to a fresh, new situation. Yes, it may refer to facts – but it doesn’t depend on them exclusively.

For example, if you read this post ONLY through knowledge, you will constantly be assessing this with what you think you know. And that process – that constant assessment – will compel you to miss what I’m trying to say. You may catch a small piece of it, but you’ll miss the heart; the essence. You’ll be filtering this through knowledge, and knowledge is never of the present moment – never of the now. Knowledge is always of the past – always. Knowledge cannot LIVE in the present, because knowledge is absolutely derived from mind, and mind cannot live in the present. Mind lives in the past and in thee future – to “places” that don’t exist. Mind cannot live in the now; and hence, knowledge cannot live in the now.

And if knowledge can’t live in the now…how can it be power!? How can living in either the past or the future – two NON-places – be powerful? It is actually the very definition of weakness. The present contains power – and to SEE the present, you must be clear; clear of the past, clear of the future.