The Politics of Power

                          The Politics of Power

                      

"Illusion holds power over you 
when you are not able to remember that you are a powerful spirit 
that has taken on the physical experience for the purpose of learning. 
It has power over you when you are compelled by 
wants and impulses and values of your personality. 
It holds power over you when you fear and hate and sorrow 
and fester in anger or strike out in rage. 
It has NO power over you when you LOVE, 
when compassion opens your heart to others, 
when your creativity flows unimpeded joyously into the present moment. 
In other words, the illusion had no power over a personality 
that is fully aligned with the soul."

~ Gary Zukav ~

Unfortunately, 98% of human transactions, interactions, transmissions, and behaviors seem to be on the level of amoeba. That is to say we often are purely a stimulus/response, go toward what we perceive as pleasurable, and away from what we perceive as pain. 98% of these perceptions seem to be distorted, that is to say, what we perceive as pleasure often turns out to be pain and vice versa.

This is nowhere more true than in the arena of politics. So considering the fact that we are far away from the Greek notion of polis (which means acting toward a common good), when engaging in political behavior, we would do well to consider the nature of what political power is really about vs. what we think it is about.

                        The World is a stage…

                 All the world's a stage,
                And all the men and women merely players;
                They have their exits and their entrances,
                And one man in his time plays many parts,
                His acts being seven ages.

                                                   William Shakespeare

In theater, a good actor learns that anything that is written in the script, given as stage directions, and worked out on stage, is about one actor wanting something from another. No group were more aware of this than the Greeks, who originated theater as a spiritual, psychological, and political expression of human tragedy, comedy, and drama.

The Greek chorus was a group of actors on stage, that would provide a collective voice that gave commentary, and was a meta-awareness of an actor’s dialogue or inner monologue. The chorus was a narrative on the narrative, or meta-narrative, much like film noir (dark film), would always have a narrator telling you about a meta-perspective, i.e., the bigger picture.

So every action and word an actor is saying or thinking is about wanting something. In this wanting lies the source of political power. We are merely players on a political stage enacting wants and needs albeit mostly unconsciously.

As we all know, what a politician says they want, or says they will do, is purely a means to getting what they really want, which is to get elected. 

This is the realm of power, purely for power’s sake, which is pathology, because it excludes the greater good, just as a cancer cell excludes the greater good of the body. Authentic power is a genuine desire to serve that which is bigger than one’s self, and this is indeed rare. The 2% of human beings that come along and are actually embodied, political and spiritual leaders are beings like Buddha, Christ, Moses, Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt, Mother Teresa, Hildegarde of Bingen, etc.

These beings are literally keeping the rest of the herd from falling over the cliff. This is because they have a power and influence that is exerted against the negative default status quo, which carries more power, even though it is a minority. So here we have a perspective of the power differential and where  authentic power is located, which is not in the masses.

                                Majority rules…not!

There is a great misconception about democracy, which is misinterpreted as majority rule. If we had the majority ruling, we would be dead! Democracy is more about the common good, and checks and balances than it is about majority rule.

In the case of the US constitution for example, the fifty-five members of the constitutional convention decided that the constitution would be considered adopted if nine out of the thirteen colonies approved it, with the constitution simply being imposed by force on the remaining four colonies. (As it happened, only two colonies refused ratification at the time, North Carolina and Rhode Island, both of which had ratified by 1789, and 1790 respectively.)

We can also see countless examples of how a majority wanted something and yet it was not enacted, such as the abolition of slavery. These days, we are seeing a surge of popularity consciousness whereby we are coming to believe that because something or someone has a high frequency of likes, hits, sales, views, and sound bites, that it is somehow better or more powerful. This is the consciousness that more is better, which is addiction consciousness. This is the mind set of social media, which is really anti-social, because it is encouraging anything but actual human contact.

                

I am saying the opposite of more is better, which is that the rarer and more subtle something or someone is, the more powerful and the higher their quality.

We live in a society of bigger is better and if at first you don’t succeed, use a bigger hammer. But, as in physics, the most power lies in the most subtle aspects of nature as in a laser, or the splitting of an atom.

                                Authentic Power

Authentic power, in the human dimension, is an alignment with the soul or the part of our individual and collective selves that seeks a higher purpose than our individual or collective ego, this is what gives meaning, balance, and fulfillment in life.

In the 12-steps, this is the 11^th and 12^th steps which seeks consciously, through spiritual technology (such as prayer and meditation), to maintain a constancy of contact with that which is higher than our ego, and seeks help for a context and power to give our gifts.

Practicing these step results in a spiritual awakening that is ever expanding and includes a desire, and responsibility to give away what we have been blessed with, this is the only way we can keep what we have!

This is the opposite of our cultural values which says; get as many toys as you can, build huge fences and security to protect them, and bask in the glory of your ego, knowing that others can’t touch what you have. This is what our materialistic society defines as success. I would define success by how much you are able to help others be successful.

Marx said; “Producing many useful things makes useless people.” This describes perfectly our current society. Our culture is one that thinks we need 42 different types of toothpaste, and is greatly offended when it is brought to our attention that we actually don’t need that many, and that actually, other people in the world don’t eat because of our greed for 42 brands of toothpaste. Herein lies one of the main sources of terrorism.

                                What is Power?

In physics, power is the ability to do work, we can also use the term energy, and we should here invoke the law of the conservation of energy to show the forms and manner in which energy and power can be transformed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed.

                           

Psycho-spiritually and politically, I would also say that power is the ability to manifest, to create, to get shit done efficiently!

"The human emotional system can be broken down into roughly two elements: 
fear and love. 
Love is of the soul. 
Fear is of the personality."

~ Gary Zukav - from "Seat Of The Soul" ~

If we are using power wisely, skillfully, and efficiently, we will be aligned with other forms of energy that will reinforce our intentions and result in creative manifestations. We will not have to push, force, or coerce our own agenda, there will be a natural flow, and it will seem effortless at times. In Taoism, this is called Wu-wei which is a kind of action-less action, it is non-doing. But it is not doing nothing, it is the most skillful means that requires the least energy and produces the maximum effect.