True spiritual “power” isn’t the ability to imagine and implement an endless series of new solutions to old problems. Rather, it is a radical new and higher form of self-understanding, one that illuminates and transcends our unconscious need to have any painful problems at all. Which would you rather have: a personal fire truck and a fire to put out every day or a life free of painful flames?
The truth is, most of us spend a great deal of our time struggling in vain to sort out one conflict or another with others, with the world, or within ourselves. Part of our ever-developing plan to “win” these wars requires us to acquire new powers that we imagine will end our suffering once and for all. But past experience proves these exercises to be pointless: the very thing that we set out to obtain to make us fearless, to relieve our stress, soon becomes the source of a new fear and a new pressure!
Not unlike an addict taking his drug of choice to release himself from the cyclical pain of his addiction, we continue to seek powers outside ourselves to free us from feeling powerless in the face of what pains us. It’s obvious that no drug the addict wants can free him from wanting drugs. What isn’t so obvious, at least not yet, is the following: each power that we imagine will liberate us only strengthens our false belief that the power we need to be free is to be found somewhere outside of us…. [to be continued]
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