The Empowered Person
"Power is the first good." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Power itself is neither good or bad. It is how power is used that determines whether it will have a good or bad impact. People who use power to manipulate and control people and events are why power is perceived as evil.
"Lack of power corrupts" Adlai Stevenson
Persons who need power over the lives of other people have not developed their own sense of empowerment. They attempt to compensate for their feelings of powerlessness by trying to have power over others by preventing them from using all their own power. Those who are using their own power do not need to take from others. They have confidence in their own ability to flourish through their own actions. Those who have developed their own sense of empowerment do not need to take other people's energy, self-esteem, willpower, trust, or property. They have no need to lie, or cheat. An empowered person posses the willingness, and ability to act truthfully, and honestly. If the truth is that someone needs help then the self-empowered person will act to honestly help him or her.
It is all about energy. The universe has a vibration resonance of energy that is the most basic pattern of the universe and it always tries to be in balance. Actions have consequences because nature always seeks balance. Coincidence and synchronicity are part of nature's way of achieving balance. A virtue taken to the extreme becomes a vice because it is out of balance. One of life's truisms is that which we most criticize in others is our own secret flaw.
Some people feed on the energy of the suffering of other people to feel powerful. They derive a sense of power from hurting, frustrating, or encouraging deenergizing emotional feelings of suffering. Other people's feelings of pleasure or contentment thwarts their need to feed on negative emotions so they try to make other people feel unworthy or in need of permission to do or feel what they want.
Joseph Campbell in "The Hero with a 1000 Faces" presented a wonderful analysis of the tyrant-monster arch-type observing that "his characteristics are everywhere essentially the same. He is the hoarder of the general good ... avid for the greedy rights of "my and mine" ... This may be no more than his household, his own tortured psyche, or the lives he blights with the touch of his friendship and assistance; or it may amount to the extent of his civilization. The inflated ego of the tyrant is a curse to himself and his world--no matter how his affairs may seem to prosper. Self-tortured, fear-haunted, alert at every hand to meet and battle back the anticipated aggressions of his environment, which are primarily the uncontrollable impulses to acquisition within himself, the giant of self-achieved independence is the world's messenger of disaster, even though in his mind, he may entertain himself with humane intentions. Wherever he sets his hand there is a cry (if not from the housetops,then--more miserably--within every heart): a cry for the redeeming hero, the carrier of the shining blade, whose blow, whose touch, whose existence, will liberate the land."
The tyrant-monster's greatest fear is the simple telling of truth. Telling the truth is the way that the tyrant is unmasked and revealed for what he is and thereby defeated. The simple truth is the "shining blade".
How the tyrant-monster and the redeeming hero generate their power may have best been defined by Nietzsche "there is a physiological prerequisite that is not to be avoided: intoxication. Intoxication must first have heightened the sensibility of the whole machine ... And all kinds of special varieties of intoxication have the power to work in this way: above all, that of sexual excitement, which is the first and oldest form of intoxication. And then, too, the intoxication that comes from any great desire, any great emotion: the intoxication of the festival, of a combat, bravado, victory, or of any extreme movement; the intoxication of ferocity; the intoxication of destruction; intoxication under various sorts of meteorological influences, that of spring for example; or under the influence of narcotics; or finally the intoxication sheerly of the will, of an overcharged, inflated will. -- The essential thing in all intoxication is the feeling of heightened power and a fullness. With this feeling one addresses oneself to things, compels them to receive what one has to give, one overpowers them: and this procedure is called idealization. But let us, right here, get rid of a prepossession: idealization does not, as is generally thought, consist of a leaving out, a subtraction of the insignificant, the incidental. What is decisive, rather, is a tremendous exaggeration of the main features, before which those others disappear.
In this condition, one enriches everything out of one's own abundance: what ever one sees or desires, one sees swelling, bursting, mighty, overladen with power. The individual in this condition changes things until they are mirrors of his own energy -- reflections of his own perfection. ... Everything, even what he is not, becomes for such a one a delighting in himself ...
The psychology of the orgiastic as of an overflowing feeling of life and power in which even pain has the effect of a stimulant ... Saying yes to life, even in its most inimical, hardest problems, the will to life delighting even in the offering up of its highest types to its own inexhaustibility ... beyond terror and pity, to be oneself identified with the everlasting joy of becoming -- that joy that includes in itself the joy in destruction as well. "
It is unfortunate that what Nietzsche perceived as the basis of a "superman" is also the framework of the tyrant. This may stem from Nietzsche's disrespect for the masses in favor of the superior person. Nietzsche does not appear to have a belief in equal rights but rather seems to see equal rights as a weakness in society that the superior must overpower. His "superman" is to be free "soaring above men, mores, laws, and the conventional" and heroic "That is the way I am; that is the way I want it to be -- to He** with you!" with a "genius of the heart" that is truthful but he feels that he will be "necessarily put the task of putting up a front". It is the belief that the superior being is above the law and can selfishly demand things the way he wants them to be while "putting up a front" that makes the "superman" into a tyrant rather than an empowered person.
Just about all religions have some basic major theme like the golden rule, golden mean, or karma that address a representation of action and consequence. I believe that this is the universal sacred truth and that everything else is the religious orthodoxy of humans. In "The Future of an Illusion" Sigmund Freud observed that "the truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity can not recognize them as truth." Schopenhauer opinionated that "Chance without significance or regulation is scarcely believable. Rather, one is moved to believe that -- just as in the case of those pictures called anamorphoses, which to the naked eye are only broken, fragmentary, deformities but when reflected in a conic mirror show normal human forms -- so the purely empirical interpretation of the course of the world resembles seeing those pictures with naked eyes, while the recognition of the intention of Fate resembles the reflection of the conic mirror, which binds together and organizes the disjointed, scattered fragments."
The empowered person comprehends that all actions have consequences and all living things have rights. The empowered person understands that her rights are protected only so long as she is willing to protect the rights of others. The empowered person generously treats others as they wish to be treated, giving help and assistance to those who need it as they would wish to receive help and assistance if they were in need. In essence the empowered person lacks greed or at the very least firmly controls their avarice with acts of kindness. The empowered person sees herself as part of society not soaring above it. The empowered person truly does enrich all around them with their generous spirit and love of living life in every moment.
Power itself is neither good or bad. It is how power is used that determines whether it will have a good or bad impact. People who use power to manipulate and control people and events are why power is perceived as evil.
"Lack of power corrupts" Adlai Stevenson
Persons who need power over the lives of other people have not developed their own sense of empowerment. They attempt to compensate for their feelings of powerlessness by trying to have power over others by preventing them from using all their own power. Those who are using their own power do not need to take from others. They have confidence in their own ability to flourish through their own actions. Those who have developed their own sense of empowerment do not need to take other people's energy, self-esteem, willpower, trust, or property. They have no need to lie, or cheat. An empowered person posses the willingness, and ability to act truthfully, and honestly. If the truth is that someone needs help then the self-empowered person will act to honestly help him or her.
It is all about energy. The universe has a vibration resonance of energy that is the most basic pattern of the universe and it always tries to be in balance. Actions have consequences because nature always seeks balance. Coincidence and synchronicity are part of nature's way of achieving balance. A virtue taken to the extreme becomes a vice because it is out of balance. One of life's truisms is that which we most criticize in others is our own secret flaw.
Some people feed on the energy of the suffering of other people to feel powerful. They derive a sense of power from hurting, frustrating, or encouraging deenergizing emotional feelings of suffering. Other people's feelings of pleasure or contentment thwarts their need to feed on negative emotions so they try to make other people feel unworthy or in need of permission to do or feel what they want.
Joseph Campbell in "The Hero with a 1000 Faces" presented a wonderful analysis of the tyrant-monster arch-type observing that "his characteristics are everywhere essentially the same. He is the hoarder of the general good ... avid for the greedy rights of "my and mine" ... This may be no more than his household, his own tortured psyche, or the lives he blights with the touch of his friendship and assistance; or it may amount to the extent of his civilization. The inflated ego of the tyrant is a curse to himself and his world--no matter how his affairs may seem to prosper. Self-tortured, fear-haunted, alert at every hand to meet and battle back the anticipated aggressions of his environment, which are primarily the uncontrollable impulses to acquisition within himself, the giant of self-achieved independence is the world's messenger of disaster, even though in his mind, he may entertain himself with humane intentions. Wherever he sets his hand there is a cry (if not from the housetops,then--more miserably--within every heart): a cry for the redeeming hero, the carrier of the shining blade, whose blow, whose touch, whose existence, will liberate the land."
The tyrant-monster's greatest fear is the simple telling of truth. Telling the truth is the way that the tyrant is unmasked and revealed for what he is and thereby defeated. The simple truth is the "shining blade".
How the tyrant-monster and the redeeming hero generate their power may have best been defined by Nietzsche "there is a physiological prerequisite that is not to be avoided: intoxication. Intoxication must first have heightened the sensibility of the whole machine ... And all kinds of special varieties of intoxication have the power to work in this way: above all, that of sexual excitement, which is the first and oldest form of intoxication. And then, too, the intoxication that comes from any great desire, any great emotion: the intoxication of the festival, of a combat, bravado, victory, or of any extreme movement; the intoxication of ferocity; the intoxication of destruction; intoxication under various sorts of meteorological influences, that of spring for example; or under the influence of narcotics; or finally the intoxication sheerly of the will, of an overcharged, inflated will. -- The essential thing in all intoxication is the feeling of heightened power and a fullness. With this feeling one addresses oneself to things, compels them to receive what one has to give, one overpowers them: and this procedure is called idealization. But let us, right here, get rid of a prepossession: idealization does not, as is generally thought, consist of a leaving out, a subtraction of the insignificant, the incidental. What is decisive, rather, is a tremendous exaggeration of the main features, before which those others disappear.
In this condition, one enriches everything out of one's own abundance: what ever one sees or desires, one sees swelling, bursting, mighty, overladen with power. The individual in this condition changes things until they are mirrors of his own energy -- reflections of his own perfection. ... Everything, even what he is not, becomes for such a one a delighting in himself ...
The psychology of the orgiastic as of an overflowing feeling of life and power in which even pain has the effect of a stimulant ... Saying yes to life, even in its most inimical, hardest problems, the will to life delighting even in the offering up of its highest types to its own inexhaustibility ... beyond terror and pity, to be oneself identified with the everlasting joy of becoming -- that joy that includes in itself the joy in destruction as well. "
It is unfortunate that what Nietzsche perceived as the basis of a "superman" is also the framework of the tyrant. This may stem from Nietzsche's disrespect for the masses in favor of the superior person. Nietzsche does not appear to have a belief in equal rights but rather seems to see equal rights as a weakness in society that the superior must overpower. His "superman" is to be free "soaring above men, mores, laws, and the conventional" and heroic "That is the way I am; that is the way I want it to be -- to He** with you!" with a "genius of the heart" that is truthful but he feels that he will be "necessarily put the task of putting up a front". It is the belief that the superior being is above the law and can selfishly demand things the way he wants them to be while "putting up a front" that makes the "superman" into a tyrant rather than an empowered person.
Just about all religions have some basic major theme like the golden rule, golden mean, or karma that address a representation of action and consequence. I believe that this is the universal sacred truth and that everything else is the religious orthodoxy of humans. In "The Future of an Illusion" Sigmund Freud observed that "the truths contained in religious doctrines are after all so distorted and systematically disguised that the mass of humanity can not recognize them as truth." Schopenhauer opinionated that "Chance without significance or regulation is scarcely believable. Rather, one is moved to believe that -- just as in the case of those pictures called anamorphoses, which to the naked eye are only broken, fragmentary, deformities but when reflected in a conic mirror show normal human forms -- so the purely empirical interpretation of the course of the world resembles seeing those pictures with naked eyes, while the recognition of the intention of Fate resembles the reflection of the conic mirror, which binds together and organizes the disjointed, scattered fragments."
The empowered person comprehends that all actions have consequences and all living things have rights. The empowered person understands that her rights are protected only so long as she is willing to protect the rights of others. The empowered person generously treats others as they wish to be treated, giving help and assistance to those who need it as they would wish to receive help and assistance if they were in need. In essence the empowered person lacks greed or at the very least firmly controls their avarice with acts of kindness. The empowered person sees herself as part of society not soaring above it. The empowered person truly does enrich all around them with their generous spirit and love of living life in every moment.
posted by candy at 12:01 PM
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