Dealing with Power Issues

“The struggle for definition is veritably the struggle for life itself…In ordinary life, the struggle is [for symbols]…whoever first defines the situation is the victor.” – Thomas Szasz One of the chief factors governing the quality of our lives, perceptions, relationships, and also the power struggles between individuals and groups, are reality definitions. A reality definition is a cognitive template that the mind of an individual or group superimposes on reality to give it both a comprehensible definition and to control it. Relationship partners, politicians, political parties, corporations and nation states are among those who are often in a struggle to impose their definition of reality to control situations. For example, in the 2012 U.S. presidential election, you saw a classic competition of reality definitions (conflicting versions of reality) fought out with campaign speeches, public events and a couple of billion dollars of advertising money. The Democrats defined the Republicans as a party that favors the rich and corporate interests and doesn’t care about women, minority groups or even the middle class. The Republicans defined the Democrats as tax-and-spend liberals who aren’t financially competent and want to provide ruinous entitlements to special interest groups. Romney tried to define Obama as [...]

“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” – C.G. Jung When we fear that we will not get the love we need or want, we tend to strive for power. A classic example is the hunchback future king, Richard III, in the Shakespeare play of the same name. In his opening monologue, Richard tells us: “But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them; Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity: And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a [...]

You do have a choice. Don’t let the Babylon Matrix castrate you. Many forces seek your disempowerment. One of the most basic forms of castration (for males or females) is to keep your attention focused on the pursuit of a glittering external object — the hottie, money, social status, worldly power, consumer goods, etc. In this position your head is captured in the wrong end of the telescope and you become ever more removed from your real source of power — the neglected core of wholeness within. Is there something you see as more powerful than yourself which you worship? That’s one of the essential forms of self-castration. The Sanskrit definition of God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. You are at the center of the circle, and so is everything else. If you worship an external savior and therefore place yourself as outside the circle of the divine looking in, then you betray your soul and descend into fundamentalist madness. In the recently discovered gnostic Gospel of Thomas Jesus says: “He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will [...]

It is easy to fall into power games and struggles for dominance. Many species are hierarchical with alpha and omega positions and competition for status. Where love is present the power principle recedes. Where love is absent the power principle ascends. This is a propitious time to recognize and work on the ever-shifting ratio of these two competing principles. Elements of power and dominance games color almost all relationships. But this does not mean that love and compassion are not also present. Relationships are complex; all sorts of forces compete for ascendancy, and the power principle wins out more than most people realize. It is beyond the scope of an oracle card to even glance at the myriad variety of human power struggles. When people used to talk about psychoanalysis, they would mention three giant figures — Freud, Jung and the one you hear the least about these days — Alfred Adler. Adler’s theory of personality and his whole school of psychology were based on the human will to power. Human beings are not equal in their attributes and control over resources. There can be huge disparities amongst people in key aspects such as size, strength, beauty, intelligence, talent, wealth, [...]

Is there something you see as more powerful than yourself which you worship? The Sanskrit definition of God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. You are at the center of the circle, and so is everything else. If you worship an external savior and therefore place yourself as outside the circle of the divine looking in, then you betray your soul and descend into fundamentalist madness. In the recently discovered gnostic Gospel of Thomas Jesus says: “He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.” The Gnostics understood the need to discover divinity from within, rather than from without. If you worship an outer text, savior, object of romantic infatuation, nation state, church, or matrix, then you empower Anti-Christ energy. Power may be given away to an idea, an ideology, a fundamentalism (religious or secular), a movement, an addiction, an exciting, dangerous activity and so forth. There are myriad things that people give their power away to. You automatically disempower yourself when you inflate another person into a God and this can happen with romantic infatuation, [...]

This card warns about the human tendency to give power away to a guru, political leader, celebrity, or a person who is the object of romantic idealization. Power may also be given away to an idea, an ideology, a fundamentalism (religious or secular), a movement, an addiction, an exciting, dangerous activity and so forth. There are myriad things that people give their power away to. This chalk graffiti was found on a sidewalk in Boulder. Amma is a guru whose is promoted as a kind of god by her followers and in her own literature. She treats those close to her with sadistic despotism, supposedly to help break their egos. The graffiti writer obviously has a guru complex always watching, but they externalized their neurotic disempowerment into a need to tell the world that their guru is omniscient and has taken the place of a supervisory Old Testament God. As Jung pointed out, proselytizing usually indicates an unbalanced psyche who has a compulsive need to spread the psychic contagion. You automatically disempower yourself when you inflate another person into a God and this can happen with romantic infatuation, guru worship, fundamentalist mythologizing and other relationships that have an unhealthy asymmetry [...]

Don’t let the matrix castrate you. Many forces seek your disempowerment. One of the most basic forms of castration (for males or females) is to keep your attention focused on the pursuit of a glittering external object — the hottie, money, social status, worldly power, consumer goods, etc. In this position your head is captured in the wrong end of the telescope and you become ever more removed from your real source of power — the neglected core of wholeness within. Is there something you see as more powerful than yourself which you worship? That’s one of the essential forms of self castration. The Sanskrit definition of God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. You are at the center of the circle, and so is everything else. If you worship an external savior and therefore place yourself as outside the circle of the divine looking in, then you betray your soul and descend into fundamentalist madness. In the recently discovered gnostic Gospel of Thomas Jesus says: “He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.” The [...]

“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” – C.G. Jung When we fear that we will not get the love we need or want, we tend to strive for power. A classic example is the hunchback future king, Richard III, in the Shakespeare play of the same name. In his opening monologue, Richard tells us: “But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them; Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity: And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a [...]

I Ching scholar Carol Anthony came up with the phrase “crescendo of awfulness situations” in her commentary on hexagram 26. We’ve all been through situations where relations with others spiral out of control, get worse and worse, and seem to have their own dark momentum. In various crescendo-of-awfulness situations we may be the prime instigator, someone else may be the prime instigator who pulls us in, or all parties contribute to the conflict. . Whatever the cause of the crescendo of awfulness we should tend to the basics: keep breathing, stay as calm as possible, keep up all disciplines, try to slow down the dark momentum if possible by being diplomatic, detached, impeccable, and centered on your own inner equilibrium. If possible try to be the calm center in the midst of the storm. Remind yourself of the classic phrase: “This too shall pass.” If you have been able to keep your inner dignity and disciplines and it seems like the other or others have been at fault, avoid becoming a righteous crusader. Have tolerance and patience for the mistakes of others. If possible, give a wrong doer a face-saving way out of the awful situation. If someone you are [...]