The Power Within You
This is an article inspired by @lukestokes post titled The Power is the Problem. Initially I began writing this as a comment to that piece and after I saw how long it was decided to post it as a separate article.
In general I agree with the sentiments he expressed, but felt I might provide another perspective that reflects ideas I'm currently in the process of discovering. I welcome your input and thoughts.
Yes, we need leadership. No, we don't need rulership. Good ideas don't require force.
...please recognize the positions of power are the core of the problem. We should never have let them get that powerful.
One perspective is these two statements have a measure of contradiction within them. I do agree that through our inaction we allow others to accumulate and abuse power. However, saying, "We should never let them get that powerful" could be taken as a need for some type of control mechanism by a "we" to constrain that power, for example a constitution or a revolution. If good ideas don't require force perhaps we need to ask ourselves, am I trying to use my will to force an outcome favorable to my ego?
I have read many of @lukestokes articles and I don't believe he is in favor of some type of collective organization or action to constrain the growth of power such as a rulership. He stated as much in the first sentence I quoted. I believe we're on the same page.
Unconstrained power is harmful to every one of us, and each of us needs to learn to understand our power as individuals and then exercise that power to constrain those who abuse theirs. It's not about establishing policies or erecting a system of control or super authority over abusers. This by the way, is also applicable to the application of power within Steemit.
Then how are we as individuals to constrain abusive power? By caring. By paying attention to injustice and taking action against it, by understanding the violation and speaking out against it or explaining it to those who aren't aware of it.
I recently voiced a similar frustration to Luke's about the lack of leadership and organization to a group of concerned freedom activists. Through their feedback I was able to see that such leaders and organizations not only don't exist but they would actually be counter-productive and antithetical to individual freedom. They helped me to see my frustration was an expression of my own ego and its desire for a freer world.
As @larkenrose says, the struggle for freedom is not against tyrants or institutions or governments but rather the belief in authority in our own minds. It's about overcoming our false and irresponsible behaviors, to uncover our true authentic selves which yearn to be free and creative. It's about understanding that delegating our judgement to an external "authority" to make decisions for us is irresponsible behavior. I'm not talking about deferring to superior knowledge and wisdom but rather of figureheads and titles of authority.
It's ironic that the path to our core authenticity, our true power as individuals, comes not through our ego but rather by letting go of the ego and allowing events to unfold naturally, organically. As I reflected on my life I can see a number of events that I did not orchestrate or bring about by my will, yet they resulted in a better outcome than I probably would have achieved had I tried. The ego is all of our life's experiences and programming that formulates our preferences, self image or "comfort zone". We need to learn how to die to ego and awaken to our true selves. That is not so easy however.
If this sounds as "new agey" to you as it did to me initially please bare with me, suspend your disbelief for a moment and allow yourself to entertain the idea that the ego is not the core of who *you* really are but is only a layer of consciousness that obscures your true, authentic nature. Like any relationship it takes time to get to know the other party, an investment of care and attention is required. Ask yourself, have I given myself the respect my true, virtuous authentic self deserves?
I have just begun to read The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer, and in the first few chapters he explains his discovery that the voice in his head, his self talk, is not actually his true authentic self. He eloquently describes his first epiphany when he was able to identify an observer within his own consciousness, a distinct and different persona from the noise of his ego or self talk which he referred to as the narrator.
What struck me as I read was the similarity to the IFS model of self therapy which is a technique used to personify and care for different aspects of our consciousness. Think of a little child, and the hurt it may feel if scolded for something it didn't do. Can you feel empathy for that child? Can you imagine comforting and defending it? Now imagine yourself as that child as well as yourself as an empathetic caregiver for that child. That is a thought exercise that may help you begin to understand the observer and narrator roles, with the narrator being the hurting child explaining their situation and the empathetic caregiver being the observer or true self.
What Luke is advocating for (if only implicitly) is not a force to counter those other forces that have become too powerful but rather societal structures with "built in" rules that can successfully prevent the concentration of power in the first place. Though Luke doesn't call call it by this name, what he's advocating for is a "collective commons". Non-permissioned blockchains are one example of such a commons. By their nature, such blockchains are non-coercive and voluntary. Competing chains ensure that people have competing options, at least until one chain comes to dominate for a given purpose. But, even then, the dominant chain is not under any centralized control or authority. Yes, power/autho0rity still exists (in the form of "consensus"), but that power/authority is distributed and arises from the bottom up rather than being forced from the top down.
Yes. As I wrote, I do not disagree with @lukestokes.
I'm trying. Trying to get the underlying psychological aspects cleared up before I go forward more.
As for the "ego death", that's a delusion. Ego="I"=self. It's really simple. You can't exist in reality without being influenced by your environment to shape your ego-personality-identity construct. Without that layer of self in consciousness, you would only be consciousness, and you wouldn't be a you, or able to do anything, you would die. Consciousness is a bare blank awareness emerging from the brain. Life of each individual, born at a different time and place, with different experiences and genetic influence, will produce different people. That is who they are. A someone, with an ego-personality-identity construct.
These New Ager narratives I was influenced by as well in the past, until I dug deep enough to understand how we are formed and shaped in life.
So if you want to be "hyper-reductionist" and fallaciously conclude that you aren't you, as if you're "really" just the blank consciousness, as if that's you're "higher self"... well believe whatever you want,but that's not how it is demonstrable objectively understandable.
I used to believe in this fantasy of "true self" "higher self" as being external and someone else, some "soul" and "spirit". I used to believe that the "pure awareness" was the "real me" and the "ego had to be killed". It's a self-delusion. It's actually an ego-trip, where the ego thinks and deludes itself into thinking it can kill itself... LOL. That's the hilarious part of it all :D
We get infatuated with all these "mysterious" and "wondrous" ideas and imaginations and try to make them "real", but all they're only valid so long as deeper critical thinking is not engaged to ground this in other understanding, that might be lacking.
The self, has both conditioning into truth and falsity. Letting go of our ego-attachments to falsity, is how to increase the acceptance and overall unity with truth within your own identity and identification with reality. I have talked about this in several places in my won work, about falser vs higher self.
If you want me to explain it more, I have some work on it, but not what I mentioned above:
Who Are You? Who We Are, Know Thyself - Psychology (Pt.1)
It takes time to uncover this all. The more you read from people that reinforce an idea that may on the surface "make sense" in some way, or give you an idea or something that you want to believe in, the more you will accept that idea more and more, even if it doesn't make as much sense as another explanation, since that explanation was not explained by these guys since they don't get it and they want you to buy their books on all this fantasy, mystery and wonderment narrative.
I may seem harsh, but I've been in this cul-de-sac, understand a lot about it because got out of it and identified all the errors in their narratives and beliefs.
Take care. Peace.
I appreciate your reply @krnel, but I don't understand the text you quoted in it (which is now removed). I didn't write the first sentence of those lines, and I suspect that is your allegation. (clarified by @krnel below).
I'm still working through much of this, and I don't claim to have all the answers. I was primarily sharing where I am at in my own struggle to identify and deal with the falsity from within. If you are saying I am guilty of spreading misinformation that is certainly not my intent.
In your unity of consciousness article you recently wrote you describe "the self" as a trinity of thought, emotions and actions. You assert that when there are no contradictions between those elements "unity of consciousness" exists. That is one model but logically that doesn't preclude other models or even a deeper breakdown of that model. Models are depictions, they are not perfect representations. I mention that article of yours knowing that it doesn't address the "how" we remove falsity from our being, although I'm willing to bet you have published others that do, such as those describing The Trivium Method.
If as you say one "lets go of the ego-attachments to falsity", what remains is different than what was started with. Why is it invalid to view those 2 states as ego and the true self? Yes it is a simplification but all models are, that is one way models provide value by offering different perspectives of the same reality.
I seriously doubt any human being can dissolve 100% of their falsity / attachment to the ego and survive in reality as it exists today. My thinking atm is that viewing the ego as a "separate" persona is just a model, one that helps to understand the different internal motivations buried in our subconscious. It's a way of identifying and relating to the false patterns of behavior so that they can be dealt with. You must identify the falsity before you can understand why it exists and how to disarm it.
I am also struggling with the passive nature promoted by The Surrender Experiment. However, even if one has a "unity of consciousness" they must still make sure they are using that in alignment with truth, to the best of their ability and understanding.
If we restrict our communication to only facts and ideas we know to be certain and true, we will never stretch ourselves to go beyond what we already know.
Thank you again for taking the time to offer your perspective. Namaste
I'll read your post later, but just wanted to say sorry about the first quote lol, I meant to quote another passage, and I think I still had a troll hater from one of my posts in by paste so it pasted that instead of the text I was trying to copy. Sorry :P
OK. Thx for the clarification. Apology accepted :)
So the ego-personality is an individual you (that we all have develop uniquely with shared components), and consciousness is a bio-natural emergence that is universal to all humans (baring in congenital defects or brain damage, etc.) I'll just add an infographic from one of my presentations last year. This is how I have been able to break down things demonstrably. By epigenetic I mean that its conditioned from the environment and can change.
For the "unity consciousness", I also said we can have "unity" and be deluded, so its only a farce of self-referential "unity" in consciousness and actions but not substantiated through the reality of others, in the case of say physically harming someone. There is also unity with reality as that demonstrates, which is to align with particular aspects of truth./reality that you recognize as demonstrable and verified as such. Not simply ideas, images and the such from our imagination factory powered by the engine of consciousness. But that make more grounded sense, which I can explain more of this in great calrity, but I have never continued my original work projects with 3 more presentations, now that I am on steemit.
Removing falsity is to recognize it by contrast to reality. When reality, demonstrable, verifyable, goes against a mere conditioned acceptance of an idea, a belief, then the belief needs to be let go.
Here are two for beliefs on steemit, short:
Beliefs - A Short Introduction
Infatuated with Ideas and Beliefs
Long:
Symbols, Reality, Knowledge, Belief and Attachment
Also, I have a Power of Consciousness series that deals with a lot of this manipulation of consciousness that we do to ourselves. I recommend, here is #10, and the links to 10 others (I started with no number): Reality, Unreality, Magic and Sorcery - The Power of Consciousness (Pt.10)
And yeah don't think about "gotta get to 100%", it's a thing that takes time,a s truth takes time. Insights and intuition can give us conclusions that are right, but also wrong. It's like a stab in the dark to give us something based on pattern recognition, connecting, linking things, but non-reflectively, automatically, and can have unconscious contradictions which require the active reflective side to analyze and correct the errors.
For belief and imagination, yes it's required. Check the Belief intro post above infographic. I don't say to not use imagination or belief. But to discern the difference between truth and belief is so important. I can;t understate that enough how important it is to make that distinction in all aspects of ideas or information.
Anyways, I have a lot a lot of work on consciousness and figuring this out in a sound way that explains many of the ideas that attempt to answer some of these questions of introspection. Like even meditation, oceanic boundlessness experiences, common visual "alternate reality" etc. I can explain more realistically. But that's not part of my interest to focus on explaining right now. I have other things in focus.
Thanks for the feedback. Sorry about the bad quote before. And I know I can sound "arrogant" to some, but arrogance's true etymology is to claim something you don't have, and I don't do that. I'm just frank, honest, blunt, etc. Say it like it is. Call me out on falsity if you can demonstrate it, I always want to not be wrong ;) so I will let it go, hehe. Peace.
Awesome, thanks for the detailed response and clarification. Makes perfect sense, especially what you said about the importance of discriminating between truth and falsity. I will take some time and study the information you linked here.
So when our imagination or intuition generate an idea or intangible concept, how can it be compared with reality to confirm or deny its' truth? This is an area I have given considerable thought to.
One way is by devising an experiment to gather more data from which to draw a conclusion or formulate other experiments to gather additional data, but that isn't always possible for all concepts. Another way is to abstract the concept to mathematics to verify its' validity (which provides evidence but not confirmation of truth in reality) but that also has its' weaknesses, though that is not a method to be dismissed as it has provided many insights into reality.
As I believe I've mentioned before, exploring the unknown (to anyone, not just unknown to yourself) requires going beyond the constraints of what we call reality, given the definition of reality requires objective confirmation / proof. Exploring the unknown may involve intuition and imagination, but it should always result in verifiable evidence in alignment with objective truth, to confirm or deny the truthfulness of a concept or idea.
Lastly I'm curious as to how you would respond to this statement: "We all live by faith to one degree or another". Those who rely on strict definitions and rigid adherence to empirical evidence typically deny the truthfulness of that statement.
However, since none of us know the exact time our death, and most if not all who are asked if they would change what they're doing today if they knew with certainty they would not be alive tomorrow reply yes, it demonstrates they are indeed living their life on faith they will be alive the next day.
Those who argue from a statistical point of view they are not likely to die tomorrow deny the demonstrable possibly they may, and also deny they may have no control of the factors that could lead to death in advance of that moment. Of course if you believe humans have the ability to be clairvoyant the logic of this falls apart.
Find it in reality, demonstrable, verifiable, then it's truth. Otherwise, it's just an idea, from imagination, that is possible true, but can also be untrue and false. Give me an example of something you want to verify. It about ti existing, shown, demonstrable, verifiable, not necessary in an lab experiment "science".
Yes there is faith, trust loyalty and belief,a proper healthy kind, and unhealthy kind. Please go check the infographic on belief.
Yes, the info you posted on belief makes perfect sense, no disagreement.
Faith is a belief in that which cannot be proven in reality. I have yet to meet a person that doesn't live under a false belief. That was the premise of the example, to illustrate that point. You didn't comment on that, did you find fault with the logic I wrote in support of that premise?
Still working thru the other material you linked.
Faith, truth, loyalty, belief in something as possible. That's part of life and the process of thinking. Then there is truth that is verified and demonstrated. You can't call something true until it can be demonstrated to be true. Even though 2+2=4, when I was 4 I didn't understand it, and it wasn't true for me to be able to recognize it as true. To accept it as "true" without being able to demonstrate it, is a belief. The word true itself matters etymologically to get when we can actually use the word true to reference something in reality. It has a specific meaning.
Veritas, veracity, veracious, verifiable. Truth is verifiable. Beliefs are anything the inner-light of consciousness can create. It doesn't mean it actual exists in reality.
Definitions define our attempts to represent reality. They are more important than you realize. Common definition of terms need to be established to talk about the same thing. The word truth itself matters. It means something verifiable. Otherwise, if something we think isn't verifiable yet can be referred to as "truth", then anything we imagine can be simply be called "truth" and then it doesn't mean what it should mean at all...
I've heard that many times. And I wouldn't change anything except give all my stuff away since I was dying... no use in it not being used by people. It's logical to change actions when something is going to happen. Say you know you are going on a plane tomorrow. You would make plans to care for your house or whatnot.
You aren't likely to die tomorrow. Probability of death increases with age. It's a scale. You're more likely to die at age 90 than age 60, while 60 is more likely to die than age 18, but someone in their 30s not so much difference from 18, health is still going well in that age range for the most. Degrees of differences in probability increase as the body ages and health deteriorates increases the likelihood. Poor health choices in life alter the probability as it affects health.
Yes, of course.
Your statement, "You aren't likely to die tomorrow" is a belief that cannot be known until tomorrow has ended. Any number of events totally outside of your control could happen to you. Those are basic facts. Probability is not factual, it is abstract, intangible, not truth. It is not proof, only evidence. As you said in your Infatuated with ideas and beliefs, "We must ask ourselves questions and doubt. Ask ourselves if this is actually true or if we merely choose to believe it ".
No, I explained why that statement is accurate. You don't understand the meaning of words and what they reflect. What does the word likely mean? If I flip a coin, is it likely to be heads or tails? Neither and both is as likely to happen, this is a truth. It can be demonstrated. Other likelihoods can also be demonstrated, as per the health and longevity demonstrated in reality, which is the example I gave.
You can demonstrate something based on reality of the past. Reality isn't simply in the present. The next cells your body produce aren't there yet, but when they do get created, they will have the same properties as the other cells, because that's how reality works, barring any abnormalities, and there are variations and mutations, etc. but the attributes are always there. Membrane, nucleus, etc.
Your "worldview" on this is flawed because you would say you can only "believe" the cell would be created, even though we know cells continue to be created, it's not a likelihood, it's a requirement for living. Secondly, it's flawed because you would also say that you can only believe the cell would also have a membrane, nucleus, etc. because you think to be able to know that things will happen is not possible because it didn't happen yet? LOL. I've heard this with the "you can't know the sun will come up tomorrow" and it's a flawed argument I find people use to attempt to inject solipsistic foundations for rejecting reality. Not that you're doing that. To try to disprove anything someone says because you can't be absolutely 100% certain something will happen even though it has before, is ridiculous. Yes, ok, understand that things change and can change at any moment, but there isn't pure chaos, there is more of an order to things than random change, ok? Why do people always want to bring this argument up as if it can be used to "prove" that you can't "prove" things, or other solipsistic ideas. Or what was your point here? Thanks. Hehe. I skipped your point the first time because I don't want to be doing this explaining, but I respect you enough to give it since you asked. ttyl.
Thanks for the reply, and I will be thinking over what you said. I don't understand your argument adequately to counter it, but I respect you enough to not dismiss it without deeper reflection.
Voice next time hehe. Comments suck.
Great post! I'm sorry I missed it. I'm following you now, so that hopefully won't happen again in the future. :) Next time, feel free to drop a comment linking out to your post. I should be using third-party tools for notifications, but ain't nobody got time for that.
Great discussion here. I think I personally am most concerned about physically violent power. Other forms of power seem to be things we can (to more or less degree) control ourselves ("sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.") but I also recognize I have a pretty thick skin, am white and well off, and am not threatened by others' opinions of me or their words. So it doesn't "hurt" me like it might hurt someone else. I'm not as concerned with other forms of power beyond physical violence, but maybe I should be.
As to letting people become powerful, that has to do with correct thinking more so than with action. We make them powerful by our thoughts and our acceptance of their lies as if they were truth.
Thanks again for having a great discussion here. Glad to know I was part of making it happen.
GREAT amounts of wisdom in there. Thanks a bunch for sharing, luckily I came across this precious article after @onceuponatime re-steemed it. Thanks to you both, namaste :)
I found your article pretty inspiring, Full-Steem.
Thanks for sharing!!
Upvoted & Followed.
Re-steemed and promoted in order to hopefully stimulate thought on the very important issues you have raised.
Thanks so much for your reply my friend, namaste!
Love these thoughts !