It’s healthy to possess a feeling of inner power. It feels wonderful, as if you are on top of everything, and have become a master of your life.
When it comes to true power, however, this sense of mastery is not attained through exerting total control, nor by dominating everything by force of will. The awesome experience of inner power comes from knowing that life, just as it is, and no matter how bad it might get, cannot break the strong and solid self that you have built.
Possessing inner power is the unconscious longing of your psyche. Though unconscious, it’s not that hard to uncover this longing. Just examine how you respond to moments of weakening or crisis. When you are losing power you feel your mind and body begin to break as if you are falling apart. So you react by quickly seeking to regain your sense of power and integration. For the ordinary mind this is achieved by relying on the false forms of inner power we have previously described: compensations, revenges, diversions, victim-feelings and replacement-wills. These forms are like bandages stuck on a wound – a wound that will never heal in this way.
That’s why inner power provides a key to psychic health and balance. You’re healthy when you feel sufficiently powerful. Whenever you settle into a deep feeling of inner power, it’s like settling into the saddle of a strong horse, or into the driver’s seat of a car with a powerful engine. You’ll feel bigger than any obstacle or challenge you might meet. You’ll know you can withstand the outer turbulence of life, and you’ll feel powerful enough to overcome any inner resistance or frailty. This is why I (Shai) use the transformation of inner power to rehabilitate traumatized people who seem to have lost all sense of power. It effectively restores their psychic vitality.
How can you create this magnificent state of true power inside you? The secret lies in working correctly with your will-driven self.
When you experience a drive, urge, wish or ambition, where do you think this feeling comes from? You might say simply that it comes from your personality or ego. But this is not the original source. We declared at the beginning of this book that life is will, and so following this through logically, your individual will is just one expression of life’s will that springs from the perpetual fountain of life’s drive to emerge, become and expand.
So your will-driven self is not just a set of egoistical wishes. Your will is egoistical only the way that trees and bees and rivers and winds are egoistical – individual parts of a larger living whole. If you think of life as a holistic movement you can see that any individual’s drive is in fact life’s drive to overcome and outgrow itself. Natural evolution can be easily grasped in this way, rather than from the usual point of view of competing species and individuals. You can even understand the universe itself as a whole that ceaselessly moves to overcome and outgrow itself. Contemplate for a moment the immense leaps the universe has taken, from the superheated physical energy of the Big Bang to plasma-filled galaxies and stars, to stable chemical atoms and molecules which on earth (and perhaps countless other planets) grew into complex living forms. From physics to chemistry to biology, the universe overcomes and outgrows itself. In us, and perhaps many of our fellow creatures, the will of the universe has leapt the chasm from the biological to psychological dimension of consciousness. We Homo sapiens then reached further than our primate heritage, separating from the natural chain, reorganizing ourselves into massive communities and creating human culture, a virtual second driver of our own evolution. When you feel the surge of will inside you, you truly feel a spark of the totality of life’s wish for expansion. It’s a natural impulse that precedes psychology, a life force in you essentially no different than your sex drive.
Imagine yourself sitting outside at night under a brilliant starlit sky, and realize that the force that powers those stars is the exact same force that fuels your desires. Think of life in these terms and you’ll soon fall in love with the gushing, rushing will inside of you. Connect the universe’s great will to your individual will and you will find yourself throbbing with life in every cell. Spiritual doctrines that emphasize the feeling of oneness with life tend to miss this easy access point. You don’t need to sit in a cave or climb to a mountaintop to get it: follow your will to its roots and at the bottom you’ll find the ocean of life; your will its ecstatic wave. These spiritual doctrines make it even worse when they teach that you should let go of will and “want nothing” in order to connect with life. But that’s not life; this is more like a frozen image of life. They say life is essentially emptiness. We say – with all the evidence of the living universe on our side – life is a restless passion for growth. Life always wants to become more of itself. You always want to become more of yourself. The urge to dance with life already burns within you. Release this urge and join the dance.
We humans are the manifestation of life’s will. More than that, we are capable of becoming aware that this is our nature. This enables us to consciously decide what we wish to do with our will: whether we want to express it as it is, refine it or transform it. Most people respond to their will by simply striving to fulfill it. Sometimes they refine it because they realize that it’s not socially acceptable. But their will is almost always directed to the external world of objects and people: they wish to appropriate external powers they find thrilling and overcome whatever stands in their way. This is, of course, far short of the full potential of life’s will in you; it’s limiting this great flame of passion in you to the narrow channel of instant gratification.
Life’s will is neither good nor bad, but you definitely can use it for destructive or constructive ends. One of the most constructive directions you can take is turning part of life’s will inwards. Instead of trying to become stronger in your external power struggles, direct life’s will towards increasing your knowledge, intelligence, awareness and creativity. In this way life’s will can urge you to transcend your current level of development.
When you direct your primordial wish “to have it all” inwards, the basic restlessness and dissatisfaction that drive you to want things in the world become a very positive kind of restlessness. It becomes an insatiable hunger for self-discovery and self-expansion. This transforms life’s biological drive to become and expand into a spiritual drive for internal growth. Once you activate this internal power you’ll realize there’s much to overcome in your mind and psyche. Surprisingly, you will not feel distressed thinking of all the hard work that lies ahead. Instead you will be thrilled to break old limitations and begin recreating yourself as a new type of human being. You will want to do it not because of some moral duty to become a “better person” but simply because you won’t be able to accept old limitations: egoistical thoughts, infantile emotions, anxieties and apathy. You will want to be done with these because you will sense they are getting in the way of what is next for you.
What’s great about self-overcoming is that you never feel it as an obligation or a chore. You will want to do it. Towards this purpose you are more than willing to abandon some of your external power, to forgo the habit of compensation, and to build an unbreakable self. This is what we call volitional replacement: choosing out of total freedom to let go of some of your powers, because through inner development you have outgrown them. In fact, volitional replacement is the only true form of development. You give up some powers for the same reason you throw away shoes that no longer fit your feet. So this is the flow of your transformation: turn life’s will to expand inwards; realize that inside yourself, will becomes the passion for self-overcoming; use this passion to overcome your fragile self and produce true inner power.
“This may look good in theory,” you may respond, “but how can it work in practice?” That’s why the rest of this chapter as well as all of Chapter Fifteen consist of four major practices aimed to ground you in this process of transformation.
Practice 1: Use your competitive spirit. Competition is natural, inherent and constant in all living things: between individuals, between groups, and even between species. It’s easy to grasp how this is so: Imagine you are one of several talented people who work individually in an office without any definite purpose, just “doing your job.” Now imagine you have been told each worker has been assigned his or her own project and the one who does the best job of it will win a million dollar prize. Which scenario do you think will be more effective in making people fulfill their talents and work productively? Throughout human history bursts of innovation and advancement have come through competition. The play-writing contests of classical Athens produced great masterpieces still performed on stage 2,500 years later. The 1960s’ “Space Race” between the USA and the USSR not only got humans to the moon, it produced advances that gave us much of the technology on which our modern life is based – including laptop computers and satellite TV. Our Capitalistic system works exactly in this way, utilizing the natural competitive spirit that throbs in human beings. While this system of course has serious drawbacks, our point is that competition gathers and focuses the individual’s energies into the wish to win and to excel.
Do you have mixed feelings about competition? Many people do. Our culture is divided on the messages it sends. It encourages you to compete for your place in the world while at the same time telling you that you should be ashamed of your wish to reach for the top and leave everyone else behind. You’re supposed to compete and supposed to conceal it. Especially for women in the workplace, these opposing messages are difficult to reconcile. Be too ambitious and assertive and others will call you “bitch.” Be a team player, and wait your turn – and your turn may never come. So your first practice towards mastering the secrets of inner power is to acknowledge the competitive spirit that exists inside of you and to honor it. It’s the way life has always moved forward, and it’s the way for you to move forward, too. Give yourself permission to embrace this spirit – and be grateful that you live in a culture in which there are plenty of opportunities to compete, in sports, academics, business and even hobbies such as multi-player video games.
The question is not if it’s right or wrong to compete. The question for you is: with whom do you choose to compete? On the path to true inner power the answer is clear: turn your competitive instinct into a competition against yourself. Engaging in power struggles with others is a lower form of competition. Winning in the higher form does not come at the expense of others. Winning when you compete with yourself means that you have overcome your lower, self-limiting impulses in favor of the stronger and freer you. One way to think of this is like athletes who compete for the sake of reaching their “personal best.”
Think of your being as an arena of competition. The different forces inside you are different competitors. Ask yourself what internal forces you want to overcome. Laziness and fear – do you want to see them win or lose? What forces do you cheer for? What forces can make your whole being advance to the next stage? Map the field of your inner world in this way. Remember the competitors you choose to identify with will most probably win. There is a beautiful scene at the end of the French play Cyrano de Bergerac that epitomizes this competition between internal forces. Wounded and dying, Cyrano hallucinates an inner battle on the stage: “I know you now, old enemies of mine! Falsehood!” (he strikes the air with his sword)…“Compromise! Prejudice! Treachery! Surrender, I?” (he strikes). “No, never!”
Your lower competitive spirit often derives its energy from revenge-wishes, from wanting to prove yourself worthy and to overpower your enemies. Your higher competitive spirit, however, originates from your authentic being. You want to succeed and excel because you wish to draw all your potential towards becoming your best possible self. Instead of looking for external gratification, you seek a higher expression of yourself that surpasses whatever you have previously attained. The struggle that engages you isn’t between you and your colleague or romantic partner or your father. It’s between your present level of development and your next possible level. You advance in your life out of the wish to overcome the present limitations of your talents, creativity, insight and awareness. The higher competitive spirit in you drives you towards internal excellence. Your flaws and limitations don’t scare you any more; they provide you with the energy you require to grow. They become raw materials, like the clay a sculptor uses to make a masterpiece, a masterpiece of wholeness and fulfillment.
Your envy can be enlisted towards this end; often considered a vice, envy can be harnessed as a positive force for transformation. Here’s how to do it:
Make a list of all the things you envy other people for. Not only the people in your life; include role models that you admire. Think of anything and anyone who provokes the desire to compare your power with theirs. Then translate each envious comparison into something that you can do to overcome your own limitation. For example:
“His knowledge is far greater than mine,” translates to: “What can I do to overcome my own limited knowledge?”
“I envy her courage,” translates to: “What can I do to overcome my fears and attain my next level of fearlessness?”
I (Tim) have three close friends whom I envy, and I do this practice regularly with them in mind. The first man is an award-winning writer. I envy his fame on the world stage. But I recognize that he’s earned it through his passion and uncompromising dedication to his work. My envy becomes a spur to make my own writing better. The second is the leader of a global environmental organization. I envy his purpose and influence in moving the world away from destruction. This spurs me to think beyond my own life and become more engaged and committed towards global causes I believe in. The third is a doctor who has devoted his entire life to curing Alzheimer’s disease. I envy his single-mindedness, which spurs me to become more focused and less scattered with my own energy. Where lower-level envy rejoices in others’ downfall, higher-level envy rejoices in others’ successes. The higher my friends go, the more they spur me on.
Practice 2: Turn any feeling into a source of power. By now you have already grasped that any feeling inside you, including negative feelings, is a will in disguise. This means everything within you is an expression of life’s will, and so you have an abundance of power that you misinterpret as weakness. In this practice, similar to others you have learned earlier in this book, you can translate any feeling back into raw will, and then harness its power for your conscious purposes. For example:
I feel depressed, I want a different life translates to: “Something totally new wishes to come to life out of my innermost being.”
I am so angry translates to: “I feel a surge of power that can move mountains.”
I am frustrated translates to: “I am inspired to look for creative solutions that will lead me to a breakthrough.”
I feel sexually suppressed translates to: “I’m like a dormant volcano of sexual desire; there’s so much intensity in me that wants to be freely expressed.”
Will is by nature an urgency to move forward, to grow in life, power and experience. So whenever a feeling is translated in you into a will, you’re immediately back in the uninterrupted stream of life’s great will. In this way you’re no longer caught in the deluded thought that life is beyond your grasp. Remember, will is energy: it flows in you like a constant river. Following this metaphor, when you feel stuck in life, you are like a tiny river creature clinging to the weeds along the riverbank. You are actually expending a lot of energy to keep holding yourself in the same place. Let go of the weeds, which is what these practices help you do, and the river of life will move you immediately back into its flow. That river flows in you and it is you: an endless amount of energy.
Practice 3: Produce empowering feelings inside yourself without external stimuli. Any wish for external power is a wish to feel a power experience. When you picture yourself going on stage to collect your Nobel Prize while the entire world cheers and applauds, this fantasy is designed by your brain to provide you with a feeling of power. The stimulating image itself is not really what you seek; it’s just a mediator between you and your longed-for power experience. The image is a symbol, in this case a symbol of the ultimate recognition and affirmation. It gives you a feeling of self-expansion, of being bigger than life. Here’s the realization: It is your mind that equates a particular object (Nobel Prize) as the symbol that grants you feelings of power (affirmation and self-expansion). In reality, all these things and people are empty of any significance. They are like empty containers. Your mind chooses to pour into them the significance and meaning that you then desire. That’s why some people consider BMWs or Porsches amazingly impressive objects: when they picture themselves behind the wheel they feel full of power, freedom and elegance, while others will think such fancy cars are a ridiculous waste of money. We all know the saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” We can adapt this as: Meaning (of a power-experience) lies in the mind of the perceiver.
When you deeply understand that the feelings you long for aren’t dependent on the external power-experience, this means you can look for ways to find them through internal experience. The analogy that makes this clear is sexual fantasy. Your mind can produce extremely arousing physical reactions through vivid imagination alone. These fantasies can be so similar to the feelings occurring in an actual sexual encounter that some people get addicted to their fantasy life and fall into obsession. Of course, we’re not suggesting that you should replay in your mind over and over the fantasy of winning the Nobel Prize in order to feel a power high! In fact, the problem with replaying a power fantasy is that it can entrap you in a state of waiting for the actual external thing to happen. Additionally, even when you have an actual external power experience, when it is over it tends to leave you with a sense of neurotic dissatisfaction: after you’ve received your Nobel Prize, you will feel even more craving for additional power experiences. In the language of addiction, this is known as the “law of diminishing returns,” where more extreme experiences are required to get the same pleasurable feeling. The movie The Wolf of Wall Street depicts a fascinating real-life example of this, as Jordon Belfort and his company of scoundrel-traders engage in ever more risky behavior, screwing their clients and breaking the law to fuel the adrenaline rush of making more and more money – beyond anything they could possibly spend.
The solution to your longing to feel power experiences lies neither in fantasizing about them, nor in doing everything you can to get them. Instead you can learn to reach the feeling of the power experience directly through an inner process that isn’t followed by the side effect of neurotic dissatisfaction, and does not lead to a path of addiction. In fact, the practice laid out for you here will instead give you increased energy for cultivating your inner power.
How do you reach this kind of power-experience? Start by imagining whatever power image you long for. Imagine this experience as vividly as a sexual fantasy until you can feel the desired power experience. Then simply strip the image away from the feeling. Feel those feelings directly by themselves, without the idea of the external experience in the way. The magic question that will help you connect with this feeling is: “What does it give me?” Use this question over and over again to gradually refine your crude desire for the external object until it feels very far away from you and unimportant. Then your inner space will be filled with the pure feeling of power, the feeling you were hoping to achieve all along.
Here’s an example you can do as an exercise:
Let’s say your wish is to be famous (if fame isn’t something you want, try the exercise with whatever scenario you desire). Let this fantasy go wild for a moment. Visualize some intense situation in which your wish to become famous gets fulfilled in the most wonderful way imaginable. Perhaps you’re surrounded by a group of admirers, or driving a limousine on your way to some major public appearance. What does this image give you? Suppose your answer is, “Endless power.” Now ask yourself, what does this endless power give you? Let’s suppose your answer is, “A feeling that my life is meaningful.” Now ask, “And what does this feeling that your life is meaningful give you?” Keep inquiring using this question until you hit the “bottom” of your mind. At the bottom of your mind the original object of desire (in this case fame) will seem to have vanished and become empty of meaning. You will see it as the empty container it really was. At the same time, you will actually be feeling more of what you really wanted – the real thing. The feeling of connection with what you really want will flood your internal domain and you will find yourself immersed in an ocean of pure power.
Try this practice now, before moving on to the next chapter, where you will learn the fourth transformational secret of inner power.
Will you find yourself saying…
“I so envy my friend. What’s the quality s/he’s got that I wish I was excellent at myself? Determination, of course. I can use my envy to spur me on in my inner competition to become my most determined self.”
“I feel so frustrated and stuck right now. But I wonder what this feeling is telling me about my will? I think it translates as: ‘Something totally new wishes to come to life out of my innermost being.’ How can I use the powerful energy of this feeling to make change happen?”
“There goes my ‘movie star’ fantasy again! What does it give me? Unconditional admiration. What does that give me? Total acceptance. What does that give me?…” (And so on down to the bottom of your mind.)