15
AS WE RESPOND to the call and face the challenge of the Shadow,we must inevitably confront our relationship to power. Power is perhaps the most consistently misunderstood area of human nature in relation to spirituality, as its most familiar face, in many religions, is patriarchal. Most established religions are steeped in the patriarchal need for power to establish and maintain authority, hierarchy, and the tradition. This makes power one of the most contentious aspects of religion and, by association, of spiritual life.
In my encounter with spiritual organizations, principally in the Buddhist world, I have seen much confusion about vital issues relating to power. There is seldom an acceptance of the reality of personal power; it is rarely spoken of openly because it evokes fears and uncertainties and seems to carry an unconscious taboo. Our ability to assert our personal will or individual truth is viewed with great ambivalence, as though it touches a critical boundary of something dangerous and forbidden. Personal will and the power to act and fulfill individual wishes are sometimes shrouded in guilt and confusion about being selfish. The ability to assert personal boundaries clearly and firmly can be either limited or absent, and it is often impossible for people to say no.
Our ability to relate appropriately to personal power often seems to evaporate when we are trying to live a so-called spiritual life. As a result, power becomes unconscious, shadowy, and potentially destructive. What is not lived consciously becomes distorted and confused but is nevertheless present as underlying pathology. Personal difficulties relating to power are then often reinforced by spiritual traditions that have an ambivalent attitude towards it.
Power pathology may have some crucial consequences for those involved in Buddhist practice, both personally and collectively. Disciples often have unaddressed power issues in relation to their teachers, a theme I will pick up in the next chapter. When we endow traditions and their spiritual leaders with power and authority, we unwittingly give away a vital aspect of our individual responsibility, at great cost. Organizations often have underlying patterns of power and control that make some disciples remain relatively disempowered and dependent, while others actually become the agents of the teacher’s parental authority. Denying and disowning personal responsibility for our power is welcomed in charismatic religions where devotion to the teacher is paramount. The dangers of this process, however, are that we leave ourselves open to abuse, exploitation, and dependency.
Reclaiming responsibility for personal power is vital if we are to grow and individuate, but the path is fraught with confusion. Many of us fear our power because we think it will be destructive and dangerous if released. Perhaps one of the simplest manifestations of ambivalence towards personal power is a confused relationship to assertiveness. In its absence people can often manifest a disposition to be deferential and submissive, fearful of asserting individuality. When someone asserts her own wishes and needs or firmly stands by her own “truth,” this assertiveness can easily be viewed disapprovingly as selfish and ego-centered. This in turn can lead to intolerable feelings of guilt. Those who suffer the sense of disempowerment that results from a failure to express their truth often find that their assertiveness lies buried in anger and resentment. Anger consistently originates in feeling disempowered or incapable of asserting ourselves appropriately. Frequently, however, there is also some confusion about how those engaged in spiritual practice should relate to anger.
Some Buddhist teachers accuse the therapy world of promoting and cultivating anger. They will often deny any validity to anger, viewing all anger merely as a cause of suffering to be overcome and controlled. This view, however, can deprive us of a vital resource that needs to be understood more deeply. The simplistic view of anger as a cause of suffering fails to take account of the complex nature of the origins of anger. We lose sight of its underlying psychological significance and deprive ourselves of a potentiality that has often become lost within the experience of anger. When anger is understood more deeply, it is possible to discover the underlying root that may require a more straightforward, creative, and effective way of expressing itself.
As long as we live with the view that anger is to be condemned, we can easily fall into the habit of repression. We will also fail to hear what truth lies behind it that is not being voiced. When we ask questions such as, “What do you really want to say?” or “What are you really wanting that is not being heard?” we will begin to hear what is at its root. This becomes a healthier way of living with anger, rather than creating a regime that fears it and tries to disown or suppress it. If our capacity to be assertive or to feel heard has become blocked and distorted, when we listen more deeply to what lies beneath or behind the anger, we will often discover some inner truth that needs to be asserted more clearly and creatively.
From a psychological perspective we may describe a range of experiences that could all be seen as in some way living under the umbrella of anger. Rage, outrage, resentment, frustration, and aversion are all familiar expressions of very different experiences of anger. There are also more passive manifestations that are often not recognized as manifestations of anger, such as some kinds of depression, passive aggression, and even boredom.
The origins of anger are complex and cannot be simply controlled and repressed. Sometimes anger is the raw acting out of the emotional need to attack or punish someone for our not getting what we want, or for getting what we don’t want. However, for many who are unable to assert themselves and who feel disempowered and ineffective, anger may be the only expression possible. Anger can be the first stage in a process of regaining and restoring self-confidence, self worth, and the power to be effective in life. The passive victim who feels unable to make choices and just accepts his or her lot with hopelessness manifests an inability to claim personal power. Anger may be the beginnings of a shift towards no longer being a victim. The sense of disempowerment and ineffectiveness some people experience in life is overcome only by regaining a relationship to their potential power. Those who have been abused and disempowered may find this only when they can access their buried outrage. This may lead to the courage to stand up and say no.
When our potential effectiveness or assertiveness has been damaged, it can turn inwards self-destructively and result in depression and feelings of despair, hopelessness, and even a desire to harm oneself. I could see this in the experience of one of my clients who had little or no capacity to assert herself either in her marriage or with her family. She would spend a huge amount of time complaining to me about her lot, without any capacity or willingness to change what was happening. On occasions when she was again repeating her sorry tales, I could feel a growing anger and frustration in myself which, I could feel, wanted to bully her into doing something about her situation rather than remaining a victim. When I reflected this back to her, she said it was very familiar to find her friends pushing and angrily bullying her to do something. The anger and bullying she was provoking was the anger and assertiveness she refused to own in herself. This is very common in the person who holds the position of a victim, and reclaiming this anger is the first step towards reclaiming personal responsibility for the power to no longer be a passive victim of life.
While anger is one manifestation of a poor relationship to personal power, another is the incapacity to create effective boundaries. When we are unable to say no and create clear boundaries around ourselves, the effect can be dramatic. For some, this inability will result in angry resentment. For others, it will lead to formlessness, or the lack of a clear expression of individual identity. Those unable to say no are then potentially open to abuse and manipulation through others’ demands.
Unfortunately, this is a familiar occurrence in organizations that rely upon the goodwill of others offering their services. I lived in a community where people often felt a conflict between an obligation to serve and the need to preserve a space for personal needs. I used to suffer feelings of guilt if I did not constantly offer to serve the community and instead chose to do my own work. Some of my close friends who found it impossible to say no gradually came to resent being exploited or taken for granted. Others seemed to endlessly sacrifice themselves and became exhausted by the constant demands placed upon them, which they felt unable to refuse.
Asserting limits, saying no, and standing up for our inner truth with firmness and courage do not imply that we have become egocentric and selfish. It is more likely a healthy self-protection needed in certain circumstances for us to retain our self-identity. For the first time, we may be able to stand in our own power and authenticity, true to ourselves, and state what is important for us. It may be a vital step in protecting ourselves from being abused and exploited—protecting our life energy and spiritual needs, without turning our powerlessness into anger and aggression.
This need became particularly apparent in a woman artist whose work was growing in demand in the commercial art world. Art galleries would put great pressure upon her to produce work to order and then expect her to deliver as though she were a production line. She increasingly felt this was alien to her natural creative instinct. She felt that her work was something sacred that had a deep spiritual undercurrent needing careful nourishing to unfold. Her problem was that she was not used to saying no to those who made demands of her. She found it very hard to really feel she had a right to look after her needs, and she failed to appreciate the nature of her own creativity as something that needed to be protected. Her background left her sorely inept at creating boundaries around what was and was not acceptable to her. As a result, she had become somewhat over-compliant, which had left her extremely vulnerable to the pushy demands of gallery owners. Through her work in therapy she began to feel stronger and more assertive with her boundaries. She saw that it was perfectly valid to protect the sacred nature of her art and to make sure that others respected that. Although her new attitude was not welcome at first, gradually she came to feel that her needs were being respected because she made it clear her priority was her art, not the marketplace.
In Tibetan Buddhism there are three central deities that embody essential qualities of Buddha activity. The most familiar of these are Chenrezig, the embodiment of compassion, and Manjushri, the embodiment of wisdom. Less familiar but of vital importance is Vajrapani, the embodiment of power. If we consider Vajrapani as an aspect of our true nature, he represents the power to assert our sense of value and purpose clearly and with great will and determination. This is strength and confidence that will not be taken advantage of and will overcome all obstacles to accomplish what is necessary. Vajrapani embodies our ability to truly stand in our power and be unshakable. Power is neutral and can be used either for good or ill, depending on our motivation and whether we are being consciously responsible for it. Many problems arise when people relate from a place of power but do not really take responsibility for that fact. The deity Vajrapani embodies the essential nature of power that, when expressed consciously, can enable us to be effective in a much cleaner and more open, caring, and compassionate way.
Wrathful deities in the Tibetan tradition exemplify a powerful, wrathful compassion free of the petty, limited, defensive ego-grasping that wants to retaliate, hurt, or punish. There may be times in our lives when we need to use such conscious expressions of power to forcefully express boundaries when others are being irresponsible or abusive. Just as a parent would use “wrathful compassion” to state clearly and concisely to a child in danger what must be avoided, someone who has suffered the abuse of power by another needs to have the inner strength to assert, “No, stop, you will no longer abuse me.” For Buddhist practitioners the recognition of the emptiness of self does not mean that we will not be able to assert a clear “no” when something is wrong.
When we develop an authentic sense of our inner power and begin to trust ourselves with it, we will not need to use our power in a destructive way to disempower others. This is not the “power over” of the patriarch but simply the power of being true to oneself and living with self-confidence. If we are in touch with our power we can accomplish what we wish more cleanly and effectively, without the tendency to be controlling or domineering.
A further aspect of our personal power that also seems to be easily misunderstood in the Buddhist world is the nature of our will. Once again, many of us have a poor relationship to will, which can range from having an almost obsessive willfulness to being like a leaf blown around by the wind. There may be those who see the will as something to be avoided in Buddhist practice because they think it is just an expression of ego and the creator of the karma that leads to suffering. From this viewpoint it may be thought that if we relinquish will and settle into a kind of passive detachment, then whatever happens, we will not create causes for suffering. It may be true that many of us need to learn to let go and accept more, rather than trying to maintain control; however, to disengage our will can be merely to avoid taking responsibility for our actions or indeed, our lives.
Understanding will in relation to the Buddhist path leads us to yet another paradox. This is a paradox that anyone who embarks upon the practice of meditation will at some point encounter. We may require a level of determination and discipline to engage in meditation, but the actual practice requires a level of surrender. Trying to meditate can become the greatest obstacle to the experience of meditation, like trying to relax. Nevertheless, having a healthy will is important for normal life as well as for our spiritual practice. If our will becomes overbearing and obsessive, however, it will become destructive and ultimately turn us away from the natural unfolding of experience. The ego dominated by a need to push, strive, or control loses relationship to our true nature and will often create the conditions for some form of crash.
As we grow up, our will is an important aspect of the development of a sense of identity as a separate, self-sufficient individual. We gradually cultivate the capacity to engage our will and take responsibility for our life choices. The absence of self-will at this time can be very detrimental. For much of our lives, the right use of will enables us to engage fully with what we do in a creative and individual way.
At some point in this journey, however, there needs to be a shift in our relationship to this will. This often happens naturally as life forces us to open to the influence of a deeper sense of meaning and purpose that is unfolding us. We encounter the paradox that willful striving is not enabling us to accomplish what we wanted. The individuation process is demanding that we begin to align or attune our personal will to what might be called a kind of divine will or, to use Jung’s term, the will of the Self. This becomes most acute during the period of mid-life, when there can be a natural shift from the position of the ego’s will to the will of the Self. This transition often demands that we let go of control and experience a kind of giving up, during which life seems to live us and we have no choice but to follow its bidding. When we open and surrender to the will of the Self and trust in the unfolding of our life, it is an act of faith. This implies not passive fatalism but a harmonious participation in the process.
While at first this idea may seem alien to the Buddhist with no notion of a Self or divine principle, it does not require a great shift of understanding to see it at the heart of the bodhisattva’s life. An aspect of the bodhisattva’s intention of bodhichitta is a quality of will that dedicates life to a higher purpose. This is sometimes known as the “Great Will.” The bodhisattva learns to surrender personal intention to the service of a higher goal, which acts like a deep undercurrent in all he or she does. In the bodhisattva vow it is written, “in order to eliminate the suffering of all sentient beings, I offer myself immediately to all the Buddhas.”14 Surrendering personal will with this deeper sense of purpose opens the bodhisattva to a quality of vitality and power that is totally transformational. This is not a passive position, however, but one where personal will engages with an essential intention so that we live as a vehicle for its expression—something the bodhisattva does to great effect. Learning to engage our will yet remain open to what unfolds is no easy task. When we get it right, however, we may feel profoundly in harmony with our journey even though it still demands of us that we courageously go through the pain of living it.
Once we reclaim our power consciously and align our intention with that of the awakening mind of bodhichitta, our potential for transformation is extraordinary. As we surrender the ego’s will to this greater will we experience a profound sense of purpose, even though we may not know exactly where it is leading us. That, however, is part of the mystery of individuation. When the ego allows the path to unfold without struggling to control where it goes, we will also be able to embody power fully, without having to self-consciously impose it on the world.