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Tag: Power
The dark jewel Temptation has the number 25 which means in effect minus seven or unwillingness to take any guidance. This is a seven year. If the planet offers us guidance in terms of ecological disaster we could listen, pay attention and try to find a solution. Or we could be tempted to do bugger all and carry on with our excessive luxury and consumption.
As a boomer I can say with a fair degree of likelihood that I will be dead by 2050. No male in my family has made it past 80 and I used to smoke like a chimney. I won’t be here to see the failed climate targets but I will experience the deterioration before I pop my clogs.
I believe the word “hack” is common parlance for finding a shortcut to at least temporarily “solve” a problem. They are good clickbait. Unfortunately, there is no hack, no shortcut for liberation and reduction in attachment.
In terms of life difficulties I am very sceptical about short cuts, am not interested in having advantage over others nor do I seek the lazy man’s way out. Very often the Elastoplast or sticking plaster “solution” whilst apparently expedient causes larger problems in the long term. Quick fix is an oxymoron.
There are some people who like, if possible, to find a low effort path. As a younger person I helped a number of people write their Ph.D. theses more than was perhaps appropriate. I was not in fact doing them a favour. They saw it as a quick fix and it was easier for me to help than to go thorough endless rewrites with them. Once you have written one thesis it is pretty easy to do others, especially in physical sciences.
There are others who instead of taking responsibility for their actions succumb to many excuses, the blame game and finger pointing. They imagine the world is against them and have a truly massive victim chip on their shoulders. “It is not fair mummy…”
Whilst is might seem expedient to succumb to the temptation of blaming others it rarely solves the character deficit such blame is meant to conceal.
Many people are very tempted by money, promised kudos and being all Kool and the Gang. If you look carefully, just like in cartoons, you can actually see $ signs rolling in their eyes in some cases.
The mutual backscratching, nod, nod, wink, wink, culture is seen as good business but it can mean yielding to temptation and evil.
“Go on old chap. You know that we are the best people to fulfil the PPE contract. After all we went to the same school as each other. I’ll return the favour in due course.”
The moral compass shatters when wanting to do a “favour” for a pal.
Temptation starts as the thin end of the wedge and in time it becomes normal practice. People can forget and grow ever more accustomed to doing dodgy stuff. People can become inured and tolerant of borderline illegal behaviours. They can find a whole host of reasons and justifications as to why it is kosher. The culture can become “infected” much quicker than many imagine. Academic bullying has been in the press. Is one supposed to take on the chin like a good little pleb? Cultural norms can be very unethical, tax evasion is OK provided that when you get caught you pay your fine, apparently.
Sleaze can become the “acceptable” norm.
I’ll make a postulate.
Anyone who is interested in power and power over is susceptible to temptation.
The type of mentality which seeks shortcuts and cuts corners can be easily tempted and swayed.
Those who are willing to put in a full and impeccable shift are less susceptible to temptation.
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Are you susceptible to temptation?
The contest, the battle, the rivalry between good and evil lies aback many books, films, and cartoons.
In so many of these cases the protagonists are brothers, erstwhile friends, or other kinds of siblings. Usually, they both start out OK and then one gets jealous of the other and has the hump with them. One is light, the other exposed to power becomes corrupted by it and evil. One turns to the dark side of the force, the other remains a true Jedi patient in the light. Vengeance and domination are common motifs for the ensuing drama.
In times gone by a wayward prince would have been dealt with in a final manner via sharp implements. Now they get to make Netflix documentaries and whinge about family. The royal soap opera continues to unfold. Who is dark and who is light here? Who has gone for the lucre? Who has someone whispering in his ears?
The struggle between tyranny and freedom is another major theme in history. Those in power, have for example, slaves. Today’s terrorist becomes the historical freedom fighter. The status quo always tries to suppress and oppress any upstarts who arrive. It is a kind of Groundhog Day in which they, sometimes brutally, cling to power. The status quo always imagines itself just and right when the 20:20 hindsight of history shows it to be barbaric, coercive, mean, and oppressive.
“We are not a foreign power Mr Ghandi, India is British”, shows the level of delusion to which some are prone.
I know several people who have been pissed off with me because I did not materialise for them the money which they anticipated I might. I walked away.
A lot of people who deem themselves just are anything but. In their sense of entitlement, they deem themselves owed usually in a material and often in a pecuniary sense. They might deem themselves Optimus Prime when they are in effect Megatron, leader of the Decepticons. People can so easily deceive themselves that the sun shines out of their arse and that butter does not melt in their mouth, whilst they sit in white armour aback their steed, the trusty white stallion.
People can mistake coercive and threat based interaction, backed up by quasi-quantitative personal development planning for effective “management”, when it can easily stray into bullying and manipulation. It need not, but there are some nasty folk out there. Give an insecure person with a grievance a stick and they will use it.
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I guess I have one question and an ancillary.
Are you imbued with the light side of the force, or have you turned to the dark side?
Do you have goodwill?
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It may seem a little out of place to start discussing power in the context of freedom and equanimity, but it is necessary. Until you have more than a notion of your relationship to power and with power, it is difficult to have balance. Power of course has many meanings, there are many types of power and it comes in all shades. There is power in the sense of dominance, power in the sense of ability, power in knowledge and power as in material plane enforcement. Power is a vast topic itself. Some people have power, that can be positional or organisational power, it can be personal power, it can be muscular power or sexual power. There is the saying that power corrupts, though it need not, it often does. Humanity has a bit of a thing for and about societal power; it has a status hang up.
If you wield power in the sense of political or corporate power, it is unlikely that you will have equanimity and peace. This is because people are so often fighting for power. Even if your powerful position is secure, by the very nature of that position you will be required to make decisions. Those decisions are a responsibility of positional power and rarely do they come with serenity and peace. It is not the fate of most people to learn what high positional power means and those so called are in for a bit of a tough time. All societies have leaders, and these are of varying ability and quality. Some seek power with a thirst. And it is many that are so drawn who end up abusing power. Power has many traps associated for those drawn to it.
In the context of freedom, it is useful to figure out what has power over you and then adjust that situation. Things that have power over you can be as simple as arachnophobia. If a simple spider makes you come out in a sweat, then you are not free of spiders. A tiny creature can evoke a massive drama. It is not the spider’s fault, it is your reaction. For whatever reason you have a fear and a drama associated in your mind with spiders. Chances are this is disproportionate. Few spiders attack humans just because there is nothing better on the TV to watch. People have hang ups about a host of things and this restricts their liberty. Anything which can evoke drama upsets balance. If small creatures have power over you, then what does that say about your level of mental control and balance?
Similarly, because of co-dependency, there are many people who have power over you. Some will go out of their way to manipulate you into a dependency and if you are so oriented you might even seek such people out, whether consciously or not. There are a multitude of buttons available to others for the pressing of. If at the pressing of a button off you trot into drama, then that button and the finger thereupon, have power over you. It can evoke drama and lack of control, you are off balance and flailing around. It is in this dependency and co-dependency that people give their power away to others. If you want to be free, then you do not need other beings having emotional power over you.
Many of the things that have power over you are to be found in the truck load of baggage which most adults carry with them. There may be shame, wounds, ambitions, unresolved conflict, grudges, guilt, vengeance, fear, unrequited love etc… The list is often long and until you have clarity on where the button comes from, it will stand proud and beckoning. It is in unpacking the baggage and by examination that one can begin to understand and slowly loosen the power over which is held. To be relatively free of buttons is to have more freedom generally. One is not beholden to the past and the narratives of it, which if we bear in mind the likelihood of selective perception are in any case often inaccurate. Memories and history are prevalent members of the set of buttons which are the indicators of something that has power over. A skilled manipulator can spot these a mile off and press them at will.
If you seek freedom, then you must defend it. This may sound ever so slightly bellicose, but one has to fight to extract oneself from situations in which things, people and ideas have power over you. The past has power over most and reorienting the past in such a manner as to be free of it, is no easy task. The common dream advertises that building memories for your dotage is a good thing, but who can really live in a sepia or rose-tinted world? It is not real. It is imagined and unreliable of recall. To build “memories” is to never be free of them. This is perhaps slightly radical but do consider this. If you live in a mish mash recollection of the past, what do you make of the present, if you even notice it all? To be bound thus, is to not experience the now.
I have used bound, shackles and manacles already in this text, emotive words of slavery and imprisonment. It is up to you to figure out if I am by metaphor over egging the pudding. Until the duvet of illusion is pulled off, there is a cosy familiarity which can seemingly be justified.
Of course, in any material society there will be people and organisations that have temporal power over the circumstances of your life. Short of going off into the wild, this will always be the case. The freedom of complete anarchy is not currently possible in large society, this need not impinge overly on your state of mind, your mental freedom. One can see it for what it is, do the minimum necessary to be a “good” citizen and not feel overly oppressed by the apparatus of state. Within this framework it is possible not to succumb to ideological power over. People will do whatever they do, they will think whatever and opine ad infinitum. None of this need impact on your own equanimity. One does not have to agree, or argue or succumb. If your own mind is clear it is not overly perturbed by the folly and behaviours of others. Unless they are directly intent on harming or manipulating you, they are not direct threats. In keeping your centre, you can rise above it. If you cannot resist the pull of hive or herd mind, then it has power over you, which means you are not yet free of it.
As you begin to see though your own façade, understand your self and get close to your true nature, you will be acquiring power in the sense of knowledge. That knowledge pertains not only to you as a being but to other beings. This knowledge then opens up choices, possibilities for you which were hitherto not available, you have more personal power and more freedom. Freedom is in your choice as to how you respond to whatever life throws at you. There will be a reduced rigidity and an enhanced flexibility of living. With more personal power comes the temptation to exploit that power and perhaps use situations and others to your “advantage”. With all growth in personal power comes temptation. In the absence there are few choices. When there is a plethora of choices available some will not be life enhancing. If you are so inclined, you may use your personal power to exert power over others. As alluded to above that way is not freedom. How can one be free if one enslaves? It is not possible.
I have briefly touched on power here. Learning to handle new found personal power is a part of the walk to freedom. Keeping oneself grounded and developing humility offsets the temptation of power, which can enslave. In this sense knowledge is power which without wisdom and discernment can be a dangerous thing.
Aside from soccer and Ukraine, there seems to be a lot about corruption in the news of late. French rugby boss, South African cash in the sofa, lordly PPE and EU. There are certain types of people who don’t think it wrong to award contracts to their mates even if they are paid for with public money. There are no laws concerning inviting speakers to lecture at your university. This is a favour asked and often results in a favour returned. It is perfectly legal. No itchy backs there. CVs are built up nicely for promotion and assessment exercises.
In some cultures, a bung is considered a part of the deal.
Ron the gangster gave me a job breaking car batteries as a sweetener {said with a London accent} for my dad who bought his lead. I did not get any special favours I sweated just like everyone else. It was a favour, in time Ron might have asked my dad to take his lorries off site… perhaps with some additional silver cached.
This is how corruption begins. It is a thin end of the edge, something innocuous which builds to a multimillion pound deal to be the face of a tournament. FIFA has a long tradition of corruption. Innocuous favours can quickly blur edges into corruption. We don’t know how much David Beckham other nations got to see. I guess his exposure to the UK was carefully reduced.
“I will pay for the wallpaper in your flat old chap.”
This is borderline to illegal, certainly not ethical in public office.
Usually after several sweeteners there is an ask. Then the whole thing starts to escalate.
In Zambia we were close to a number of Indian merchant families, playing badminton with them on a regular basis. I learned about the partition of India from them. When stock arrived in store, we would get a call. If dad had any foreign exchange allowance left, there would be a favourable Kwacha for Sterling exchange. Not illegal but again no itchy backs.
I suspect that the Sussexes are in so deep now, it probably cannot be stopped. To my eyes it will end in tears in due course. There is something iffy going on there.
What I don’t get is that people who already have a lot of money, want more and bend rules so as to get more. Is it the risk taking or simple gluttony?
Toltecs according to Théun consider money to be crystallized power. Here power can mean knowledge, positional power, power by association, personal power as in vitality. There is no denying that money is an enabler. People can “bought”. One can build spaceships or buy blue birds if you have enough dosh.
A long time ago I was able to “materialise” a considerable amount of money. I materialised a job offering shed loads of cash, but then got out of the contract.
Right now, I am powerless in the material plane sense and by pecuniary amount. I have no power over anyone else. I am nobodies’ boss or supervisor. Neither am I an underling.
I can no longer materialise money. I am virtually unemployable. {I have tried.}
Power is the third natural enemy and many yield to the temptation of pecuniary gain, whether legal or not. Some argue the toss that they deserve huge salaries. Premier league football is a ridiculous example. Do they really think they deserve or need a million quid a week?
My theory is that I did not yield to that third natural enemy and passed the test at a relatively young age.
There is another side to money or silver, argent, as they call it here. It is a human invention and pertains to the material plane, to materiality and materialism. Although technically not inherently evil, basically neutral, it has evil undertones and effects. Wherever evil is, so is money. This cannot be said to be the case for good.
Everyone has heard about the famous thirty pieces of silver. 30 is the number of the dark jewel manipulation! Silver is the dreaming symbol for the Tonal or the materialised world.
Worldly goods and money do not loosen the ties to the wheel of rebirth and there are material karmic effects from the greed for and misuse of money. Trump is embroiled it numerous lawsuits, it is his karma.
If you cling to materialism, you will, like Arnie, be back. If you are corrupt there is evil karma to face. Often a fair portion of those engaged in corruption get some kind of comeuppance in the same lifetime.
I am wondering if this corruption discovery theme is going to evolve and increase as this age draws to a close. Things need a cleansing…
You Can Buy Extendable Backscratchers on Amazon, there is a very wide selection…
Marketing advises us that many things are convenient and time saving. An example in case is on board satellite navigation systems as are parking cameras. I suspect that is very difficult to buy a new car these days without these fitted. There are pieces of software that help with diaries and contacts. For me there is wretched thing in which emails are stacked as conversations. I once gave over partial control of my outlook diary allowing secretaries and others to schedule meeting for me. Not fun. There are lot of things that seem convenient but which impinge a great deal into life. Outlook assistant pops things moving into the bottom right hand corner of my screen and it very distracting.
I have never used a satellite navigation system. Once when traveling with someone else in the car they used one on their iPhone to avoid a traffic jam. When we hired a car in Brussels central train station, the guy there tried to rent us a satellite navigation system as an extra. He did not understand when I did not take him up on his offer. As a consequence of not using satellite navigation, I rarely get lost. I tend to plan journeys and sometimes do a walk through of complicated parts of a journey on Google Maps Streetview. This way I remember routes and do not have to rely on technology. I have not handed my power over to a microprocessor. I also navigate loosely by sun and sometimes by intuition. I use my brain, my mind and my memory. I do not rely on shortcuts…
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I do not think that semiconductors in cars have had the same radiation hardness tests as those used in satellites and space telescopes. If there is a sudden burst of radiation many of the chips could be toast. We have one old car, a shed, it would probably still work whereas a top of the range 4X4 with computer controlled traction control might be useless. People might have to learn to read an archaic thing called a map.
Younger humans have an appendage called a smart ‘phone and in many cases their entire life is on that ‘phone; contacts, banking, apps to synchronise with their toothbrushes and look at their baby monitor video camera. There are even apps to aid going to sleep and dreaming. The telephone company here offered us an extra X gigabytes a month for a couple of Euros in an email. The online process to opt out of this generous offer was obscure and difficult.
The question is do you have power over the apparently “convenient” technology or does it have power over you?
Could you go cold turkey from technology?
Are you free or hooked?
This is a question which most will never consider. As I mentioned earlier evil has managed to get the whole subject of evil taboo. It is a feat of some considerable trickery.
In the very early part of this century, I encountered on the physical plane a number of individuals who with the benefit of hindsight I now consider to be evil and who practised the dark art of forceful manipulation. One of these was the CEO of the company I co-founded. Luckily, I did not get overly tainted by his acquaintance. Around that time, I was offered many temptations, the vast majority of which I did not take. Another character was very nasty and prone to growling and being generally unpleasant.
I’ll speculate. The more insecure you are the more susceptible to evil you are. If you want to take shortcuts and be cunning, evil will tempt you and you will find it hard to resist. If you want to hold the trump card, the joker up the sleeve, evil may appear to offer you these. If you desire the upper hand the advantage because you don’t think you are not good enough, evil will whisper in your ear. If you like secrets and playing secret squirrels evil will offer you, its cloak. Do you like to persuade or manipulate others to do your bidding, if so, evil will show you how. Evil is always willing to negotiate and to strike a bargain, it likes to offer rewards. It believes in sticks and carrots.
There is a basic question. Which do you prefer Sun Tzu or Lao-Tse? One is force the other is flow.
Evil likes to possess, enslave and have power over beings. Evil likes binding contracts. Many think that they are being good leaders when in fact all they are doing is trying to satisfy their lust for power. They will have many justifications for why they are a good leader, why they know best. Power tempts and can be the thin end of the wedge whereby evil permeates. For those susceptible to evil there is always a path of least resistance and evil knows how to find it.
In the previous post the Tibetan suggests that it is lower concrete mind, where evil if effective. Lower concrete mind out argues what remains of conscience and intuition. It silences the still small voice of calm.
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It in using justifications can find reasons for heinous acts, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Nazis in Ukraine. Evil twists and perverts. Trump lost his battle with power; he could not admit he lost the election. The King of Rohan listened to the whispers of Grima Wormtongue. Smeagol was twisted by the ring of power.
But evil does not need to be so dramatic. It can just be deep selfishness, ambition and greed. Evil is often about material acquisition. Most would find this notion of gaining material goods as normal. But in excess and in an unfair distribution there is evil. Occultly speaking matter has remnants of evil in it. Lust for money, is evil. The word ME can found somewhere in the motive for all low level mundane evil practices. Me, me, me, me is an evil mantra. Evil is jealous and vengeful.
Balance is not evil, excess often is.
Having read the above, are you susceptible to evil?
The four natural enemies are fear, sobriety, power, and old age.
I think it fair to say that most people have fears, some of these are crippling. In our times we have a new fear, the fear of missing out.
In the context of evolution fear of the unknown and fear of changing from the way you were socially programmed by family and peers are big, as is fear of getting rid of your internal dialogue. If you have no inner critic, what are you going to do without all those circling thoughts? Fear of silence and being alone in one’s own company is also common.
Sobriety as an enemy means that you think you know more than you do and are sufficiently detached to have no pangs of conscience if you are mean to someone. If you are sufficiently detached and uncaring you can then exert power over other beings. This kind of power is addictive to some.
You could say we have, insecure scaredy cat, clever Trevor or Jeremy and Donald the bequiffed prince of orange, the very stable genius, as archetypes of people who have succumbed to these enemies.
The fourth natural enemy is old age, it means that you are exhausted and worn out by struggle, so you just want to pack it all in, get your slippers and a mug of cocoa, nanna and gramps.
One encounters stories of a lot of people who have succumbed to power in alternative circles. It often involves copious shagging by the “guru” of people who have handed their power and wealth over to said guru, so that he can have orgies and Rolls Royces. How many people in Westminster sexually interfere with their junior staff? Power is an aphrodisiac to those who are power hungry. It is a vicious circle.
If you work in higher education, you will have encountered the young smart Alec type, who thinks that they get all the material you have been torturing them with. Thinking they know a lot, they are fond of showing off, whilst still an undergraduate. They are usually a tad more circumspect when it comes to Ph.D. viva having been disabused of their illusion.
The Toltec teachings are the only ones, that I know of, which tackle power as a subject. It is, to my eyes, implicit in Vajrayana tantra. To my opinion a discussion on temptation and on evil in a sane way, is absent in much “spiritual” material. Treating evil as a taboo subject, enables it. In the darkness strange things fester. If you can’t talk about evil in an adult rational way, you are handing your power over to evil by means of fear. Taboos are primitive and superstitious.
I’ll speculate that it is transcending the natural enemy power which is the gateway to the third initiation and thereby inevitable ultimate liberation or if you succumb becoming ever more deeply embroiled with the dark adepts and thereby not achieving liberation, not in this kalpa. Overcome the natural enemy power and in the fullness of time there is no hasta la vista baby, no au revoir.
To overcome power is tiring. If you do this, you feel knackered. Then you have to start all over and with a newfound sense of trying hard not to be a complete arrogant dickhead, rather a harmless and humble being trying their best, and with little or no drama.
I am aware of quite a few people who have lost their battle with power….
Traou an Dour 
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