Recently a situation occurred in which I found myself feeling outshined by Sera. I felt that she was more compassionate than I was and I judged myself very harshly. I felt very bad about not being compassionate enough. Later, talking about it with Kyeli, I found myself thrown into utter confusion about, well, everything. The way people are, why anyone does anything, ever. Please allow me to share that confusion with you. (:

You do what you want to do. When you feel conflicting wants, you may be disappointed that you can’t have both. When you attempt to achieve a want and fail, you may be disappointed that you failed. All that makes sense. But what doesn’t make sense is being disappointed about what you want or do not want. There’s this pressure in society that tells you that to be a good person, you must be a selfless and altruistic person. But if you follow it down to the root, everything bottoms out in selfishness. Ultimately, you do what you want to do, and if you want to help someone else, you will. But at the root of it you’re doing it because you want to. Since everything you do is exactly what you want to do, you’re not even capable of making an unselfish act.

So where the hell did this social pressure toward altruism come from? How could this pressure have come to exist when it’s a pressure to be something that’s not even possible? My best guess is that it’s kind of a want-infection meme. It’s a pressure that affects what we want, and steers us toward wanting to do nice things for others. If it succeeds, it will affect what we want (a form of metaprogramming) and hence we will do that. And evolutionarily, it makes sense for us to be genetically and/or socially predisposed to altruism in some forms, because it’s evolutionarily advantageous.

I guess it’s just a matter of perspective. From a social perspective, altruism makes sense, because externally, the effect is that you’re doing things to help others rather than to help yourself. But from an internal perspective, everything is self-motivated. And from an internal perspective, wanting to help others is just one want among many others. And looking at it that way brings to bear all the tools and models I already have about dealing with my wants. It’s a nice thing to want to help others. But it’s not a nice or useful thing to beat yourself up for desiring one thing and not desiring another. If your wants are in conflict, then find some way to bring them into alignment and harmony. It’s not serving you to be hurt by the conflict. Just figure out what you most want to do, and do it. Figure out who you most want to be, and Be.

Last Friday’s Iron Pentacle class was on the point of Power. I feel like this was the missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle that I’ve been putting together for two years.

When most people think of power, they think of power-over. This is because that’s the only kind of power recognized by the control paradigm^[1], and most of us are stuck in the control paradigm. But the truth is that power shared is power multiplied. Now I know a lot of you have heard that phrase before, with a different word in place of “power”. What was it? That’s right, love. Love shared is love multiplied. The similarity of these two sayings is no coincidence. Just as power-over is rooted in control which is rooted in fear, power-with is rooted in cooperation which is rooted in love. It all boils down to fear and love — just like everything does.

It’s like The Celestine Prophecy^[2]. Every interaction between living beings is an energy exchange. There are two basic dynamics of energy exchange: control and love. Control is when one person forcibly takes another’s energy away. Love is when you willingly give your energy to another, and in doing so, increase your own as well. These two dynamics are equivalent to power-over and power-with.

All power rooted in fear is false power. All power-over is false power, because it is rooted in control, which is rooted in fear. I’ve been attacking by retreating. Headspace is a form of power-over. I never saw it like that before. When I retreat and say to you “You can’t hurt me now”, that’s exercising my power over you. I don’t like that.

Power-with is a form of dependence. It’s interdependence. But from the outside it can look a lot like codependence. Codependence is when you have an ego that is hurting and you direct that hurt inward. You ask others “Please have power over me and hurt me because I deserve to be hurt”. Interdependence is when you let go of your ego’s desire for control and let your walls down. You say to others “Here, I am sharing my power with you.” And if they turn out not to be trustworthy, you aren’t betrayed, you just made a poor choice — and you move on.

I had a vision in my third circle of Power. I saw the three of us being the Antichrist, being B^[3], speaking our truth in front of thousands of people. And we were doing it. We were actually fixing the world. Just the three of us, and we did it. With great power comes great responsibility. It’s incredibly scary to realize how powerful you are. It’s quite a perspective shift to realize that you are fully capable of fixing the world, but then instead choose to sit on the couch and play Mario 64.

We’re in the Tower days. Everything is falling apart. When the control paradigm does fall apart, people are going to look for a new story to be in. Where are they going to look? They’ll look at people who are already living a different paradigm. They’ll look at people who are working together in cooperation, mutual respect, and love. They’ll look at us — all of us. By being ourselves, loudly and proudly, we can help a new paradigm take root so it will be ready to bloom when the old one comes crashing down.

Bibliography:

1. The Paradigm Conspiracy, Christopher Largent and Denise Breton
2. The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield
3. The Story of B, Daniel Quinn