The Source of Power

Q II. WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF POWER?

The Source of Power is the Need within the Subject.
But for the Need, there is no Power.

Needs are experienced asRequirements, Desires, and Attachments.

Needs are Complex, Compounding and Competing.


Growing up in a world full of people using power over you can create myths about your reality.

From the instant you are born you are experiencing power. When your mother first decided to let you cry rather than pick you up, you experienced power. However long before this, you learned how to use power. It was why you cried. If you did, mom would pick you up. She would feed you or change you or just hold you.

At this point in your life you were not making conscious decisions to use power. You were simply acting in a way that worked. You were responding to your needs with an action that got you relief.

This kind of lesson about power is not cognitive. There is nothing rational about it. You have learned these lessons on the most animal of levels. These kind of lessons are hard to dispel when your rational, logical self comes into play.

To understand more about this aspect of the mind you may consider doing some reading in developmental psychology and neuro-lingusitic programming (NLP).

But to see where the myths come into play, we must understand that at some point, early in our lives, whether that was our mother or caregiver or someone else - someone chose not to respond to our cries for help. Someone chose not to give us what we wanted.

Our first power struggle...

No matter how many power struggles we may have won to that point, oblivious to their existence, when one of the persons ruling our lives decided that we were not going to have our way - we were going to have to learn to endulge our suffering - we lost our first power struggle. At that point, because we could not satisfy our need ourselves, we became aware of the power others had over us. Our need was unbearable and we submitted. In that first submission was born the practice of locating power outside ourselves. Power was something that someone else had.

And the lessons continued from there. As we grew and found ourselves trying to get what we wanted, using different strategies, with different people in our lives, we had that lesson reinforced. Power is out there. It is something parents, teachers, adults had. Our job was to learn how to get our own.

As we matured we began the bargaining and negotiation that became common in our everyday life.

Soon, as teenagers, we learned that many of the authorities of our lives could be overcome. Parents and Teachers could not use force. Rebellion and challenge were tools that worked. We learned instinctively what our parents and families wanted from us and we used it to create our own power. It countered the power we were subject to and we began to be powerful.

We learned about independence. We learned about manipulation. We learned about lying and information control. We were able to use power.

But we did not call it power. And we did not see how it was about the need of the subject that created the power we had rather than the skill or possession we used.

In fact, what we learned was that unless we had something they wanted we had no power. So we continued our lessons of thinking that power was something "out there" by gaining knowledge and money and learning to use our abilities to get results. Always thinking that it was what we had or could do that gave us power.

So as adults we have come to believe that the source of power is wealth, or public office, or authority, or strength, or knowledge, or beauty or any number of other things.

Our lessons have taught us that sometimes power works and sometimes it doesn't.

It is in that lesson that we can learn the most important lesson.

Why doesn't power work when we think it should? Why does beauty sometimes get us what we want and other times doesn't? Why is it that sometimes having money is all it takes to get your way but sometimes people seem to be able to over come it? Why is it that sometimes people are willing to suffer - even die - rather than submit to force? Why is it that sometimes even the president of a nation should be afraid?

Because the power does not reside in the thing. There is no power in money. There is no power in authority. There is no power in beauty or sex. There is no power in brute strength or the ability to implement an army.

The power is in our requirement for money - in our world you have money or you die. The power is in our need for order and predictability in our society - without social order shaos and destruction results. It is in our drive for sex and our desire of beauty. The power is in our attachment to survival.

The power is in the need.

The baby needed to have her diaper changed. The mother had the ability to do it. The baby wanted the mother to chose to change her diaper. So time and again, the mother responded and changed the diaper.

Because she needed to be a good mother.

The baby used her ability to cry to upset the mother into thinking she was not being a good mother. The mothers need was more pressing than the baby's. The baby won.

But soon the mother knew that if the baby had to wait for a diaper change, the baby would be fine. And she was still a good mother. So, the baby was forced to wait. The mother won the power struggle.

The feelings of power - control, influence or seduction - are stimulated by feelings of motivation - anger, fear or excitement - they are created by needs - requirements, desires and attachments - which are subject to abilities - mechanisms of power.

The source of power is need. Without the need there is no power.

It is not an external thing, or force, held or possessed by someone else. The power against us is created in the needs we have - the requirements, desires and attachments we feel.

Power is not real. Control is an illusion. Every feeling of power be it control, influence or seduction is not real. It is simply a feeling. A construct of the mind. That mental creation is having an impact on the choices we make. This is because at that primal mental level we are just babies trying to alleviate suffering. But when we try to rise to a level of cognitive life - deliberate living - we take back choice. There is always a choice to be made. The act of Choice is true power.

On the other hand, Needs are real. That is why there can be such a thing as power. It is the core of our nature. Our life is the journey from need to need. Meeting other persons making the same journey. Seeking to alleviate their suffering. Seeking to satisfy their needs.

It is that journey that creates the possibility for power.

The source of power is need.

Of course there is a hope...

When we accept our needs and the needs of others as the reality we are here to address - the purpose of this life - we will likely stop the utilization of power and begin the application of compassion.