The Direction of Intention

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Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I spent a good deal of my life running away from the idea that I was powerful. Or, running toward it but like all good mirages it was never quite where I thought I’d find it. Like many of the people I now work with, I had been taught that my power and my answers were lurking “out there” somewhere if I could only find them. Inner truth, intuition, feeling, and heart took the back seat to intellect, reason, and the idea that truth was another one of those things located “out there” somewhere and I’d know it if I could capture and measure it. But, to capture it, I’d have to kill or compromise a part of myself, that part that feels or intuits. That part called soul. I might have a hole in my psyche but I’d have personal power. If it wasn’t measurable, it wasn’t important.

How do you measure love? What about friendship? Who has a tape measure that can accurately quantify passion or community? Is there a standardized test anywhere that can determine the depth of character or size the creative spirit? Who has a rubric for the quality of life?

I don’t know about you but this world has never made much sense to me. It’s always seemed to be upside down or riddled with false oppositions: is it really necessary to pit the head against the heart, the intellect against the intuition, the soul against the ego, and to demonize one of the poles? What a great recipe for internal warfare! There is nothing better to create and then have to control those combating inner voices; driving with one foot on the gas and the other on the brakes. Divide yourself against yourself and you are bound to develop a healthy case of self-loathing. As within, so without: the internal will find an outer expression for one very simple reason: if the story-you-are-telling-yourself-about-yourself (your inner monologue) is one of separation and disunion, the story you live, the story you see and practice in the world will be one of separation and disunion. The meaning you make will be one of division and usually the thing you will be divided from is any sense of meaning.

There are more potent forms of personal power than “power over” but you have to put down your ruler to see them. When you call a cease-fire to the inner warfare you quickly lose interest and need for power-as-dominance. You see it for what it is: like a drowning man only the powerless need to push others down to get to the top. Drowning others to save your self is a litmus test for low self-esteem. Think about it: if you can only experience a high by bringing others low, you are utterly dependent on how others see you. Instead of relying on others for your power, why not be powerful?

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