The Direction of Intention

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Power is like the sack in this Sufi Story:

Mula came upon a frowning man trudging along the road to town. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

The man held up a tattered bag and moaned, “All that I own in this wide world barely fills this miserable, wretched sack.”

“Too bad,” said Mula, and with that, he snatched the bag from the man’s hands and ran down the road with it.

Having lost everything, the man burst into tears and, more miserable than before, continued walking. Meanwhile, Mula quickly ran around the bend and placed the man’s sack in the middle of the road where he would have to come upon it.

When the man saw his bag sitting in the road before him, he laughed with joy, and shouted, “My sack! I thought I’d lost you!”

Watching through the bushes, Mula chuckled. “Well, that’s one way to make someone happy!”

Power-with-others is not something you acquire. It is something you have and do not appreciate. People rarely see their own power when they have it but are very aware of it when it is missing. They find their great gift when they stop trying to be clever, when they stop trying to have power over others. Power-with is natural; we only have to work hard to lose it.

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