WITH GREAT POWER
The ultimate key to profound healing
The most addictive thing is power. Especially when taken for granted.
The great Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero related the famous historical account of the Sword of Damocles, which took place in the 4th century BC in the city of Syracuse in Sicily.
At the time, Dionysius the Elder ruled with an iron fist and was much feared and reviled by his subjects. However his tyranny over others also tyrannized him with visions of put-upon peasants carrying pitchforks, rallying to depose him and much worse. Understandably paranoid, he slept in a bedchamber surrounded by a moat and allowed only his daughters to trim his beard.
He became annoyed one day when a courtier named Damocles flattered him, and wondered at how blissful his life must be.
“Since this life so delights you,” he replied, “do you wish to taste it yourself and make a trial of my good fortune?”
Damocles, apparently not one to take a hint, jumped at the chance, and was soon enough seated on a luxurious golden diwan, surrounded by servants, being fed the most delicious of foods.
However his joy was short-lived. He soon noticed a great sword had been suspended above his head by a single horse’s hair, and all his enjoyment was instantly and irrevocably replaced with crippling anxiety. He begged leave, asking to be excused from his place of “honor” immediately.
To Cicero and apparently Dionysius, the tale represented the idea that “there can be no happiness for one who is under constant apprehensions,” but it has also come to serve as a warning for those who would abuse their power and thereby become liable to lose it (and themselves).
There are numerous examples of a similar idea across cultures and throughout history.
For example in Jesus’ parable of the faithful servant (Luke 12:48) we find the warning: “To whomever much is given, of him will much be required; and to whom much was entrusted, of him more will be asked.”
And perhaps the most famous and pithy modern formulation of this ancient wisdom was written in English by Stan Lee and voiced by Spiderman’s Uncle Ben as he lay dying:
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
POWER
To begin to understand power, we first have to know where power comes from.
The ultimate Power of course lies apart from any human being. We’re all subject to a higher authority. If we weren’t we wouldn’t need to do this or that. We wouldn’t need to worry about gravity, and paper cuts, and running with scissors. We could do whatever we wanted and be healthy and happy.
So, all power is ultimately delegated from on high.
While no one could compete with Alexander, they could be one of his generals ruling over Greece or Persia. Not a bad gig if you can get it.
But, everyone, regardless of station, already has a great deal of potential power. Everyone has been given their own kingdom, their own domain of absolute authority, their own temple as it were, and it is themselves (and many also have temporary power over others like their children, and to a lesser extent service people).
However, while we all rail against tyrants, we often tyrannize ourselves ruthlessly.
You have to be your own PETA. Stop abusing yourself worse than a lab rat. Be a benevolent monarch and reap the rewards, or continue in the track of tyranny and beware the consequences.
But most people don’t truly appreciate the degree to which they are masters of their own domain and their entire existence, because they don’t grasp the true nature of their reality.
You may get an inkling of it skimming various spiritual traditions and it’s been popularized in books like The Secret from 2006, which itself was a distillation of ideas first popularized in the US in the late 19th century.
Inspired by earlier philosophical and spiritual traditions, including Transcendentalism, Christian Science, and various forms of mysticism that highlighted the connection between thought and manifestation, Prentice Mulford was perhaps the first to clearly articulate the Law of Attraction as a general principle in the English literature, discussing it extensively in his 1887 essay "The Law of Success." Mulford's ideas influenced other New Thought authors, including Henry Wood and Ralph Waldo Trine, who expanded the concept to encompass all aspects of life.
In the 20th century, interest in the Law of Attraction grew significantly, leading to the publication of best-selling books like Think and Grow Rich (1937) by Napoleon Hill, The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) by Norman Vincent Peale, and You Can Heal Your Life (1984) by Louise Hay.
Studies on prayer have been done which suggest that people are in some sense manifesting the desired effect. In one study, women who were prayed for had nearly twice the pregnancy rate compared to those who were not. Similarly, a study on 22 bush babies found that animals who received prayers experienced greater wound healing than those who did not.
Another series of fascinating studies carried out by French researcher René Peoc'h involved a self-propelled robot driven by a random number generator to move unpredictably around a room. When a cage of live chicks, which had imprinted on the robot as their mother, was introduced, the robot spent 2.5X more time near the chicks than when they weren’t in the room with it. A followup study showed that even without imprinting the chicks could draw a robot towards them that was carrying a candle in a dark room (chicks don’t like the dark).
There was even an unpublished study from the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab, later described by one of the participants, entrepreneur Adam Curry, in which a houseplant was kept in a sealed room with just one light source which was driven to point in unpredictable directions by a random number generator. The light ended up spending much more time than expected pointed in the direction of the plant (if it seems incredible that a plant could be conscious you’ll be even more astonished to discover in this article that plants can read your mind, see the world around them in detail, and remember and identify specific people).
In these random number generator driven experiments it’s important to note that neither the chicks nor the houseplant overrode the directions of the software. They did appear to change the generated numbers from random to non-random to affect the outcome they “wanted” despite having no insight at all into the mechanics of the situation.
Adam Curry later went on to create a lamp connected to a quantum random number generator, with each random number linked to a particular color. This lamp (out of stock) can apparently literally be willed to display a particular color, by the mind’s ability to skew the output of the otherwise random numbers.
“We have one of these in our office. Last Wednesday a few of us went up to the lamp and said, "Ok, let's all make it turn red." When we did, it changed pretty quickly from blue to green to red (with a flash of bright white in between) in about 30 seconds, and then stayed a deep red color for some time. We hadn't seen it work quite like that before.” - Mind Lamp User Review
All of this suggests that consciousness heavily influences, or even creates reality, instead of the other way around. The direction of development is not physical to energetic to conscious. Rather the universe is manifested from the other direction: from consciousness and it’s desires to energy to physicality.
E = mc² means that energy and matter are equivalent and related by a constant, the speed of light squared. The equation works left to right or right to left. Matter can be turned into energy - think a nuclear bomb - and energy can be turned back into matter. Light is pure electromagnetic energy without any mass, and it can be directly converted into particles with mass, like electrons and positrons, when interacting with the nucleus of an atom.
The Law of Attraction, or you could say the Power of Manifestation means that consciousness (even of a plant!) is primary and it directs the flow of energy which becomes matter.
The implication of that is that this Power of Manifestation is really the superset of what most people think of as free will - the ultimate test of power granted from on high.
Everyone (except some philosophers or physicists) would readily agree they have free will. It’s as obvious as knowing you’re alive, whether you know how or not, it just is.
What few realize is just how much free will they actually have.
Not only our conscious minds making simple day to day choices, but our subconscious, or rather what is termed the heart, which is that faculty within us which desires, also wields this power to choose in a sense, by summoning forth, not what we may think we want, but what amounts to a reflection of who we really are, by Divine Providence.
The heart was created to experience infinite Divine Beauty. It is the Holy Grail within each human being, the only vessel in existence that can inconceivably contain the Infinitude of the Divine, but only when it pays the highest price it can: letting go of its attachments to this world and to its own self. This is it’s deepest desire, whether it knows it or not and the fulfillment of its purpose. But when the heart is instead attached to the inherently limited physical world it is repeatedly disappointed. It is impossible for it to find any lasting satisfaction in what is limited, since the appetite of the heart has no limits - as it must since it was created to desire the Infinite.
When the heart is attached to the world it always wants more, and every time it is obstructed in any worldly desire it finds the situation noxious, bad, evil. The pain of those disapointments serve a purpose: to uncover its true nature, to redirect it towards it’s true desire. When the heart has had enough of worldly disappointments and finally let’s go of its worldly attachments, and instead becomes attached to the Divine, what happens or doesn’t happen in the life of this world becomes paltry and insignificant. Previously important events and things are only viewed as the means to a greater end.
The circumstances of our lives serve to illuminate what we need to fulfill the purpose of our existence here on Earth, which is to better know the Divine, and which can only be accomplished by better knowing ourselves. If our shortcomings and failures were not manifest to us then how would we fix them? They must be manifested in order to fulfill the moral purpose of our existence.
Reality invariably and at every moment weighs you and no matter how far you’ve climbed, always finds you wanting, then presents to you a mirror from which to diagnose your own failings. This mirror is what annoys you about other people and events, what pushes your buttons, what reveals your ever more subtle imperfection and is what is supposed to drive you in the direction you’re meant to go.
From an individuals perspective everything that happens is the Doing of the Divine, which Creates all events, all other people and all of their actions in order to test that individual and raise them to higher degrees. The situations and actions are exactly what that individual needs at that moment to work on themselves, so they are determined by who that individual is.
Once the heart becomes directed towards Divinity it’s own failings become veils that obstruct its view of the Divine Splendour. In that state it realizes that whatever happens is a test, situations and people are meant to elicit a certain response. As its reponses become more refined, so too does its understanding of the Divine Reality.
What you are experiencing in your life is you. Most people reject this by labelling it as other than themselves. They get riled up at the situations and people that annoy them, instead of recognizing that it is just their own self that annoys them. Their own expectations disappoint them. Accepting this reality means accepting your imperfect self for what it is, reorienting your attachment and then gently nudging it towards higher perfections.
At a merely physical level consider "mirror neurons that “mirror” other people we come across inside our own heads. Someone who is antagonistic in a particular way will trigger others who recognize what that person is doing. The only reason they recognize it so well and are so antagonized by it is because it’s something they themselves do. Ask someone what annoys them most about other people and it will reveal more about that person than about other people.
Some people are so wrapped up in themselves that they see things in others that aren’t even there. They see themselves or reflections of their parents from childhood that live on within them, or someone else they never forgave. The past they haven’t let go of is their present reality. Their own imperfections that they haven’t yet addressed make up their dissapointing experience of the world.
No one is perfect, failing is our inevitable lot as human beings. But there is a Divine purpose being fulfilled. Our failings illuminate Divine Perfections.
In order to reveal perfections of which we were previously unaware we can’t just keep failing in the same way, we have to fix ourselves up and then fail in a more subtle way, a way that we weren't even aware of as a failing before. This only happens if you take an accounting of yourself and shape up. It’s an endless path of greater refinement of the soul and the journey only ends when you stop traveling.
Those seeking refuge in Alcoholics Anonymous have found no matter what they do they can’t overcome the urge to drink, especially when stressed out. Then a flip switches inside them, they give up trying and fighting themselves, they rely on a Higher Power to relieve them of their insurmountable problem. The realization of their own powerlessness leads them to realize the unlimited power of the Divine in their own lives.
In the same way deeply realizing the nature of any of our imperfections illuminates the Divine Perfection of that attribute that can then become better manifested through us.
"Almost all problems in the spiritual life stem from a lack of self-knowledge." - St Theresa of Ávila.
"He who knows himself, knows his Lord" - unattributed mystic maxim
The journey of life is one of understanding yourself, of hopefully realizing that you are in some sense manifesting everything that happens with your very being, and when you start “asking” for something else by being something else, that will happen instead and your journey will continue.
RADICAL RESPONSIBLITY
Anything less than taking radical responsibility for your life and everything in it is an abdication of your true potential. Those who don’t understand this haven’t yet grasped the true nature of their reality and are still firmly ensconced in the mindset of victimhood. Rather than “victim blaming”, this is “victim empowering,” or rather the elimination of victimhood entirely and being crowned with the responsibility of Divine stewardship over yourself, the earth and its creatures.
Once you accept the power you’ve been given and the responsibility of not abusing it, your circle of influence over yourself and others inevitably grows. Alexander didn’t distribute rule over his dominions to just anyone and neither does the Divine.
Power is a test. Plato wrote, "The measure of a man is what he does with power." Those who pass, gain more. This is the invariable way of Power. It’s a law of Nature.
In fact it’s the exact opposite of the superhero movie trope of accidentally becoming powerful like Spiderman being bitten by a bug, or the Flash being hit by lightning or Superman happening to be the only one to escape his exploding planet and end up on one with a yellow sun that empowered him. These are fantasies. In the real world, whether it’s apparent or not, the truth is that:
With great responsibility comes great power.
And the corollary applies to those who abuse the power they’ve been given: irresponsiblity leads to the loss of power, again whether outwardly apparent or not, whether within that sphere of influence or in another. For example those who abuse themselves and lose their health.
The proof that power isn’t always apparent is that some of the most powerful people in existence may not appear so. Jesus appeared to be but the humble son of a carpenter.
Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching, circa 6th century BC: "The softest things in the world overcome the hardest things in the world."
This is a general principle of life in this world. Appearances can be deceiving.
St Theresa of Ávila., a Christian mystic, wrote: "Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices." Or as a sufi mystic put it to all those whose lives are spent in the pursuit of pleasure and happiness: "If the kings of this world knew the pleasure and happiness we experience, they would send their armies to take it from us."
THE TEST OF POWER
Since everyone has been given power over themselves, proving the ability to control the self is where everyone’s test begins.
"Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city." - Proverbs 16:32
"He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still." (Tao Te Ching)
"No man is free who is not master of himself." - Epictetus
"Anybody can become angry—that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody's power and is not easy." - Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong." - Gandhi
Self-discovery and self-mastery is an endless journey in power. Once you think you’ve mastered yourself more subtleties of mastery appear before you. There’s always more work to be done.
THE SOLUTION IS POWER
Every problem, including any disease, can be solved with more power.
Chronic illness only exists because the body doesn’t have enough power to expel the underlying problem and becomes stuck in a stalemate, keeping things in check, but not progressing to a resolution. This usually stems from repeatedly suppressing the immune system in order to feel better fast, yet thereby allowing toxins and pathogens to become more deeply entrenched, further sapping the body’s power.
This is due to a misunderstanding stemming from another deceptive appearance.
People view their symptoms as the problem, when actually their symptoms are the solution. The symptoms only come from the battle being waged by your immune system to root out the enemy within.
Many people mistake quick and easy symptom resolution for the solution. This is like ordering down your armed forces when the enemy is entrenched in your country and then allowing them to spread and take over all your institutions one by one until they nearly overpower you and then finally becoming alarmed by the looming disaster and finally letting your forces loose again.
This pattern of malpractice plays out over years and leads to a downward spiral with the real problem getting worse and worse even though it is kept mostly invisible due to ever stronger bandaids (the chains holding your immune armed forces back).
Acute illnesses are meant to be the perfect chance for the body to do some spring cleaning. The weakest, most toxin and pathogen infested cells will be affected first by any new acute illness. They will be targeted for destruction by the immune system the same way a lion singles out the slowest or weakest member of a herd of gazelles. This natural culling of the weak and imperfect specimens leaves the herd stronger. Similarly acute illnesses are meant to leave your body stronger. When they are cut short or suppressed they do not serve their evolutionary task and the body becomes ever weaker. Each successive illness allows weaker, older, sicker, more toxin and pathogen affected cells to accumulate.
Weakness in a cell is manifested by an inability to produce power.
The “power plants” of cells are the mitochondria, so from one perspective all diseases stem from mitochondrial dysfunction. Mitochondrial power production directly depends on UV and infrared wavelengths of sunlight and indirectly on quantum effects made possible by light structured water. Mitochondrial power is sapped by too much blue light, especially after sunset.
What all that really means is that mitochondria, like everything else about you, are subject to a higher authority, the natural laws of the universe. When they are in the right environment and get the inputs they are designed for they will be healthy, when out of it they will be diseased. In other words when the natural laws are followed you and your mitochondria will be powerful, and when they are broken you and your mitochondria will be weak.
MOOD LIGHTING
Previously I explained that everyone’s an SSRI-chugging “werewolf” now, addicted to an artificial full moon that doesn’t just rise once a month, but every night at their command.
And it’s not the romantic movie type werewolf. It’s the horror movie kind, because that artificial light is pumping them full of too much dopamine and serotonin and adrenaline and insulin and cortisol, while harming their mitochondrial power production, driving them all slightly (or greatly) “mad”, and eventually making them chronically burnt out and sick in all the usual ways we get sick nowadays.
Almost everyone who read it and left a comment lamented they just couldn’t bring themselves to let go of the intoxicating ability to flip a light switch at night and bathe themselves in their mini moons. And what about those long winter nights? What to do?
Here’s my answer:
It’s a haiku.
The hard limits spur creativity.
The greatest creativity and satisfaction and power in life requires respecting hard limits, like when struggling to write a haiku (or what used to be the modern haiku-lite, the old 140 character tweet limit).
Some of those hard limits are natural laws we can’t yet break like traveling faster than the speed of light to visit other star systems, while others we can, like the sun governed light cycles that program our circadian biology.
Limiting factors like morals, principles, even schedules, provide the necessary foundation on which to build a solid, healthy, happy life.
Once you discover a first principle that you truly believe in, don’t waver. Don’t compromise. Make it work. Often, only by fully committing will you even be able to see how you can possibly make it happen.
That’s Power.
Real power comes from the ability to say no, not the ability to say yes. Ask any two year old. That’s why stoicism. That’s why self-abnegation. That’s why fasting. That’s why you turn off the lights.
It’s not discipline applied willy nilly. It’s not self-refusal for its own sake. Sure that may build character, but this does more.
Real power is always in service to a higher order. Power wielded selfishly only courts destruction.
Alexander’s generals had power delegated to them by one with more. And Alexander only had power delegated to him from further above (after all, who can bring themselves into existence or prevent their own demise?).
When Pontius Pilate questions Jesus during his trial, Jesus remains largely silent. Pilate, frustrated, says, "Do you refuse to speak to me? Don’t you realize I have power either to free you or to crucify you?" Jesus responds, "You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above."
There are natural laws that we’re all subject to from a higher authority. We break those laws at our own peril. No one sane jumps off the Empire State building. No one sane should (flippantly) flip on a light switch at night.
What worldly sign of the natural order of creation is greater than the rising and setting of the sun? Take it to heart and learn what it means and apply it to regain all the power that is your birthright.
If you know physics you can build rockets that fly. If you know the natural laws that govern health you can build a body that thrives.
Those natural laws are apparent in the natural environment. They were inescapable 1000 years ago. Our biggest modern test in our bodies is being given the immense power to easily abuse those natural limits. Only the wise who refrain will pass.
Learn and obey natural law and you will be powerful, disregard it and you will wither away and perish.
EXCEPTIONAL POWER
Of course, exceptions to every rule exist.
But exceptions require a rule in the first place. And for the one who wishes to retain their power, exceptions always serve a higher purpose, not base desires. Giving in to your whims isn’t power, it’s the abdication of it. Deciding like an emperor that there is good reason to waive the letter of the law in a special case for a greater good is real power.
The best criteria for this is usually asking, am I doing it for myself or for someone else? Indulging selfishness saps you of your power over yourself, while serving others increases it.
As Jesus said, "But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave." (Matthew 20:26-27, ESV)
THE NIGHT
“It is vain for you to rise early, To retire late, To eat the bread of anxious labors— For He gives [blessings] to His beloved even in his sleep.” - Psalms 127:2
"The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether they eat little or much, but as for the rich, their abundance permits them no sleep." Ecclesiastes 5:12
"The sun also shines on the wicked, but night is reserved for the wise." - Seneca
The night is not for taking in and building, that’s for daytime. Whether it be food, water, information, or light*. The night is for resting and recovering, digesting and divesting, consolidating and curing.
Nighttime is for prayer, reflection, meditation, visualization, gratitude, breath work, gentle stretching, whispering with a loved one.
When you commit to it, you’ll reestablish a natural rhythm that varies with the seasons (if you’re up north). The pre-industrial sleep wake cycle was a typical yin yang pattern: most of the day awake, punctuated by a seasonally appropriate midday nap (i.e. might be longer in summers and shorter in winters). Most of the night asleep, punctuated by a seasonally appropriate midnight awakening (vice versa: shorter in summers and longer in winters).
Reconnect with your natural rhythms tonight and rediscover effortless circadian hormonal balance, deepening health and real power that’s not only bioelectrical, but physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual.
Perhaps the primary cause of addiction to power is a lack of sunlight (not enough beta endorphins), and too much light at night (excess dopamine). See the sun, skip the electric lights and finally ditch your addiction to the power of illumination taken out of its proper time that was never meant for you to command so recklessly.
Power abused is tyranny, knowledge unused is ignorance.
*Candles or nightlights no more than 50 lux (candles are 10) can be used until you’ve developed your Spidey sense to avoid hitting things in the dark.
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