Power and Control within Spirituality

Written by Mathew Naismith

This is another discussion that is ongoing and seems to be so prominent within my life at the moment, it just keeps coming up; does power and control belong within spirituality?  In a human sense it certainly does but does it in a solely spiritual sense?  People like me believe it doesn’t but so many others believe it does, does it truly matter either way?  

Matthew - I will have to disagree with you about power.

If Love is not lust, obsessions, etc; then power is also not ego or control. Ego and control are different things. Also people love very deeply and that leads them to take evil actions. Just as you would say that then they truly don't have love; those that take "evil" actions from power also are not truly coming from power. You seem to be shifting your guidelines to make things fit as you want to see them. Which you are welcome to your perceptions.

You say that power is a reaction to not feeling powerful; actually the desire to control is the reaction, not power - again they are very different things.

You also say that one cannot have power if they are humble. Contrary, in order for there to be true humbleness, one must fully know their power. When one is standing in true power, they have no need to control others or flaunt their powerful or be abusive with it; for they understand the awe of it. As I mentioned before the divine is fully powerful and does not deny it. No ascended master has denied their power, we will not develop or grow without realizing our own power which is the divine power within us. If we are unwilling to accept this aspect of the divine we are rejecting the divine and will not develop ourselves; because we are in fear of this attribute and not at peace with it. We will always remain separate in lower vibration if this is our choice.

G'day Jesse

It's good we have such opportunities to discuss such things.

I'm having a discussion at present with a well-connected spiritual bloke from Malaysia, the more we react the more chaos we will create; power and control are such reactions. The less we react in spirituality the less chaos we will have within our lives. To me this made perfect sense.

True love cannot lead to evil intent, that is an impossibility however lust can, don't confuse them. Power on the other hand can be anything from highly destructive to highly constructive. So what you seem to be saying here is power can't be about control and evil intent, that’s not true at all, Hitler is a good example of this. True love, as opposed to lust, isn't this ambiguous.

“You seem to be shifting your guidelines to make things fit as you want to see them.”

Very untrue Jesse, this is only how you perceive it, all I have done is bring forth a different perspective.

A spiritual master doesn’t seek power or control but the release of power and control. In a human sense this is gaining more power and control but it isn’t in a spiritual sense, only within the action reaction, push and pull effect can this be so which of course creates chaos, spirituality shouldn’t be about chaos, they made this mistake in the religious Dark Age and look what happened. Look what is happening over in the Middle East, this is all to do with power and control; this is why power and control doesn’t in my mind belong within true spirituality. We need to rid ourselves of the push and pull effect not enhance it.

However if you think power and control belong in spirituality that is your right, I just don’t think it does, the Middle East and the Dark Ages are a good example why I think they don’t. I’m not sure why anyone would even take the risk in bringing in power and control within spirituality, why even contemplate such risks in the first place especially within a chaotic existence?

Please don't take this to heart Jesse, we just have different views on this that is all and that's OK too is it not?

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Empowerment: Power can mean control, influence, authority, but it can also mean ability, potential, strength and might however the ability, potential, strength and might over what?  However you want to define power, power comes down to one energy source over shadowing another like strength in oneself over shadowing the weakness in oneself, in a human perspective this seems quite a positive thing to do but I believe it’s quite different in a spiritual perspective.

First of all, to know we have power is to judge a weakness and secondly feeling power within oneself is a reaction, we are back to cause and effect, push and pull effect which is what I believe causes chaos. The strange thing though, not all chaos is bad or negative however chaos still represents a reaction.

I believe this is one of the biggest fundamental mistakes of religion, it involves itself with chaos when it relates to power in anyway, if you look back in history, you will see this time and time again, I don’t think any new age spiritually should go down this same old path.  

Now there are two perspectives to consider here, one is human and the other spiritual. In a human perspective there is nothing wrong with being powerful within oneself, empowered in other words, yes this can cause chaos but not necessarily a destructive chaos. The other perspective is of the spiritual, to me there should be no relation between the spiritual and power/chaos period, this isn’t of true spirituality to me.  This is because spirituality isn’t about one or the other, it’s about nothing but everything as one at the same time, there are no opposite like power and powerlessness or inability within spirituality, it has no cause and effect, no motion but utter stillness. Yes religion has motion and cause and effect but to me true spirituality shouldn’t however certain religions do practice in this motionless state of consciousness.  

Is it wrong to be spiritual and feel powerful in oneself, to be empowered?  There is no wrong or right in this, if we want to create a chaotic existence, spirituality should be also about power and control, human history shows this time and time again however, if we want a less chaotic existence, we need to take the power and control out of spirituality, give it back it’s stillness and giving back our motionless conscious state to some degree.  Spirituality in my mind was supposed to balance out the chaos of ordinary life with the motionless conscious state of spiritualty, not add to it.

Yes we will feel empowered and more in control while becoming spiritually aware but we must also be aware of this reaction of empowerment and what it can lead to.  This happened in the religious Dark Ages, the churchmen got carried away by their own empowerment when all they should have done is become motionless within their consciousness, they could have quite easily avoided such chaos but they didn’t, they chose to keep feeling empowered  thus creating even more chaos.  

Yes by all means use power within spirituality but also be aware of where it can keep taking us.  I think we need to go right back to a pure conscious state of total motionlessness or at least become aware of this state to help us qualm the chaos in our lives, we need to go back to our grass roots of our true being and become aware of our connectedness to the sources consciousness of tranquillity and stillness and once again feel the love of this connection.