On Power

The aliens have arrived: they’ve invaded our cities, enslaved our people, committed unspeakable acts, and now we must fight back!

According to seasoned film watchers, Hollywood has been churning out a stream of spiky alien invasion flicks in recent years, including the latest, Edge of Tomorrow, with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, which is currently showing in Australia.

Films are products of the imagination and the imagination a product of the psyche, individual and collective. Perhaps the theme of alien invasion is particularly relevant to Americans, who it could be said are facing challenges to their self-identity. The rise of China and the constant menace of extreme Islamism are threats to US global military and economic dominance that also challenge US ideas of exceptionalism and self-belief in primacy among nations. The fear of America (and indeed the West more broadly) losing its power implies at the same time an attack on its values and self-worth. Anxiety usually triggers soul-searching (Why do they hate us? What’s wrong with our values?) and denial (They are evil, we must intensify our resistance) which can occur simultaneously. This is essentially no different to what any other empire has faced throughout history when under threat. Indeed, it’s interesting to note that the Islamic world is perhaps still trying to come to terms with its losses and decline from the 13th century.

Power is self-possession: the taking hold of an internal form and expressing it through will in the world. This applies equally to individuals, groups and whole nations. In attempting to understand a particular manifestation of power, we need to know what the “self” is that is being possessed – what kind of self? What is the operating conception of self? This is important because power can be expressed very differently. If we take the example of a referee or umpire in a sport: one umpire may conduct a game in such a way that they are barely noticed, while another might blow their whistle and intervene frequently and awkwardly. In politics, democracies and dictatorships express power markedly differently.

In the modern world, the self is typically equated with the ego; power is understood to serve a self that is narrowly defined as one’s own material interests. The individual acts for his/her own benefit, the family likewise, the extended group, the small business, the organisation, the corporation, the nation. The conception is of separate actors competing with one another in a kind of grand Darwinian drama where the sole purpose is to get more for you and your own. What is missing is the reality of interdependence, mutuality and unity of all life.

The ego, it must be said, has its place in ensuring material and psychological health for individuals and groups – we couldn’t live without satisfying our basic needs in the world – but its exclusive identification with the self means we reduce the range of our humanity. In squabbling over our individual rights to do what we like, we miss the bigger reality that is the oneness of all. We can see this in the failure of countries to unite over the current global ecological crisis, instead pursuing their own agendas of material wealth at the expense of an increasingly polluted and depleted planet.

Power needs to come from a much broader understanding of the self. When we move outwards from the ego our concern becomes centred on Life in general and on serving the greatest good. We identify with an intangible force that manifests everywhere as life-affirmation and which entails action aimed at fulfilling the best in ourselves, in others and the world. Nobody but truly enlightened souls can act from the greatest good all the time, but the more we aim in that direction, the greater is our sense of meaning and fulfilment and the happier is the full body of Life.

We know that good acts don’t need to be big – helping a sick person cross the street is action in that moment for the greatest good; so too is being kind to yourself by resting for a few days instead of taking on more work; or cooking a pleasing meal. Millions of small acts of kindness every day keep the whole world going, forming the nurturing soil upon which everything flourishes.

The challenging aspect in seeking to centre the self in the greatest good is that it defies definition and boundaries. The ego, the family, the tribe and the nation are all objectively well-defined and so it is easy to identify with them. But when power rests upon the greatest good no single entity forms the basis for identity because all life is embraced equally – all egos are your ego, all families your family, all tribes your tribe, all countries your country ...

In our time there is a desperate need to reorient power towards a self larger than the ego. This self has to be anchored in the greatest good and be expressed in forms that are meaningful in today’s world. Perhaps the ecological self, the embracing of our beautiful blue planet Gaia and all its life, will emerge as the libratory vision. The work of the great prophets like Jesus, Zoroaster, Buddha and Mohammed was to provide, through divine inspiration, the means by which latent spiritual energy could find expression. They unleashed enormous, world-changing power. Maybe in our time there will be no single individual but millions of prophets working for the good all over the world who will harvest an equally powerful transformative movement. We can only look forward to that day.

Giving Thanks

We take a lot of things for granted, maybe more so in Australia than anywhere else – take the sun as an example. I once happened to be in Germany at the start of spring. Coming from Australia, where sunshine is a staple of life, it was amusing to see people in parks basking in the feeble rays streaming down on days that were still quite cold. Then it occurred to me that these poor folk had seen very little of the sun through the dark northern European winter.

The other morning while walking to work I suddenly noticed the beauty of the sun. Over the top of the city’s buildings, past the spires of St Patrick’s Cathedral and the date palms crowded around a small patch of green, the sun was a wonderful, gracefully strong presence. Its warmth kindled something in me and I said, quietly and looking upwards, “Thank you, sun, for shining on me and the world. Thank you for the life you bring. May you shine and shine.”

What is the value of such simple gratefulness? In our highly rationalist culture my giving thanks to the sun has no meaning aside from a temporary good feeling I might get, and any further significance would be considered illogical and woolly-headed. But we think this way only because we take for granted the conditions of our existence – nothing on Earth would live without the sun; there would be no life here. In being thankful we recognise and, crucially, renew the life-giving relationships of which we are part and the grace that those relationships bestow.

We start with the assumption that everything has a life beyond its material existence. The sun, the moon, stars, rocks, water, animals, people etc resonate at subtle and spiritual levels and all are interwoven in the one Spirit. By giving thanks we identify ourselves beyond our own finite existence and into this collective channel of oneness, acknowledging that we are part of a much bigger Life. Recognition entails naming, which is synonymous with truth and carries power. The Gospel of John begins famously with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Naming brings us into the field of direct and primary relationships.

Renewal is brought about at subtle levels because of the energy that flows between all things. An act of gratefulness directs energy back to the object of thanks, so there is a mutually enhancing flow both ways. We experience this concretely every day as positive feelings when either we thank someone or are thanked for something we have done. A measure of physical, energetic and psychic replenishment takes place. I believe it’s essentially the same when we give thanks to the sun: when we return its constant, loving presence in our world a mutual reinforcement occurs. Being more aware of nature, growing our awareness of the interdependent conditions and relationships of our existence, also creates a platform to act in life-affirming ways. Protecting a forest is then not just about the trees or the animals, but about us and all life.

Thankfulness to nature is important in another way – it stimulates and nurtures our inner child. Being connected to the inner child, and to play more broadly, brings joy and vitality; we experience life a little more lightly and manageably. Much of the time our culture denies and buries the child in us – we are supposed to be occupied with work, serious and productive, busy for the sake of money and consumption. But the child in us wants none of that; it wants to play and experience the world in its own pure way. The inner child is psychologically closer to nature and can guide us back to the sense of wonder and simplicity that is essential for reverence. Jesus said: “Let the children come to me and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” (Matthew 19:14).

I think that our culture is in the process of casting off the extremes of rationality and is moving again, slowly but steadily, towards recognition and respect for Spirit. In the growing popular feeling for (usually non-religious or non-church based) spirituality we see the sacred starting to return to our world. In truth, it never left but our perception of it simply hibernated for a while. In the 21st century our understanding of the divine and the ways in which we give thanks – by word, ritual and deed – are evolving. Though we can draw from the wisdom traditions of the past, our time in the sun is unique and very much our own. We are in a creative moment in history.