Each of us is a microcosm of the world as it is. Only when we recognize and accept this reality can we move forward in our practice. But we can’t just change; we have to be conscious and take responsibility for our transformation. Human beings have choice, and we do choose.
Over the past year, I have seen a divide—in the world and among my students—become clearer where it used to be fuzzy and foggy. This divide is between power and Love. Now that some people have consciously chosen Love, the divide may remain the same but a sense of real community has emerged. I would love to see the same emergence out in the larger world.
The point is to be Love driven, not power driven. If we are power driven, we just want “freedom”—we want what we want, when we want it. If we are Love driven, our will is directed differently, toward the Heart. The third level of spiritual practice uses the will, and power also uses the will. The question is where the will is directed: either the Heart or the head.
If we are turned outward into our heads, into our narrative, our choices will always be about power. We cannot love. We do power but call it love. The Heart does Love, and Love is the greatest power. In this context, the definition of Heart is pure foundational Consciousness.
Our system is all about pride, and it can only be done as a power trip. It is all about maintaining our separateness and specialness. People who do power don’t want to work. They want their discomfort solved in a flash of insight and magic, and for everyone else to be “happy” with whatever they do. They don’t want to be part of community—except on their terms. They especially don’t want to be part of their problem. So they often hide behind a visible public narrative in which they have done and can do no wrong. If I lie and deceive, they say, then so does everyone else.
To know whether someone is coming from a place of Love or a place of power, you can’t rely on surface appearances. Actions may superficially look the same. We are then surprised when the outcomes are not the same. That’s the difference between accomplishing the same action done from Love or power. The two may look similar on videotape, but the experiences are completely different for everyone involved.
How do we get people to shift from the desire for power to the desire for Love? They have to lose everything, just as we who Love had to lose everything. We had to lose everything we thought mattered. And when we gave it up, thinking we were sacrificing everything, we realized we had lost nothing that really mattered. Our pride deludes us into thinking that what we think, believe and identify with really matters. There is nothing better than to let go of your reputation. Losing everything undoes our pride.
So if you want to choose Love instead of power, you have to face yourself. You have to face what you don’t want to face. And this can’t be your system facing itself, because it will only call you names you like and indulge in, whether those names are positive or negative. Everyone faces troubles and conflicts; whether they learn from those challenges or not depends on how honestly they face themselves.
This isn’t the sort of self-examination we can find in therapy. The goal of therapy is to make Rohini okay with Rohini. The goal of sadhana is Love. Through Love and practice, Rohini learns that to be who she really is—which is Love—she must completely give up Rohini.
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