The madness of power

I dare to say from my experience and observation that we as a species have a very interesting mental disease. When I say as a species I mean that almost everyone has caught it and are acting their whole lives out in a way that greatly resembles a parasite taking over a host and the host starts adjusting it’s behaviour according to the parasite’s needs.

Of course in this case we don’t talk about any actual physical parasite but more of an infection of the mind. The basic infection is identity with this face, this voice, these personal traits, the identity as a separate entity who has it’s own life which then goes on gathering beliefs, notions and myths about itself to perpetuate it's existence. It gives a certain hollow feeling, a feeling of separation from the surroundings. From that basic idea and feeling it drives us into an obvious need for belonging and having a sense of purpose. That need is then fed by building the identity more likeable, more feared, more respectable.. basically whatever is needed according to the standards and influences given by the surrounding people, culture and conditioning. We gather the feedback we get from other people in order to mould our sense of self into that direction to fit in better. The problem then is that we will never actually fully satisfy our need for belonging because the root of that drive is the feeling of disconnection, of alienation. So what we do is turn to power games.

You might perceive power as something mechanistic, tangible, a force of nature but what I’m talking about is something much more subtle (so subtle that it doesn’t really even exist) but our delusion of separation and the beliefs based on that feeling of alienation make it seem very real. Power is something that only exist because there’s a common belief in it. We build hierarchies amongst each others and we climb that ladder of respectability, glory, money, recognition, acceptance and we reach to the highest steps in order to feel good and okay but the ironic thing is that while we make our way up the ladder we are basically putting ourself in a position where we are insignificant and powerless and the “others” have the power to change that. They have something that we need so we must find means to get it whatever the price. So basically what we are doing is handing over our own self worth because we don’t feel worthy of accepting whatever we are naturally without any effort and by doing that we actually create the situation where we feel that we need to climb up the ladder and gather whatever symbols that our society uses to symbolise power. 

When I talk about power I’m not only talking about political power where you can order somebody to be imprisoned but I’m talking about any kind of manipulation of other peoples feelings, thought processes and perceptions in order to feel better and more fulfilled about ourselves. We all do that and it really perpetuates the feeling of separation from each other even further because everybody is trying to trick and manipulate each other in some way.. and we can feel it. We know instinctively when we are being fooled by someone but we get so confused usually because we also want something from those who are fooling us.. so we keep on doing the same to them.

It’s a very upside-down world because of this game of power. We imagine that some others posses something that we need and we keep dancing like somebody was shooting at our feet. We are also very intelligent species so we are very very well equipped to learn how to get what we want and we easily adapt to whatever things we take as the symbols of power. For example for the super rich elite money is the symbol of power. It’s the symbol of power and they do anything to hoard it to themselves to no limit. They don’t even know how to invest and use all the money that they are getting but that’s not the point to them. They could easily live a remarkably abundant and care free life with just fraction of what they have but it’s not really about the money in the end. It’s the feeling of being someone remarkable and being someone who matters, who has influence and power. The funny or sad part of it is that they are very needy and feel powerless and are not living abundantly and joyously at all. The same situation is typically with politicians but their symbol is different although they drive towards the same underlying goals. They need to feel important and respectable, they need to matter so mostly their measurement for it is public approval and getting re-elected. That’s really mostly their bottom line. That’s why when there is some really important decision to be made and the next election is pushing closer the usual protocol is to leave that decision after the election because it simply weighs more to remain as a politician because they have perfected their identity and power game as a politician and they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves otherwise. Then they run in their elections and promise all sorts of empty things that they trade in a heartbeat for a powerful position. They even hire advertising agencies to manipulate their voters by reinventing their image instead of actual political agendas. Basically they just become faces in suits who are taught how to act, walk and talk appropriately to preserve and polish their public image. Also the political system easily moulds anyone into it because the whole game is based on those power dynamics and generally those kind of power hungry people are more likely to be attracted to them.

Power essentially is a poor imitation of belonging, love, being at peace with one's self which is really what is being missed. It’s an attempt to breach the gap that is self created by false identity and the feeling of separation and it’s not really doing the job very well. If power actually worked you would see people reaching to a certain point of power and then being so contented that they would just not know what to do anymore… they simply wouldn’t want anything more. They would live happily ever after. It’s just that there is no amount of power that has ever satisfied anyone for more than a brief moment because it’s an illusion in itself and it cannot create anything real and lasting. The only way to get rid of the constant hunger is to realise it’s core and see it in it’s full falsehood. It doesn’t really exist and you were never separate and you never needed any justification to exist. You don’t need to manipulate others and twist yourself in all possible directions to live this life. There is an easier way to exist and it doesn’t know anything about power. It’s the natural way. Just a bit of inspection is needed to see where do you really stand. Are you your identity or are you indeed something that is beyond that?

The road to nowhere. A journey from mass consciousness, past new age to my own domain.

I remember the times when I was swimming almost absolutely in the pre-determined stream of consciousness where I was whoever I was told to be and my desires and ambitions were all borrowed, my identity a collection of subliminal and direct messages, those that were projected on me by my surroundings . "This is who you are, these are good values to live by, this is what it means to live in this kind of body and this is what we think about other kind of bodies and cultural conditionings" etc. It was an easy life in a way and because my identity was so strongly suited on me and I never had any dilemma about whether my reactions were right for the moment because everything came from this coding put into me. Back then I somehow belonged, I survived.. I wasn't happy, I wasn't fulfilled but I had such clear and easy answer to everything and therefore I had confidence in who I thought I was.

Something just didn't quite fit. It just started feeling more uncomfortable when the game of identities really began to take lift. I was in high school and around maybe 14 years old when I really felt like my childhood identity didn't give me enough confidence and I didn't know how to interact with other kids coming outside of my little local elementary school. Everything seemed much more cruel, competitive and tough. I tried my best in constructing a new, more popular, more wanted, more cool identity up to the point where it just all collapsed. I was just too sensitive and childlike for the confusing world of an early teenager and the constructed identity dropped away and I fell into a depression that lasted for months.

So I never really managed to construct a very functional indentity at the age when it's usually constructed for blending into the consensus and therefore it was easy for me to abandon it and start looking for something else. I pursued spirituality in relatively young age. I was around 19-20 and I started meditating and collecting knowledge of more esoteric views, doing some drugs and experimenting with my consciousness. I started deconstructing my old intentity and building a new, more new agey one. I went through some meditation and therapy groups and had some interest in becoming a teacher of those things and I did try it for a while. Especially in the beginning my spiritual identity became something that was like a negative picture of my old identity, in essence focused on the same things but instead just being against what I was enforcing and living out earlier. I was a rebel an I fought against everything old because there was an underlying fear that if I don't fight and also inflict a chance in others for the purpose of fulfilling my list of divine attributes I would turn right back to my old bondage. I felt very much at home in these spiritual groups, workshops and festivals and it really fed my new identity to live for some days in a care free pink cloud of love and high vibes. It was a kind of high that I got that would charge me against the ugly outside world and it's fucked up shit. It felt so opposite to what my old identity was about when I was in those groups. Of course there was that real joy in the experience that was the the essence of true being and freedom from identity that brought real happiness and joy but it was owned by the identity later and put into a mold by my mind so that the joy had more to do with the circumstances and it made me dependent of those circumstances. It was playful and very liberating for a while to be able to express myself in a way that my old conditioning wouldn't have let me... but it had an identity to it non the less. I was floating in this other world of spirituality a bit more free but still quite contained. Still quite lacking that last "A-Ha!" -moment when it all paid off and came together. It still felt like it was something that should be maintained and kept, it felt something outside of me to be pursued.

I even tried to eat more spiritual, more pure. I tried to tweak my consciousness and fulfilment with raw foods and what ever supplements I could get my hands on. I pushed my new found pure lifestyle to others who just didn't want to have anything to do with it. When I look back at myself and who I was back then I probably wouldn't spend much time with me.

It all started slipping away eventually. I just couldn't find the energy to go to next thing to pursue the next spiritual high and the feeling of belonging to another stream of consciousness that made my decisions as easy as the old conditioning but this time maybe in even more cunning way. I thought at some point that I found my "real" family in these other likeminded seekers and we could live in this bubble together and build a better world but now whenever I even hear these people talk about love and vibration and their practices and diets I feel utterly uninterested and I don't feel that sense of belonging to that group anymore either. I don't find it a fascinating idea to go to some spiritual festivals and workshops on how to unleash my this and that.. I would rather go camping on my own, just watch tv, open a beer or go for a walk.

So this leaves me in a funny situation where there is the mass hypnosis of automated values and conformity and it's counter movements that try to perfect the spiritual human, heal all the traumas and make everything beautiful and save the world and spread light and "awareness" everywhere, to basically do the same thing I was doing in my little world before. I cannot really find myself in either of them. It's not that I went back to the mass consciousness, they are just both there but I don't find myself strongly preferring either one, yet I can still interact and enjoy both phenomenas in their own way. I really like people who are seekers and It feels more light to be around them than someone heavily conditioned personality who just kind of fills the air with their mental noise of what they want you to agree with and think about them but sometimes it's so much more fun to be with someone who just doesn't question every single thing and isn't so analytical and self-aware all the time.

This is uncharted territory for me. It's kind of freakish to have friends and family in both but still knowing quite well that I do not belong to either of them. I stand alone in my own domain and I don't have any ready answers in me gathered from anywhere. I feel sometimes like I'm just flailing around without any direction because I'm not even spiritual anymore and I don't think I've ever been really "normal" either. It feels natural that these two streams seem so different from each other but the further away you look from the more they seem like the same river taking a little different path for a while before they reach to the ocean.

Now I am so much more uncertain about everything because I have lost the guidelines that I referred to in the past. I lost them twice because the spiritual ones were there although much more abstract and hard to grasp. It is actually quite spacious to be out of them but something freaks out when I see people being so sure and confident about their own tiny perspective that it feels almost rock solid.. And here I am. Not knowing jack shit. Except that I exist and this personality and whatever energies move in the body and the mind take place and still I ultimately have nothing to do with them. I learn that there are sometimes some uncomfortable feelings and actions acted out but the trust that all of it is fine as it is prevails even amongst the doubts that something has gone wrong. They are indeed just something old burping up into awareness. They are not so important ultimately. It's just the nature of consciousness to bring all of it back together.. It's automatic.

First the worldly goals became spiritual ambitions where the whole New Age plays out but then the goals and ambitions change into allowing and

experience. Nothing more to find out or prove and nothing to know. Then everything is seen appropriate and meaningful.


All is well.