We're always trying, one way or the other, to grab and maintain something that will make us feel safe and whole forever. The pursuit of that wholeness, of that security, is through what we commonly call "powers." When we think of our security, we think of the powers that we must have to maintain it -- whether it's trying to please other people, trying to have, keep, and gain more possessions, or struggling to get some kind of control over a relationship or some shaky situation -- it doesn't make any difference. The fact remains that it is impossible to approach peace and contentment through our present mindset. So it isn't a question any longer of us trying to find a new power by which to bring to ourselves what we're searching for. Rather, it is through our understanding of what will release us from all the impossible things we have been doing and that produce the pain we're in.
This is a huge thing for us to understand, because when we talk about the pursuit of powers, whether it's to win some praise, possession, or some control, what are we trying to do? Can you think of a power you're looking for? How about the power to have people approve of you? The power to not be afraid? The power to be free of your painful past? When you think of a power for that, what do you do? You go find somebody to talk to for $150 per hour, and when that doesn't work, you buy things!
The powers we pursue are powerless to help us because we're trying to find in this world (that thought has produced) the peace and contentment we're looking for. Real power isn't the ability to imagine and implement an endless series of new solutions to old problems, but to awaken the higher understanding that allows us to transcend the need we have to live with any painful problems at all. So, which would you rather have? A big fire hose with a hydrant and a fire to put out every day, or a life without fires?
What we have to examine is the way we think -- our present mindset. Most of us wouldn't know what to do if there wasn't something pressing us. Isn't it weird that we'll come up with a path, a solution, something we're going to do, that once we do it, we'll become whatever we've imagined with no more pressure, no more fear? Then the very thing we set out to obtain to make us fearless, to take the pressure out of our lives, becomes the source of a new fear and a new pressure! And when that doesn't work, we do it again and again.
Men and women literally drive themselves mad -- destroy and corrupt their own soul -- in the attempt to somehow seize power from anything that tells a story in which they have some peace and a measure of comfort that nothing else can get to. This is our story. But there is a greater story within which our story is taking place. And there's nothing we can do about the greater story that's taking place within which our personal story is unfolding.
If we want to live without fear, we're going to have to learn what it means to live with the greater story as well as our individual story, and to know which comes first. Because as long as our mindset remains in which "my story" is the dominant one, and what happens in life must be subordinate to my wishes, then my wish will be the cause of struggle and conflict everywhere I go when the conditions change that won't support it anymore.
Presently, we spend all our time seeking power over the bigger story so our little story can go on without a hitch. If we see we can't control the bigger story through powers we imagine as part of our little story, what are we to do? How are we ever to be in proper relationship with this larger story, to have power within it?
Here's the beautiful answer, something that was never taught to us, but that we're learning now. These two stories -- the big one (what's happening) versus what we wish was happening -- are not separate stories at all. They're separate in our mind now because we meet the bigger story, reality, insisting it fit what we have said reality should be. But the truth is -- and we can see it if we're willing to look at it -- this larger world and this world of our personal life are not separate stories. Here's why.
Have you ever been in a situation where you've struggled with something, maybe a crisis of some kind, and you work and work, trying to get powers, and at the end, you have none? You don't know what to do. And then out of the clear blue sky comes a marvelous insight, basically having nothing to do with anything you were trying to figure out, but that basically resolved everything. Can you understand that the world from which that insight came was never apart from you? But it was apart as long as you were trying to find power to fix yourself or free yourself from the problem that you imagined. And what was the problem you had? You were trying to control things!
This all boils down to a simple thing. What do I want to remember in the moment when I'm afraid, or start to worry, or get angry? Can I get it into my mind (because it has to start there) that I have a choice? That I'm not here to be the subject of thoughts and feelings whose sole purpose is to keep me wrapped up in their dream life, forever struggling with dark states that are produced by the expiration of powers that I believed would set me free?
Will you have the courage to stop struggling? If you get tired enough of continuing to produce experience that leaves you as the victim of yourself, one day you won't need courage. You'll just be willing to let it go.