Oftentimes we seek strength and power from all the wrong places. We look to people to do for us things that we have been equipped to do for ourselves. We seek interdependence before independence, putting the cart before the horse; and by so doing, we depend rather than be independent.
While many seek power knocking at the door of the acquisition of material possessions and riches, money, positions and authority, what they should actually seek are the intangibles which are able to make them the wealthy masters of their being through the deliberate practice of self-awareness, self-development and self-regulation.
The focus of this post is to seek to help us see the wealth that dwells within us but which many of us are completely ignorant of. And this ignorance prevents potential from becoming actual. The lack of this knowledge keeps us in the dark and negatively affects everything that we do. Many are kept in subjugation due to their ignorance of this fundamental concept.
I often use observation and pay attention to things that many are oblivious of. For example, I notice my nails after they are cut. They grow in less than 24 or 48 hours. I shave daily in my bathroom when I take a bath. If I take a bath in the morning, by evening, I am already itching the stubble of hairs on my chin. The same thing happens when I cut myself. In few minutes, the blood clots and the healing process is instantly activated. These things get me fascinated always.
What intelligence is responsible for these things? What program runs in my hardware? Something is within you that is higher than you are and it works constantly to keep you functional. Even when you sleep, it is actively working to deliver results to you. There are codes that run within you. They are commands that activate the operations of your being. They live and work in you for your personal well-being and effectiveness.
Then I get curious about truly and deliberately connecting with this program or intelligence. What if I get intentional with this intelligence? What if I can connect with it and observe it more closely? What would it mean to get me to finding myself and activate being, more than just having and while carelessly seeking to have, get lost in a rat race in search of fading materialism?
The biggest hindrance to this search and relationship with this Higher Self is the insane passion to acquire. It is what drives the majority of us and it is our biggest bane. We seek treasure outside a box when we are completely ignorant of what is in the box. I learned some time back that knowledge proceeds from the known to the unknown. Not many of us know who we are and that is why we are powerless.
What are those faculties that work in me that make me a conscious being? If I know them, then I can be said to be self-conscious. If I don't know them, then I am accounted ignorant of myself. What language do my emotions speak? What language do my mental faculties of perception, reasoning, imagination, memory, intuition and will speak? How do I even know the language if I don't know they exist? How do I self-regulate what I don't know?
In man dwells every every kind of emotion: envy, jealousy, anger, happiness, sadness, sorrow, joy and more. What triggers each emotion depends on how much resilience we have been able to build based on the information that is available to us. What do I thirst after and hunger for? This is dependent on what I have ingested in myself in the past. We do not thirst or hunger for what we do not know.
My ability to successfully engage with myself and tell my negative thoughts apart from the positive is good. It's great if I can tell what triggers what and how I can keep those things away. It's even greater to be able to activate control when those things play out. Each of these is power in itself. My ability to control my thoughts; my ability to restrain from speaking; my ability to keep myself from reacting to negative words and responding instead is because I know the difference between consequences and rewards.
You can use your emotions and mental faculties to either positive or negative ends. True power rests in the virtues and values of humility, care for mankind, selflessness, diligence, integrity, service, using the golden rule and being human. The whole idea is to be human and not be bestial in human skin. There is a difference between gold and gold-plated.
A man who has no control over his emotions and mental faculties has no control over his spirit. Every emotion and human faculty lies in the unseen. The ability to mortify these things and keep them in check is power. This is the power that keeps man in conscientiousness. A being with a conscientious agility is informed beyond mere words. Such a being has the understanding of the knowledge of the wisdom from above through lessons earned in endurance and long-suffering.
There is innate strength yet untapped in the ability to express gratitude through moments of pain that life's experiences bestow on mankind through suffering. How can we explain the forgiveness that a sufferer extends to those who torture them through the bondage of pain? This is beyond human understanding. It's in parity with the Infinite One.
The strength to accept and engage with the unseen is true power. The ability to converse in meekness with people who hold divergent views from us is the victory of charity. The ability to stay calm in distress as if every other thing is fine is the assurance that every storm of life comes with the purpose to fix things and nothing gets settled without first being unsettled. Things do get worse before they get great for all time.
Virtues and values are the intangibles that endure infinitely. They are not finite. They endure beyond time because they did exist before time with the Infinite Intelligence. They dwell within. They are not without. They are intrinsic power. Man is nothing without them. Man who lives in lack of them cannot escape self-destruction.
Power is unseen. Power is not in the physical things. Power is intangible. Whether it is positive or negative, it resides within man and only expressed in thoughts, words and actions. These make power known.
The force that would transcend through time is the same force that came into time and created time. This Force is Infinite and it is the Word. It is amazing how mankind receives words that are spoken in the heart and by that the words are sown and work through to manifest in the physical. If the words are right, they would justify, but if otherwise, they would condemn.
Why do humans take these things for granted? The thoughts you're sold and given to determine who you are. This is the power that resides in you. The negative would never rule over the positive because the positive is the Light through which and in whom all things came and subsist.
Seneca said: We suffer more in imagination than reality. How true this is! Imagine when our imagination is vain. Imagine when our imagination is unfruitful. How much more would we pine in misery as compared to us relishing in productivity because of the value we become to others from what we churn out from the workshop of our mind? Do we know that our imagination faculty is the workshop of our mind? We suffer too much from what we don't know than what we know.
I have heard people say "Invest in yourself" and I wonder how many of us who connect with the depth of this statement. Where does this investment begin if not in the mind and the mental and emotional faculties? How do we feed these without the consumption of the right information that is able to make our mind sane and productive?
What do you read? What do you see? What do you hear? Who do you play with? These determine how you turn out. You can surpass the reasoning of your environment if you separate yourself, not necessarily physically, but based on what you feed constantly on through your conscious mind.
The power you seek dwells right with in you. You are potentially powerful but you can be actually powerful if you sow into yourself. Even when you are not speaking or saying a word, you are emitting energies based on the content in your container and those beings who encounter you are able to interpret what you let out. Do you realize this much about the being?
Since this is so, how much should you deliberately begin to pay attention to yourself on a daily and regular basis? Do you realize how much and how great you would develop your unseen faculties in order to be the person of value that you thirst to be?
Imagine for once that you were made in the image and likeness of the Creator, the Infinite Intelligence. This makes you a creative partner in the mould of your creator. But the question is, what do you create? What do you ignorantly create? What do you deliberately create? Until you begin to get conscious of these things, you would be almost inert only making movement but never progress because you have refused to access the power in you in order to actualize your full potentials as a being.
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