"POWER"… I have this theory that there's a big twist in, or misunderstanding about, what this is: being personally empowered (which you can't really be unless you truly know who you are) is a state which would have *no* desire to squash, or sap, or overshadow anyone else... whereas having power in the sense that you hold this over others, and are propped up by the threat of what you could do to those you've put below you, is really a position of the misguided, fractured person who seeks to lift them self up by being threatening and cutting others down - this is illness, not true empowerment.So this is a bit of a follow-up to my previous post where “equality” between men and women was looked into. Some people brought up how, in any relationship, it’s very unlikely to find a real balance of power, and that one or the other usually holds the power, even if this vacillates back and forth. This is my answer to that perception:
Approaching other people, or animals, as equals doesn't mean jockeying for a balance of power, as if looking for that 50/50 edge... it means honestly presenting who you are, given whatever that is at the time, understanding that each person is a work in progress, and not needing to judge yourself or the other person as being more or less. Each is just being who they are, to the best of their ability, and allowing the other to do the same. So seeing that it's more a matter of putting down the power struggle, rather than an effort to cope with a relative balance or struggle of forces pitted against each other... being able to meet another as an equal is relatively simple, even if it might take a while to get the hang of it. This means you're personally empowered enough to not buy into the power struggle unless you want to. In this way, a person is free... the power struggle no longer has power over them. If you know who you are as a person, and you're secure in this, then no amount of baiting and chiding, or degradation and rejection can make you more or less than you already know yourself to be. To give into this, is actually to give up your own power. But if a person doesn't know them self all that well (and most of us don't, no blame in this), then the dance of interactions in life is there to help sort this out. And so we're back to playing out and working on the human condition.
Yes, in many ways these power struggles are very difficult, complicated or convoluted, and there's overwhelming pain to be addressed. But given the will to take up the challenge of this, and discover tools to help the process, and the openness to understand what it's all for... there really is some truth to the saying: "it's all good".
