Question:
I’m so tired of pushing against life all the time. Where do I find the energy to overcome this relentless stress?
Answer:
Stress exists because you insist! It’s really that simple. It is your mistaken belief that you must push life in the direction you choose that keeps you in a strained and unhappy relationship with it. Your wish to have power over life comes from this wrong relationship with life. Reality has its own effortless course, and you can either embrace its way or struggle endlessly with yours. You do not need power to flow. Why push when you can learn to ride?
Question:
It seems like I need to be empowered in order to accomplish anything in life, either for myself or my family — otherwise there seems no choice but to be crushed by the competition.
Answer:
No one seeks power to do good unless it’s first for the good of himself. This prevailing popular philosophy of self-empowerment is justified by the thought that once I have enough, then I can give to others from my abundance. The only problem with this is it’s just one lie perpetuating another. First of all, for the false nature there is never enough of anything; and that’s beside the fact that you don’t need power to do Good. Good is its own power. We seek power because we want the force to make things go the way we want; to crush the small and large rebellions and disturbances wherever they may arise, whether at home or at the work place.
Power, who has it and who doesn’t, seems to determine in this world who pushes and who gets shoved. And given our preference, if we must choose one, we would rather be doing the pushing. The only problem is that on the level of this field of choices, whether to push or be pushed, everyone loses because push always comes to shove. The really incredible part of all of this is that there is no real worldly or personal power to be found here at all. Even more amazingly, none is needed. That’s right. This is because there is a third choice. This third and higher choice is the choice to be left alone. The following paragraph will help you to understand this new and truly powerful idea:
There is no power on earth that can make you feel safe and secure because it isn’t this world that threatens or disturbs you. You seek worldly and personal power because you are dominated by your own thoughts and feelings. It is your own undeveloped nature that punishes you because it doesn’t as yet understand that the disturbance it perceives as being outside of itself is itself. And so this unconscious nature keeps you ever seeking power and authority in the hopes that with enough of it, you will eventually have the force to be able to control your life. This is like throwing a rock into a pond to quiet the ripples. The more you toss in, the more waves you get. That is why what you really want is to leave yourself alone.
Question:
If neither my own feelings nor social and economic forces can make me feel safe and secure, where do I look for the power I need to be happy?
Answer:
Look for this power not in a person, place, possession, idea or belief, but through the new understanding that your higher, permanent nature needs no power outside of itself in order to be in charge of an inner or outer attacker. Its strength is a Silent Force It alone can do for you what you have been unable to do for yourself.
Silent Force is the understanding that you need not answer to any disturbance within you. You must not respond. You have been taught by wrong example and false traditions that negative thoughts and feelings such as fear, anger and hatred are something that you are responsible for; that they belong to you. You are indeed responsible for them, but not to them. Inner aches and dark feelings are not yours. They never have been and they never will be no matter how much these inner-impostors try to convince you otherwise.
When we seek some power to make a fear go away, all we have done is empowered the fear. There is no power that can make light out of darkness. Remember this lesson the next time you feel compelled to help yourself out of a dark inner thought or feeling. Remember the Silent Force. Go silent! This silence and inner-light will do for you what you have not been able to do for yourself. It will turn the dark inner-skies into pleasant blue ones. Go silent. Let the threatening clouds of thoughts and feelings go by. Behind them is the sun.
