"It's not so much that we won't keep our
fingers
out of the
machinery.
It's that we're totally convinced the
machinery
needs
fixing."
... Laurence Platt
This essay,
Unfamiliar
Position Of
Power,
was written at the same time as
WEmess
so much with the stuff of our lives, trying to tweak it
and bang it all into shape so that it
works
- or at least so that it
works
in a way we assume will be better than the way it currently
works.
Somehow (and it doesn't matter
how
or
why,
but somehow ...) we've come to
believe
that tweaking it and banging it all into shape will
fix
whatever the problem is. It takes an
enlightenedact
to let it all alone ie to let it be exactly the way it is and exactly
the way it isn't. Perhaps it's us
futilely
trying to tweak it and bang it all into shape which is at
the heart
of the problem - there's actually
nothing wrong
with any of it
the way it is
(or with
the way
it isn't).
Why the idea of there being
nothing wrong
with it all
the way it is
(or with the way it isn't) is sometimes challenging for us to
get,
is we start from the premise of taking it circumstantially
when in fact it only has real
power
when we start from the premise of taking it experientially. When
we start from the premise of taking it circumstantially, all that's
available to us is to try to
fix
or adjust the circumstances, to move them around, to avoid them, to try
them on in new combinations, or to prioritize them in a different
order. And yet that just proves it's always "plus ça change,
plus c'est la même chose", Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr's
famous
French
epigram which is usually translated as "the more things change, the
more they stay the same", yes? However when we start from the premise
of taking it experientially rather than circumstantially, what that
provides a
clearing
for are new possibilities to bring to the same
existing circumstances. That's
direct access.
That's real
power.
Transformation
comes not with re-arranging the circumstances (no matter what they
are), neither with trying to tweak them nor with banging them into
shape, but rather with holding them ie with experiencing them in a new
context.
Transformation
doesn't look like anything in particular.
We say with
transformation,
nothing
changes. The circumstances all stay the same. Yet there's a new
way
of being, a new leverage (if you will) on living which
isn't so much an improvement or even a betterway
to live (and if you
consider
it to be either of those, you'll ruin it faster than a furnace ruins a
snowflake), but rather it just plain
works
- simply because it comes from being aligned with
the waylife
is, rather than trying to
manipulate
it into being
the way
we'd like it to be or into
the way
we want it to be.
Standing
in
transformation
(which is to say coming fromtransformation)
is a (no, arguably the)powerful,
authentic
place to
standwith
integrity.
Yet because the circumstances don't look any different, it's
chickenshit easy to debase
transformation
- which is to say to not take responsibility for generating it (listen:
the first
deadly sin
with
transformation
is proclaiming that it, once experienced, has "faded away"
... when in fact if it's
true
it's "faded away", it's because it's we who ceased generating
it in the first place). Going to exactly where we are with
exactly what's going on, no matter what it looks like, no matter how
much we may wish it to be different or want to change it, may just be
the best place to go for
transformation
- I don't know where it's likely to go better (as Robert Lee Frost may
have said).
Standing
with exactly what is (whatever it is) and with exactly what isn't,
gives access to the sweet spot, our
power
center, our position of
power,
our being in the zone. For most of us, given that we're
hell-bent on changing what is (and what isn't), that may
be an
unfamiliar
position of
power.
Yet the
unfamiliarity
doesn't lessen its
power.
Being with whatever's going on exactly
the way
it is and exactly
the way
it isn't, allows for the possibility of being
powerful.
The most
powerful
position in which to
stand,
it turns out, may just be
standingwherever you are right now - no changing, no
fixing,
no tweaking, and no banging into shape required.
For most of us this may indeed be an
unfamiliar
position. Nonetheless this
unfamiliar
position I assert is the most
powerful
position there is in which you'll ever
stand.