POWER ADDENDUM

As I think about power and how little I actually seem to have, I am becoming more reconciled to the idea that there is nothing I can do about anything. For example, I can apply for a number of jobs and talk myself into looking forward to working at any one of them and shower each job opening with gobs of positive energy, and if I land an interview, I can make a supreme effort to "sell" my Self. But I still don't have the power to force the interviewer to give me the job. Something else has to happen for this to take place. I think it might be some sort of divine intervention or energy of spirit that actually gets one the job offer.

As I investigate power in my life, I find myself delving deeper and deeper below the "surface" into that which causes the functions of my life. For example, and harping back to "Who has seen the Wind," what creates the entire mechanism of walking my body? In other words, I have the intent to walk. Where does this intent come from? What is making it happen? Is it my willpower? But it must be so much more than that. When I really truly deeply contemplate the arising of the intent to walk, I realize that I haven't a clue where it comes from.

Last night, I was listening to Big Sword Swinging in which Adyashanti tackles the subject of power. How opportune!!! In Big Sword Swinging, Adya has a discussion with a woman about getting out of bed. She explains that when she wakes up, she might be feeling too lazy to get up and Adya replies that if she is going to lay there being lazy, it is because there "is a lack of intention to do otherwise." Adya then claims that when the intention to get up arises, it does so spontaneously and the mind takes credit for it. Hmmm!!! He goes on to tell her that thousands of meditators all over the world think that they have the power to stop the mind and they refuse to see that they don't. The mystery deepens and with it, my realization that I probably have no power whatsoever and I might as well give up trying to make things happen as I will never succeed.

During this morning's reading from Joel Goldsmith's "Our Spiritual Resources," I was intrigued by the following paragraphs:
     "All limitation of whatever nature must be recognized as the carnal mind, which is made up of the belief in two powers, but which actually is not a mind since there is only one mind. This carnal mind has no law to maintain it and is not God-ordained or God-sustained. Therefore, in dealing with any problem of limitation, first recognize it as the carnal mind which is not a power, but a nothingness, the "arm of flesh"; and then, as you contact the Father within, realize your oneness with the Spirit, and feel that answering "click," you are at-one with your opportunity -- with your position, with any capital necessary with which to carry on your business, or for that matter with help of any kind, human or mechanical.
     If you needed a piece of machinery and if that piece of machinery were three thousand miles away, as soon as you recognized limitation as impersonal carnal mind, always without power and presence, and after you made your contact with God, it would be on its way to you. If you needed a book, and if it were at the other end of the world, as soon as you recognized lack in any form as impersonal error and after you made your God-contact, that book would find its way to you. It is a recognition that whatever is needed is to be found within your own consciousness, not somewhere external to it, and it appears when the need is felt because it has been embodied in your consciousness since the beginning of time." (p.41).

I do not entirely understand these instructions, or rather, have no idea how to perform them, but I think that these instructions are pointing to the fact that a source that I am hardly aware of is the only power and I have to somehow connect with it in order to cause functionality in my life. These paragraphs resemble some of the teaching of Abraham-Hicks. But listening to Adya talking about God or Source being the one that draws one to Itself and not the other way around, I continue to think that my carnal mind has absolutely no power: can it even make choices or are those also a domain of Source?

Namaste