Episode 40 Power versus Force ...applied to everyday life 11-11-23
Sat, Nov 18, 2023 11:42AM • 24:19
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
power, force, body, principle, alignment, align, sense, environment, forceful, larger, espoused, lines, skill, experience, apply, altruistic, discuss, bigger, love, podcast
Welcome back, folks to Episode 40 of the Running Man self regulation skills and self improvement project podcast with me your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez PhD in health psychology, a licensed professional counselor and an adjunct professor at a local community college. And what we're going to be discussing this lovely Saturday morning is power versus force. Power versus force is a book that was written by Dr. David R. Hawkins a number of years back, and really espouses some really important details as to the difference between being forceful and physically making things happen, versus aligning with power something bigger than ourselves, such as a principle along the lines of love, and compassion, this sort of thing. And those sound very altruistic. And yes, this can be a very big topic, but in the practical sense how I apply this to self regulatory skills, and how I can manage my movement through my life as I know it through my world and my relationships, and interactions. That's where this becomes exceedingly useful as a principal, but also as a perspective tool, moving forward to make things better, and to increase the quality interactions that we have in our lives, in greater quantity. And who doesn't want that. So power versus force, what is power, what is force are going to be the two things we'll define first. And we'll start with force since this one's a little easier. And force basically has to do with those things that I can physically put my hands on and create influence with that often I can push and pull and manipulate to make in the sense of influence, make things happen, encourage people to do things. And this is by our verbiage, by our behaviors, by our influence plied by our body language, our tones, and also the things that we may promise or imply, or encourage or expect, that may shape how we do and interact with people. And these things will create either beliefs misbeliefs, depending on how accurate the information is, and also may also encourage some things that may or may not be particularly healthy, such as stressors, or behaviors based on stress are those things that make us not want to stress. Because life is too hard. That's a belief, based on the things that I'm experiencing, I have no power to change my life are those things that occur in my world, and things are out of my control. Notice those are awesome, really negative beliefs. Those are in line with force. Now the negative aspect of forces that I'm creating more of a versus the yin and yang balance, I have more of a yin draw, or sucking, suckish quality wherever I am drawn downhill down in, it's almost a gravity that keeps us down. And you've probably heard terms like this one over people's experience, feelings of feeling hopeless, helpless, not knowing what to do in a situation, being overwhelmed when situations are bigger than us and succumbing to the force of an environment. And we spoken a lot about environment from the skin out also, the impact of the external environment changes what goes on with the skin in our internal environment, or neurotransmitters, feelings, emotions, thoughts, beliefs that come as a result of how we interact with our environment. And that's the nature versus nurture thing being out of balance where the nature becomes basically afflicted by what is inflicted upon it by the environment, if it is stressful or dangerous. For instance, not in all cases, but yet along those lines, but that helpless, I can't do anything to stop this hopeless. I have no sense of understanding of what's going on. It's too much for me, and I don't know what to do. And this is where we start having that anxiety, depression aspect and the shame, guilt, the internal environment start to roll and turn like a wheel very quickly in our minds, and bring about self adjudications that are really hard. Now that is force applied, and being overwhelmed by something that would be more powerful. And even if the environment is stressful, we can consider that a source of power that's bigger than what force can apply. And it's a perfect example of me trying to muscle my way through it. or make things happen whenever things aren't allowing it to happen, because there are things in quotes, and I am flexing my air quotes right now, beyond my control, we can't control everything. That's an absolute. But we can't control all things. But there are things that we can control. And we lose focus whenever we zoom out and look at the big thing as what Ken Wilber, in his writings would call a whole lawn, in quotes, a whole long mean the whole everything being a whole versus seeing it. And it's more wall like brick like structures, in a sense of a metaphor that I'm using, wherever its bits and pieces put together, individual bricks, put together to make up a wall, so to speak, and therefore it stands as part of a larger hole. But yet, we tend to forget that it's elemental. And if we want to break that wall, we could, we could start by hitting the masonry, joints, whoever, all the cement and stuff, joined the bricks together and create a weakness that we can apply force judiciously at a lower level and make a change to that larger structure. So can we apply force against power? Yes, but it tends to be a little daunting. It's like taking a brick to the very, at the very bottom and trying to break it of a 10 storey building, that's probably not going to work so well and probably won't topple the building too much force involved. So I think I've defined what force is and how that tends to be more of a manmade physical limited by the material 3d existence that we experienced. And that kind of gives us a definition for what we're working with moving forward with this discussion. Now, let's just discuss power. And let's define that to the best of our ability. And if we're looking at power, power isn't always a bad thing. And I know that there are many cliches out there that have to do with power and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And I do not agree with that. I do believe that there are those that could become corrupted whenever they're running an ego game. And whenever we're doing that, the ego syntonic thing and that my ego believes that the power that it holds is some how having to do with the value of the individual's self image or ego self or that somehow they've elevated themselves, from the most base to somehow higher and above versus realizing that the materialism and the power and the influence that they've gained, or forceful influence, or creation of force, at the limited human level is somehow greater than what it is, and we all lose power. We see what happens to our politicals whenever they're out and about. And people are taking shots at them, we realize how human they really are. And this isn't making right or wrong about that, but just using as an example. So what is power? Is the question that I'm asking, and how do we define this? And the more altruistic sense, the way David Hawkins in his book mentions that is that power would be along the lines of aligning with love, for instance, and this is the universal altruistic love. This is not the love in the romantic sense, even though that has a sense of measurable power, so to speak, on his scale, and those are the good feelings. And yes, it is physical at first, and you have the chemical romance going on. And there's nothing wrong with that those are good things. But that's not power that's still at the force level. But can that get to the point of generative power? Yes, it can, if someone actually does become in love with somebody, and they care for somebody, and even to the point where they would be willing to sacrifice themselves to help each other, then we're starting to see the growth in power that started from a point of force. And it may have been a powerful thing in the beginning in the sense of how they experienced it. But that is an example a smaller example, a larger example would be fear, the way he measured it is about on a scale of one to 1000, about 100. And that's being in the survival level mode. And I talk a lot about survival level things, but also speak about things that help us get through that and rise above that, so that we don't get stuck in that fear and fighting and the fight flight mode at all times, because that is very bad. It's corrosive to the body. Of course, you know, the cortisol and the glucocorticoids are useful for survival mode. But for a continuous chronic state. It's bad on the organs bad on the body that joints and makes us more apt to develop health conditions that
aren't good. And power. Once again, what is this if we were to align with something that was power and fear is along the lines of high level of forcefulness experience, but also a measure of power of 100 On a scale of one to 1000? Were just local, according to Dr. Hawkins and his scale low falls in the range of 500 and that is a very high level. This is in a sense a very be altruistic love, not a conditional love, one, wherever we have love for species love for animals, that sort of thing and those things that are living. And I'm not saying necessarily anything about dietary choices or anything along those lines, but wherever we have care and regard for our fellow human beings, and being a good human, and being a nice human being to each other, that sort of thing. So that would scale out at about 500. And this is wherever you might say, say to somebody, a peace be with you. And this is not necessarily a religious thing. But that is something that we see applied in religious circles. But even outside of religious circles, when you see somebody, and you wish them well and tell them, Hey, be safe, take care, be careful, and you may not know them, give them a smile, hey, they carry yourself out there, that's well wish. Those are within the range of the four to 500 range of loving another without necessarily having an intimacy of family or relationship, but just being generally kind to those that are at large. And whenever we look at the higher scores, the altruistic, compassionate love, that has to do with having compassion for all beings and things, we started approaching the level of 700, that is closer to the area of what we would call enlightenment, which means every step you take every breath you that you draw, is within that realm of I'm continuously compassionate and loving. And this is where we start seeing our avatars are Christ like beings, wherever we have those that have become enlightened since we have the historic designation of Christ in history, this sort of thing, and I'm not pushing religion one way or the other, but just as an example, along the scale, because he measured that he also measured Mother Teresa Gandhi, and what, what he did and Martin Luther King and those being very altruistic patterns that they that they lived and espoused, but also that they did and sacrifice for, for the larger whole. So just some ideas. So what is power? Have I defined it yet? Not perfectly yet. But the principles that were driving them were measurable, but to align with powers to align with something bigger than yourself. And I'm going to use two terms. One is from a book called the Magus of Java, written by Costas Antonio's, that's actually his pen name. But he'd studied with a martial artist that was in a video many years back, I remember seeing those my dad when he was still alive. And it was before I'd gone into the military, and it was a documentary on Java and Indonesia, they called Ring of Fire. And they introduced this man that was able to do acupuncture, and had a great deal of energetic capacity. Whether you believe in that or not that I tend to have my own opinions about that. They'll discuss it some other time. But the omegas was able to actually do what was called Pyro Canisius, and actually run electrical energy through these needles, but there was no way that they could find that he was faking it, or using some sort of device to make these people jump and Twitch, whenever the needles were in, because he was doing acupuncture. He was a high level martial artist, a meditator and, and a traditional Chinese medical doctor and a Chinese community in Java, in Jakarta, believe or near Jakarta. But the important thing that I want to mention about this book is that John D Jiang, or John Chang, as they knew him, mentioned, that he believed in one source of the One God, which was highly unusual for having been brought up in mostly Southeast Asian community, and not really espousing a religion, in particular, by his experience in connection, but he talked about aligning with Joe doe, Joe doe, meaning heavens will, in the more Western sense of what we understand that comes out of the east, of course, the idea of God's will or divine will. And these are bigger things beyond self beyond ego, self, beyond individual self beyond our groups that we live in valid villages and countries. And we're talking about truly a principle that would become very powerful, whenever we're in alignment with So to define power, this is along the lines of that idea. And that would actually scale out closer to from about 700. On Hawkins scale closer to about 900. Because we're talking about the identity of what we would call day or, or, or, or God or the divine, or heaven, this sort of thing if you believe in such things, but in principle, something bigger than ourselves in principle along the lines of compassion, altruistic Love and Compassion starts approaching that. So now we have this larger sense of definition of what that principle of power is and how I aligned with it has to do with how I don't struggle or force my way through things, and being able to pay attention to those things that are larger than me. And yes, being able to manipulate and change things, to the degree that I can, it doesn't mean sitting there, like a bump on the log asking for the divine to do for you. Understanding that, whenever we are in line with principle, higher principle of power, then we are actually moving much more easily. And I will give some examples, that gives us a feel or, or the sense of the pulse of whenever I am in alignment with power. Now to get away from those two definitions now and just go towards the practical aspect of self regulatory skill. So how can I tell whenever I'm managing my emotions, my thoughts, my feelings, my life and my relationships and interactions and communications in a way that I could say that it's powerful, or it's in alignment with power? One is, that is a symptom of being in alignment with power and mind you kind of do it as a symptom and a logical thing, what am I seeing, whenever I'm in alignment with power, versus being forceful, or being in line with force. And that's going to be that things tend to come more easily. And one of the, one of the things that I will say is that whenever you are in alignment with power, or things that should be going on, to say that it's in alignment with Joe doe, just for my own principle, the heavens will there is a sense of grace, there is a sense of things not getting in the way. And if things do they tend to be overcome, rather easily. And it's almost like a token resistance, if there's any resistance at all. And the more in alignment you are, the more you realize, it seems like the universe is playing out in your favor, things are playing out in your favor circumstances playing out in your favor, whichever term you'd like to use, but there's a sense of unity with what's going on. There isn't a sense of I'm impacting with this. And, and I have to somehow wrestle with it and make things happen. There tends to be ease that goes along with this. So there's an efficiency by default, that occurs and that you're not expending a whole lot of energy to not only experience what it is that you're doing relationship, communication, or maybe even talking to somebody even if it's something that you would have probably expected to be difficult or somehow cumbersome. And then it's like, Well, that's easy. That's too easy. It's like falling off a cliff or pouring water takes no skill at all, it seems you know, and whenever you have that you have a sense of grace going through. And there's that sense of align with power. And power isn't something that I always make the intention to be in alignment with power. But whenever we are in alignment, you may note that there are certain
ways of thinking certain ways of doing and feeling that you might be experiencing that make it easier to allow that to happen. Now, in the traditional Chinese martial arts that I've trained in Tai Chi Chuan, tai chi, in particular, usually it's allotted for great health benefits. And being largely an old folks exercise I am not old folks have been practicing since I was a young person for the most part for many years. But it is not that it is a devastating martial art when trained for that. But for health, it is incredibly useful up into our ladder years. And that is a good thing. Now, why I'm using this as an example is that the principle of intrinsic power, power that we have naturally occurring on our body, not anything you have to do to use it, because it's already there. And it isn't a Bogey, Bogey, esoteric, you know, thing that I'm drawing in for myself in selling my soul to the devil power, not that what I'm talking about is what our body does, whenever we're most relaxed. We're most aligned, and most naturally breathing, breath, alignment in root. And good structure gives you a natural power. And intrinsic power can be applied through that with the least amount of effort. That means no force, or very little force and the maximum amount of output. And this means that we have a development of power. When we aligned with, for instance, the earth and gravity, we tend to route and our structure seems to be heavier than normal when our bodies still the same. But yet this is leveraging or using what we would call Unity, or joining with a larger force, that's the earth. So if you're truly rooted, and you push somebody, you're getting pushed not just by me standing on the earth, but I'm pushing you off of the earth making you jump back a few feet, if that's what we're doing, just pushing because I'm using the earth beneath me and I'm rooting into it and the earth is pushing you plus me. So it's kind of a nice feel. So just as an illustration that It is an idea of intrinsic force. But our body intrinsically has the capacity for this. Think about a baby. And I've been thinking about babies lately, and I'm just giving a shout out there, because my second son just recently, he and his significant other person have had a baby. So they've made me grandpappy. And that's kind of a cool thing. And she's a very strong individual. And how is she strong, whenever she is a little helpless baby, you would think one of the things is that babies when they do things, and Tai Chi is well known for using this adage, is that being natural, like a baby confers power. And that has to do with the fact that if you ever noticed a baby, and whenever they grabbed something, it's not just with their hand, it's all of them all their body is involved. And it's an incredibly strong grip, even though it's really relaxed. And it really sticks to you when they hold your finger, or they get your hair or grab something they shouldn't be. And sometimes they they have a rattle, and they have what we would call as an adult a death grip on it, when in actuality it's the grip of life because it is very powerful. But something to think about. Because the more natural and relaxed we are, the more rounded Our bodies become less rigid. And it's not so much that we shouldn't be upright and straight or structure should support what we're doing. But physically, whenever we're more relaxed, we are apt to feel more at ease in our environment. And that is plying power in your environment, you don't have to be doing anything in particular. But sometimes it's this self way of being just that relaxed state of being that confers power in what you do. And sometimes whenever we're most at ease is whenever we feel the most flow, so to speak, whenever we're doing things, and therefore we have an alignment with power. And these are the things I wanted to touch upon today, because they're very important to what we're going to be discussing moving forward with the podcast, as we're discussing not only application of skill, to make self regulation more effective, but also to hopefully encourage and grow the possibility of gaining more quality of life experiences, having more influence in those things that are really important to us without necessarily being forceful or ungraceful. And these things apply in a physical sense. And they're things that we can practice in a physical sense, that have transfer of training or skill, do things that we apply and how we interact with people. So in that vein, today, we'll discuss power versus force as an idea, and we'll we'll be hitting more on these principles as we go forward. And I just want to tell you, thank you for sharing the Saturday morning with me, it's been an exciting week for me. And I will tell you, it's an exciting time moving forward because the podcast continues. And I'm looking forward to the near future with this podcast, or we're going to pivot some directions as far as other platforms, YouTube is one of the areas that we'll be going to when they change over to the the RSS feed, and I'll be delivering this podcast there as well. And we're probably going to be loading some videos as we go. But for now, if you have any feedback, any questions, or anything that you'd like to add, or you need suggestions, please do send those to me at Running Man. Get skills project at Gmail. And I would be happy to talk to you listen to you, and hopefully adjust what it is we're doing here. If you want to hear something discussed, whether it be psychological or application strategic, this sort of thing, or anything you'd like to hear about, please let me know. And I'd be more than happy to accommodate and share some of those ideas as well. And I appreciate your time once again. So I hope they have a good week going forward. Thank you for your time once again. Walk well