Power vs Force

This morning I found myself looking at what is happening around the world and feeling outrage.

War. Suffering. Division. Governments acting in ways that many of their own people oppose. Human beings hurting while those who appear to hold power continue seemingly untouched.

And I found myself asking:

When do we stop merely talking?

When do we remember that we have power?

Then something shifted in me.

Perhaps we have confused force with power.

Force demands.

Force threatens.

Force dominates.

Force uses fear, division, control and sometimes violence to sustain itself.

But that is not power.

Power comes from somewhere much deeper.

There is within every one of us something that existed before the labels, the politics, the religions, the nationalities and the divisions.

For me, that is God.

That Divine spark of Life that ignited the first human cell at conception. The Higher Power within. The Presence beneath everything we have accumulated, believed, feared and experienced.

And the nature of that Power is Love.

Perhaps our first act, then, is not to fight.

Perhaps our first act is to return within.

And there, perhaps we begin by forgiving ourselves.

Forgiving ourselves for becoming caught in the fear.

For becoming consumed by the outrage.

For giving our attention endlessly to what frightened or angered us.

For forgetting, even temporarily, who and what we are.

Then we forgive those who do not yet see what we see.

Not because we excuse suffering, injustice or destructive behavior.

Love does not require blindness.

We can tell the truth.

We can refuse cooperation with injustice.

We can protect one another.

We can organize.

We can protest.

We can demand accountability.

We can use every peaceful means available to us to change what must be changed.

But we do not have to hate.

Because the moment hatred becomes the energy from which I act, the very force I oppose has begun reproducing itself through me.

And I refuse that.

I choose another Power.

The Power of Love.

Not sentimental love.

Not passive love.

Not love that turns its face away from suffering.

I mean the Love that stands in Truth.

The Love that says No when No is required.

The Love that refuses to dehumanize even the human being whose actions it opposes.

The Love that remembers that beneath everything humanity has constructed, we came from One Source.

Perhaps this is where our collective power has been waiting.

Not outside of us.

Within us.

And when I consciously surrender myself to that Higher Power within me, I am no longer standing alone against the enormity of the world.

Because I alone am nothing.

But I, consciously aware of the Higher Power of God within me, am no longer operating from force.

I am standing in Power.

And from that place, I can send something different into my family, my community, my country and outward into the world.

Not more fear.

Not more rage.

Not another enemy.

Love. Truth. Light.

Imagine millions of human beings doing that—not withdrawing from the world, but entering it consciously.

Speaking.

Acting.

Creating.

Refusing injustice.

Helping the suffering.

Holding leaders accountable.

And doing it without surrendering ourselves to hatred.

Perhaps that is the revolution.

Not simply changing who occupies the seat of power.

But remembering where Power actually lives.

Today, I forgive myself for forgetting.

I forgive those who have forgotten too.

I withdraw my energy from fear and hatred.

I turn within.

I surrender to the Higher Power of God within me.

And from that place, I choose Love.

Because force can compel the body.

Force can frighten the mind.

Force can dominate for a season.

But force cannot become Power simply by becoming louder.

And when humanity remembers the Power from which we came, perhaps the structures sustained by fear, division and unconscious participation will finally encounter something they cannot manufacture:

A people who remember who they are.

We are not powerless.

We have simply forgotten where the Power lives.

And perhaps it is time to remember.