Letter 2025 #5: Is it Power or Force?
Beauty is a powerful motivator! Picture from Chiang Dao, northern Thailand
Dear Friend
How is your year going so far?!
Remember, when it comes to transforming our lives, it’s our responsibility—ability to respond—to keep active, proactive, creative and productive! And reflective to monitor how the changes you make are impacting on you and your life.
Last week I said I would comment on Q6, which was this:
Here are the italicised sections from the text collated in one place. I wanted to emphasise these bits as to me they are crucial to truly understand for ourselves. Reading through them, can you identify i) the macro-problem we face in life, ii) the consequences of this problem, iii) what the solution is, and iv) what benefits we will experience when we apply the solution.
>> We all suffer from ignorance of the nature of the mind. All problems we encounter in life are based ultimately upon not knowing the mind, and its functions…
>> From a wrong understanding of the mind, we develop wrong ideas about the world and run into difficulty in our social interactions…
>> All psychological problems are nothing more than a wrong use of the mind, which arises from ignorance of how the mind works. The solution to all our mental problems is to learn to use the mind properly…
>> More important than any examination of our personal or social problems is educating ourselves about the nature of the mind…
>> For all things in life, we must start with understanding the mind.
My thoughts and understandings
My understandings are firstly that Frawley totally defines in a nutshell the root causes of all the misery in our human world, and therefore reveals the solution. More specifically, my thoughts are:
i) The big problem, the mother of all problems if you like, is that we have a wrong relationship with life, which arises because we are ignorant of who we truly are, and of how our mind works.
ii) The consequence of this wrong relationship is almost perpetual stress within our body/mind/soul complex, as we frequently are not aligned with the ways of nature. I view spirituality as nothing less or more than living in harmony with the web of life and in alignment with one’s true nature.
Such stress leads to mental health issues, addictions, harmful habits, self-doubt, self-consciousness, depression, disconnect, negative thought patterns, and spiritual emptiness. Naturally enough, as we are one interconnected whole being, this array of harm to mind, consciousness and soul leads to all kinds of different ailments and symptoms in the body, which, if left unaddressed, lead to diseases. Life is not fun, not much enjoyable, doctor-dependent, and often one feels hopeless and powerless to change anything in today’s turbulent world.
iii) The solution to a problem is usually (probably always) sitting right next to the root cause of a problem. And so it’s clear that we should develop a right relationship with life, and we do this by learning about our mind and doing inner work to learn the true nature of who we are as a unique human being, yet simultaneously an integral part of the cosmic whole.
That is precisely what A Spiritual Revolution is! It is taking the path from wrong relationship to right relationship. It is self-inquiry and cultivating your learning and communication skills.
Right relationship with life means right relationship with yourself, with others, with nature and with the whole planet and her ecosystems. It becomes clear that we must focus on ourselves first, but in so doing, we learn how our own wellbeing is interdependent on the wellbeing of all others and our planet, and this is a life-changing realisation. “I’m alright Jack” does not cut the mustard, and in fact the speaker is under a big misunderstanding thinking it’s not their responsibility to take care of all life.
This, to my way of thinking, is the starting point for a world without war and conflict, and where solutions are easy to find when conflict does arise.
We literally need to find out who we are! Then we will know that causing harm to others is embracing that harm towards ourself. That seems crazy to do when we realise how it—life—works!
iv) Benefits?? Millions of them! I can summarise it all up in three words, the sub-title of my book: Health Harmony and Happiness. From this basis, you become creative, productive, healed, confident, compassionate, enthusiastic, motivated, and you find your purpose in life to direct you along. Live with meaning, and with passion. Don’t hide your wellbeing, live it and be a mentor for others to be inspired by.
One word on happiness. I hear comments like, ‘but you can’t be happy all the time’, as if pursuing happiness for even some of the time is therefore a wasted effort. What warped thinking! Personally speaking, as I convey in my book, what could be a more important objective in life than to be healthy and happy? Clearly we won’t be grinning like a Cheshire cat 24/7, but make health and happiness your road map and take life from that position, not one of dependent misery, made this way through a conflicted human world and lack of understanding of one’s mind and true nature.
The above truly encapsulates the big problem in our human world, why we labour under it, how it impacts on us, what its solution is, and what the expected benefits will be.
Learning to release the wrong relationship and to live with a right relationship, is a journey of transformational nature. It is filled with joys and good experiences as problem after problem shed themselves! It’s founded on self-inquiry and it is A Spiritual Revolution. Living with meaning, purpose, fun, joy, and good health… available if you so choose it.
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This week I’ve chosen a couple of pages from the brilliant Power vs Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behaviour by David Hawkins. The extract is from chapter 8, called The Source of Power.
We will follow the usual task-based learning procedure; quite simply the more practice you get the higher your abilities will become in a range of learning skills.
Pre-Reading Task
Before you read the extract, have a think about the following, making notes in your notebook or comparing thoughts and ideas with a friend.
Ordinarily, what do you think the words ‘power’ and ‘force’ mean in the practical reality of human relationships? Are either or both of them bad or good things?
Who or what do you think makes an ‘enemy’? How are enemies created? Can we live without enemies?
Reading Task
As you read the Extract, notice your reactions to what you read, and the meanings you are getting from reading what David Hawkins is communicating. At the end you’ll find a post-reading task.
Extract
Power vs Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behaviour
~ David Hawkins
Sometimes we need to compare a word to its ‘cousin’ in order to better understand what it means and what it can mean. I say this because today’s extract comes from a spiritual (and excellent) book written by David Hawkins called Power vs Force, and probably everybody knows the famous saying that ‘Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’.
However, as we shall read, this is not the case in Power vs Force. If we take that saying at face value, and accept its premise, then we have to conclude that power is bad because we know corruption is bad; at least in principle - if we ourselves become corrupt we may go into self-denial to live with our conscience.
What could ‘power’ mean??
“On examination, we'll see that power arises from meaning. It has to do with motive, and it has to do with principle. Power is always associated with that which supports the significance of life itself. It appeals to that part of human nature that we call noble – in contrast to force, which appeals to that which we call crass. Power appeals to what uplifts, dignifies, and ennobles. Force must always be justified, whereas power requires no justification. Force is associated with the partial, power with the whole.
If we analyse the nature of force, it becomes readily apparent why it must always succumb to power; this is in accordance with one of the basic laws of physics. Because force automatically creates counter-force, its effect is limited by definition. We could say that force is a movement – it goes from here to there (or tries to) against opposition. Power, on the other hand, is still. It's like a standing field that doesn't move. Gravity itself, for instance, doesn't move against anything. Its power moves all objects within its field, but the gravity field itself does not move.
Force always moves against something, whereas power doesn't move against anything at all. Force is incomplete and therefore has to be fed energy constantly. Power is total and complete in itself and requires nothing from outside. It makes no demands; it has no needs. Because force has an insatiable appetite, it constantly consumes. Power, in contrast, energises, gives forth, supplies, and supports. Power gives life and energy – force takes these away. We notice that power is associated with compassion and makes us feel positively about ourselves. Force is associated with judgement and makes us feel poorly about ourselves.
Force always creates counter force; its effect is to polarise rather than unify. Polarisation always implies conflict; its cost, therefore, is always high. Because force incites polarisation, it inevitably produces a win/lose dichotomy; and because somebody always loses, enemies are created. Constantly faced with enemies, force requires constant defense. Defensiveness is invariably costly, whether in the marketplace, politics, or international affairs.
In looking for the source of power, we've noted that it's associated with meaning, and this meaning has to do with the significance of life itself, Force is concrete, literal, and arguable. It requires proof and support. The sources of power, however, are inarguable and aren’t subject to proof. The self evident isn't arguable. That health is more important than disease, that life is more important than death, that honor is preferable to dishonor, that faith and trust are preferable to doubt and cynicism, that the constructive is preferable to the destructive – all our self-evident statements not subject to proof. Ultimately, the only thing we can say about a source of power is that it just “is”.
Every civilisation is characterised by native principles. If the principles of a civilisation are noble, it succeeds; if they are selfish, it falls. As a term, principles may sound abstract, but the consequences of principle are quite concrete. If we examine principles, we'll see that they reside in an invisible realm within consciousness itself. Although we can point out examples of honesty in the world, honesty itself as an organising principle central to civilisation does not independently exist anywhere in the external world. True power, then, emanates from consciousness itself; what we see is a visible manifestation of the invisible.”
Post-Reading Task
Ideally discuss these questions with a friend or two, but if you’re doing the reading on your own, then write down your thoughts in your notebook.
Reflecting upon the main differences between power and force as outlined by Frawley, apply these notions of power and force to your own life and see how your understanding of yourself and your life increases.
Now do the same by reflecting upon the use of power and force in your own culture and nation. Is yours a nation on the decline, or on the up? How can you better understand the bigger picture using Frawley’s concepts of power and force?
Frawley says that ‘power arises from meaning’, and that this has to do with motive and principle. Do you think that a struggling nation, or a struggling individual human being, or a troubled human world, is in this negative energy because motivation, principles and meaning in people’s lives are lacking? How do you feel in life when you’re on a mission to accomplish something?
How can you personally get more power into your life and more force out of your life? If force comes to you from somebody else, how can you intelligently and powerfully counteract it so that any potential effects of the force are prevented?
That’s it for this week. I might just add that, from my perspective of life and understanding of humankind, there’s never been a better time, nor a better opportunity, nor a more supportive psychological landscape in our world for empowering ourselves and transforming our lives. Regardless of what one thinks of Donald Trump, it’s unarguable that he is blowing in powerful winds of change to America, and therefore by extension, the whole world.
I’ve never known times like this in my whole life. Still many bad things can happen, but my gut feeling is that the human world has turned a corner. We are becoming more spiritual all the time, and of course, this means the ego (or my term, the ‘emind’!) is resisting big time! Transformation is a conscious journey, and it using our conscious mind that enables us to tell the ego to take a running jump when it is getting in our way.
Till next time
Philip
