For a long time this body looked to an external authority figure for validation and approval. In fact, this external authority figure was a compass that could tell whether the system was headed for disaster; potentially risking comfort, companionship, sustenance for loneliness, poverty, sickness and hunger. It choose jobs, relationships and circumstances based on what this external authority figure deemed to be the right direction. The dualistic paths of right and wrong were long determined. The body only knew how to navigate between the two.

What is described above is a form of power based on worldly seeking. It is a conditioned response to the environment and inevitably fails us. This world of right and wrong is completely determined by knowledge, by that what is known.

When the system abandons its predispositioned sources of knowledge and authority, it starts to recognize that there is a greater source of power available. A power that is beyond the world of right and wrong, earthly conditions and earthly possessions. The body is actually, completely petrified of this power, because it means that if it starts to use this power, it will have to take responsibilty for its actions.

Until we begin to seek that power, we are locked into the world of seeking; seeking for comfort, security, companionship, health, and of course, money.

This is a description of what might be appearing, and it is neither deemed right nor wrong. What these words are pointing to is a potential that exists, a possibility.

When one begins to loose hope in one’s external authority, (because inevitably this authority will let one down because it is subject to the world of cause and effect, and therefore loss), then one arrives at a place of hopelessness and desperation, some call it rock bottom. In this description, it is a place of grace.

Th parents die, the job is lost, one goes bankrupt, the partner leaves, the diagnoses comes…come what may, it is a call and an invitation into the Truth. The Truth that the real source of power is not in the world of form, yet it is in something that is beyond the apparent loss and brokenness, in fact it is something thinner, finer and more invisible than the early morning mountain mist. This Truth is not derived from the world of right and wrong, a world of knowledge, a world of predictability and order.

A place of desperation gifts one with the Truth that the power that they have, is actually the power that they are, which is something that is eternal. Yet it is not something they have or a thing they’re gifted with. It is beyond that which comes and goes, can be given or taken. It’s something that’s always been here, never left. It’s been there in the midst of (the apparent) you navigating life, relationships, health, work and money, it’s been there all along, silently witnessing, silently choosing, silently expressing.

Perhaps, the winter is a time of endings. Perhaps these endings are a call into the silence, into this stillness, into this extraordinary power not subject to cause and effect, or the cycles of birth and death. Perhaps this power is not simply in an authority figure, but in everything. In the words we write, in the texture of the curtains, in the tase of tea, in the feel of hugging someone, in the screams, in the pain, in the sound of a birds wings, or rain pellets pounding on the side walk, in the feel of tears, in the ache in the belly, even in the place that feels powerless, hopeless, scared…

Perhaps, we relinquish worldly power, for everything. Perhaps we abandon what we seek, and instead of gaining some “thing” in return, we simply become everything?

Silent, still, power.