Mike’s Common Sense
The age-old battle for Man to figure out is, “Do I try to acquire power, or do I follow the path of love?”
A quick look through our past shows that a vast majority of people are in the business of getting power. The pitiful few that have sought love are the martyrs that we all are so familiar with. Even in our so-called “enlightened times” the occultists, the religions, the political systems — most everybody — is very interested in power.
Power is, as they say, intoxicating. It must be some some really good shit, considering the millions of people murdered for the sake of power.
MIKE’S LAW: “The final lesson to be learned is love.”
Power is for the ego, or the “small self”. The ego has a need to have attention paid to it. The more attention paid to an ego, the greater its feelings of self-importance. The more self-importance an ego feels, the farther that ego places itself from others. This is the breeding ground for all kinds of atrocities.
When one seeks love over power, the ego shrinks. One starts to relate to others — to care. One starts to think about something other than the small self. This is a major step in one’s spiritual evolution.
Power is always held closely, lest you lose it, but to be had, one has to give love. That’s the great thing about love. You can give away all you want, and you will never run out. Because the more you give, the more you receive, and there is nothing more intoxicating than love.
That’s the power of love. .
Interesting blog. I believe in the power of love but I also like to think that I own my power and only I do. To have power for oneself is a very enlightening experience as long as we don’t let it go to our head, or our ego. I say this probably from my own personal experience. About love and power. Though what your speaking of may be a different degree than what I’m about to explain but all in all the results could be the same.
We are each our own individual being, only we have the power to change for ourselves. Particularly for the better. Yet if we have not evolved ourselves as we grow and mature then we might have a tendency to give that power away.
I am 44 years old and when I was 19 I fell in love. I was captivated by this man’s presence. Little did I know then how naive I would become. When I first met him, we were in love. I thought to myself this was the man I was going to marry, the man I would spend the rest of my life with. Early on though in the beginning of our relationship I saw a part in him that I never would have imagined. It was a kind of control that he had over me. It slowly manifested itself into a power that I got trapped in. I was young and naive, I came from a broken family and after I met him we began a family of our own. I found out I was pregnant less than a year after we met. I had a miscarriage but got pregnant again just a few months later. We had a boy. Less than two years later we had another boy. Then a girl and another girl followed. We were together for almost 14 years, but throughout all those years I hoped for change. I hoped he would change but he never did. From the very start of our relationship he showed me his power, his control and it only grew increasingly worse as the years went by.
It wasn’t until my later years (when I was in my 30’s) that I realized I was in an extremely abusive relationship. Mentally, verbally, emotional psychological and sometimes on occasion there were bouts of physical abuse as well. Before I knew it, I was trapped and he called all the shots. I was under his control and I never even realized it. It was a kind of mind control, I think because from his past his upbringing, and when I came into his life I became that one thing he could control. I was only 19 when I met him and even though we were starting a family of our own, I held onto to the slightest bit of hope that one day he would change his hostile and controlling ways. It never happened. Through the years it only got worse and I lived with empty promises from him saying, “It’ll never happen again” until it did. Before I knew it, he had complete control over my life, even my thoughts at one point. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere, without him knowing what I was doing or who I was seeing. He wanred me home to take care of the kids. Just as my mother did while I was growing up. I grew up in the era of believing a woman’s place was in the home. I wasn’t educated on anything different. Yet throughout those years that I was that stay-at-home-mom, I never realized then that I was giving up my power to be my own person. He didn’t want me driving, he alienated me from my family. I had no life except with him.
He had control of everything, the house, the finances, even our children. He minimized me and demeanored me as a mother. He dominated over us all. I can still remember when our kids used to walk on eggshells not knowing what kind of mood he would be in when he got home from work. When I began to realize this, I tried leaving him a few number of times, but when I did, I always went back. He would use his cunning tactics to get me to come back
Guilting me, saying I was breaking up our family, taking the kids away from him. Threatening suicide etc. Until one day I found my out. It was a safe house, a shelter for victims of domestic violence. When I left him a final time, I took my children with me and were gone before he came home from work that day. I remember the night befired I left him, my youngest son came to me and said Dad is getting mean again! That I later learned was called the “honeymoon phase”.
It was a pattern for him, every time I tried leaving him before that, he would promise things would change and he would be all nice and perfect until he got mean again.
Anyway, the point to my story here is that somewhere over the years I let him have that power and control over him. It wasn’t until I was 33 years old when I finally got the strength to leave him and find a way out. When I left him, our children were 12, 10, 8 and 4 years old. Today they are 23, 21, 19 and 15.
When I made the decision to leave him it was because I didn’t want my children to grow up in the hostile environment that we were in. I didn’t want my boys growing up to be like him and I didn’t want my girls to grow up thinking it’s okay to be treated like that. They watched him treat me like I was a piece of crap, and we all walked on eggshells with him all the time because he was sometimes like a grenade, we just didn’t know what would set him off!
It didn’t end there, in fact it only got worse from there, which began a 7 year long custody battle and a bitter divorce. The custody battle was one of the most heartwrenching experiences of my life. Because our children were just a pawn for him, to try and hurt me and break me down. He used then to hurt me and little did he ever realize that they were the ones hurt by all of it.
After suffering from years of abuse, I realized I gave him that power and I learned how to reclaim that for myself. I got my power back after so many years. The power to actually think for myself and be my own person without him critizing me for my own hopes and dreams. He literally made me believe I was worthless. I was nothing but a doormat for him and that’s what my children grew up knowing.
I have come to learn that I have a voice, I have a mind of my own and how I choose to live is my freedom. I guess the moral of my story is this….
We all are each our own person and no one has a right to tell us how we choose to be. We all have a God given right to be free thinkers and have our very own individuality. How we choose to be is up to us and I don’t think any one person has the right to tell us differently.
Power is intoxicating yes, I believe it is, but at what cost! I don’t think he realizes then, the damage he was doing to us all, but for him it did come at a cost.
We are now divorced (I like to say that I am a happily divorced woman) and since my divorce I have evolved into the person I was meant to be. I was sheltered and isolated for so long, it was almost mind numbing and the lesson I learned from this is that no one will ever be able to have that kind of control over me ever again. I am confident in myself and only I have the power to choose how I want to live my life.
Anyway, thank you for allowing me to share.
Best regards,
MamaButterfly
Hi Mama! Thanks for your comment. Most of us have learned the hard way to take the path of love over power. Very happy to hear you have grown from your experience.