You have been imprinted by people in this world who take power from others. Most people drain each other. Or, what is worse, they are draining you right now, psychically!
If you get in a battle with someone, you don't get their power if you win. Power is something that you have to acquire yourself, through self-inquiry and the practice of meditation.
Deluded beings think that if they get in a battle with a Zen Master or with a Don Juan, that it's going enhance their life if they win. You can never take power from someone else any more than you can take sunlight.
Those who practice lower sorcery hurt themselves the most because they interact with negative thoughts and apply power to them; they devastate their own consciousness and their own lives.
People who have power, who think negatively of others and seek to injure them, are practicing a kind of voodoo, a lower sorcery.
When you think an angry thought about someone, it's like hitting them.
You must control your anger and jealousy and possessive nature or, as you become more powerful and your will increases in strength, you will injure others.
It is a tremendous waste of energy to try to block anyone else. That same energy could be applied to furthering your own success.
We see a lot of people who decide to go out and teach meditation. They become so wrapped up in it that they stop progressing themselves and they really don't have that much more to teach.
It takes a lot of energy to manipulate someone and keep them on a string.
It is not necessary to wrap people up. The reason you're doing it is because you don't have enough power. If you had enough power, you could unlock your own personal power - you wouldn't need to control others.
I would define the proper use of power as something that creates happiness for yourself and others.
There is a difference between willing and forcing. Willing something simply means you are not being lazy. Forcing something means you are trying to do something inappropriate or in an inappropriate way.
The person of power uses their power to open up their mind to higher levels all the time, which creates tremendous happiness.
Only the fool wants to go into battle to beat someone for the satisfaction of beating someone.
A person who has power doesn't seek to challenge others, their battles are within.
A reverence for life needs to be developed, in which all things are sacred.
The big problem with power, of course, is obsession. Once you get some of it and feel it, it dominates your whole life and it's all you can think about. That doesn't have to happen.
If you use your will all the time, then it runs out. You deplete yourself and then, when you really need it, it's not there.
Say, for example, you develop the ability to make parking meters disappear. It's probably easier to put a quarter in it. That would be the wisdom on the subject.
Whatever you want you can get, when you understand the secret of will. But wisdom is needed so that you do not use your will abusively because you'll get hurt.
Without wisdom, power tends to destroy the one who wields it.
People want power but not wisdom. Power without wisdom is a very dangerous thing. Better to have wisdom first.
When willpower is not guided, it's terrible. Hitler had a lot of will. But he used it for destructive purposes because he lacked wisdom.
The challenge of power is how to use it and not abuse it. When you abuse it, it reverses on you and it hurts you.
