Digging Deeper

“A power struggle collapses when you withdraw your energy from it. Power struggles become uninteresting to you when you change your intention from winning to learning about yourself.” — Gary Zukav

 

 I found  this quote on a tarot blog that I read (when I remember).  It is from a book called The Heart of the Soul: Emotional Awareness. The reason that it stands out to me is that it is something that my counselors have been telling me. And I think that they use Zukav's work as reference material.

One of the reasons that this particular quote jumps out at me is that I have been involved in two very strong struggles this year. The first is in my family. The second is at work. When I break down this quote by sentence, I see that in the family struggle, it is over because I am removing myself from the situation. Permanently. The work struggle is not. I am fully engaged in that struggle. And that, I think, has the second statement at the crux of it.

Power struggles are interesting. And, properly motivated, they are necessary. I think. My intention in the family struggle was to free myself from the battle to maintain who I am and be free from the tyranny of a Dominant Personality. I decided that I was tired of being bullied. I was tired of my own desires for attachment being used to manipulate me. So I drew a line. My intention in the work struggle was to also stand up for myself. But that was only a minor consideration. My intention was to win the battle. But if I keep fighting that fight I could lose my job.

If my only option is to learn something about myself because winning the fight puts me in jeopardy in other areas of my life then it is time to learn something about me. As introspective as I am, I didn't think that there was too much about me that I didn't already know.

So I guess it's time to dig a little deeper.