It is important for us to remember: The search for power begins with our minds.
Many of us use our minds to search for power in different ways. Some of us use books, schools, bombs, guns, churches, movies, money, and so on. While some of us use meditation, prayer, mind-body practices, and so forth.
What is important for us to remember in all these situations; we are using our minds to guide us. And that our minds are filled with beliefs and values acquired primarily from outside sources.
When we acquire a lot of information about history, politics, religion, and so forth, we use this information to navigate our way through the illusions of people, places, and things. And unfortunately, as we navigate the treacherous challenges of overcoming the illusions distorting our clarity, we become powerless to the illusions we are seeking to overcome.
After awhile, we believe that our beliefs in religion and politics, for example, are sacrosanct. So if we are born into a Baptist-Democrat family, we accept these beliefs as being who we are. And for most of us after we do this, we eschew ideas about pursuing other religious and political beliefs.
Similarly, some of us understand and accept the rights of others to have different religious and political beliefs, but we do so believing we have superior ones. We are quite content believing we are who our beliefs tell us we are.
In the main, once we embody certain beliefs and values, we keep them. And this intransigence philosophy keeps us going around in circles. In other words, we are searching for our inner-power by using the light from our illusions to guide us to this power.
Nevertheless, we continue inexorably on our spiritual journeys with flickering lights of illusory beliefs and values guiding us in our search for the ultimate power of The Creator.
Unfortunately, many of us, despite pronouncements by the enlightened ones, believe this power exists outside of our minds. So our searches are limited by our beliefs. That is, it's too difficult for us to believe that such power exists in our minds.
Meanwhile, it's not easy for many of us to enlighten our minds. And whether we know it or not, it wasn't easy for others either. It takes a lot of courage to free our minds.
For us to achieve enlightenment at the level of those we now worship and believe did so, we must be willing to move beyond our family-societal beliefs and values. This means we must have the courage and commitment to enlightenment to withstand the inevitable criticism from them.
The commitment to enlightment requires us to lose ourselves (the illusions) in order for us to find ourselves (enlightenment).
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