A Source of Power (standard:non fiction, 2378 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Dec 17 2010	Views/Reads: 2921/1964	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Peace and Power are two sides of the same coin. Both can be found inside you. Here's where to look.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

fulfilled -- simply retain a token of each event (or make one (buy one 
if you haven't kept a souvenir) and put them in a bag or a necklace 
hung from your neck, or in a box that you carry with you all the time. 
Each token has the power to recall the ego-boosting feeling of an event 
in your life.  Every day, two or three times, pick up and feel each 
token in turn; recall every detail of the event associated with that 
token. This ritual reinforces positive, enjoyable feelings. Take a 
moment to feel the memory of that event, fully, richly, warmly.  Move 
on to the next token and the next, until you have felt them all. 

2. Each time you do this, you gather power from the ritual. Over a
period of days, weeks, months, you can feel the power build.  It is 
there for you to use -- in any way you need, in any way you want.  Two 
kinds of energy are needed to accomplish a specific task, goal or 
challenge: 

Overall self-esteem, self-confidence, self-reliance and  self-respect
keep building up as you go through your tokens one by one and re-live 
the feelings associated with them.  This is the source of your power.  
It comes from within. 

In order to nucleate new ideas; to grow in knowledge, feeling and
experience; to synergize human value from the architecture of existing 
thought and feeling, you need to carry out research. learn new things, 
ponder deeply, experiment.  These become the channels for your power 
and creativity.  Some powers come from within, but much more come from 
external experience.  As people age, they accumulate more and more 
memories of external experience, so they can draw more from within than 
younger people, who need to gather power outside their own memories and 
emotions, vicariously, from literature, films, museums and travel. 

3. Each positive emotion you experience can be measured: its quality,
its intensity, its effect on body functions, its outward effect on 
others.  The quanta of energy in any given emotional experience can be 
evoked using the token associated with it. Over a period of time, 
positive feelings build to a thrilling crest, not unlike an orgasm, and 
you know that the power has matured and is ready to use. 

4. Before undertaking any goals with the intent of using power, plan the
details of what must be accomplished: Must you resolve conflicts?   
Will you need the power to sustain you during times of privation?  Do 
you plan to open new pathways?  Write these down.  Build your power  
over a period of several days, while thinking about how to achieve each 
step; 

When you have gathered power, take the most essential step first. Now
relax, check your power reserve, and let your power build to the full 
again, Take the next step, and the next. Let the pace of accomplishment 
match the rate at which your power rebuilds itself.  From the outside, 
this looks like doing your best when you are full of energy.  It is. 

In Richard Wagner's "Ring of the Niebelung", every major character seeks
power.  And each abuses power by exploiting others, by trickery, 
flattery, shame, murder, deceit, breaking of treaties and so on. These 
actions betray the power that rises from integrity; they sabotage the 
flow of power and sap its energy.  In the short run, the powers of gods 
and demi-gods seem to increase; but in the end, Valhalla falls and 
Siegfried, hero of the world, lies dead.  What is Wagner saying here? 

In order to avoid losing your power, don't "each of the above." Your
power will accomplish much more, in the long run, when you are sharing, 
faithful, honest, proud, nurturing and life-loving. 

Another approach to gaining mastery over life appears in the rewarding
text, "Godel, Escher, Bach" by Douglas R. Hofstadter.  The entire book 
is a challenging progression in developing alternate ways of thinking 
about things.  An example, briefly paraphrased, illustrates how you can 
arrive at an alternate way of thinking. 

Hofstadter portrays a computer as playing a board game.  The initial way
of thinking built into the computer by its maker enables it to predict 
all of the consequences of one move by projecting every possible 
combination the pieces might take for seven successive moves.  This 
takes a few seconds.  Then the computer assesses the least favorable of 
all combinations surviving seven moves and discards it.  It 
progressively discards other fatal outcomes one by one until the only 
course of action that remains is a winning one.  Or, at least, it 
leaves the computer in a more favorable space than previously, for the 
next seven moves. 

Now as fast as this method seems to be, it is cumbersome and limited. 
An alternate way of thinking would be for the computer to store a model 
of the board with an assigned value on each square.  Then assign 
increasing values to a piece as it approaches the goal -- with 
drastically negative values for a piece at hazard.  Multiply the board 
value by the piece value and multiply this by the number of pieces in 
action, and by the ranking of the pieces themselves, and you get a 
sensitive indicator of how favorable an existing board position may be. 
 Now, the computer can evaluate the board, comparing its total value 
with that of the opponent.  If a move shifts the ratio unfavorably, 
then all subsequent moves originating with that particular move are 
discarded -- without having to calculate seven moves ahead!  The 
computer thus runs a quick test of one or two moves ahead (in 
milliseconds) for a piece, and quickly discards those that lead to an 
unfavorable future.  The only moves left, near the end of this process 
(which may require evaluating several dozen, or a few hundred 
alternatives) can then be projected ahead for twelve, fifteen moves, 
even to the end of the game, to test at each stage which board 
positions are most favorable, and most probably lead to a win -- 
achieving the goal. Since this can now also be done in milliseconds, 
the computer would have a new way of thinking that is a more effective 
tool than its original programming. 

If you accept that anyone can bring more than one thinking procedure to
bear on a problem, you have taken the first step in developing your 
thinking powers at a new, higher level.  The animal that thinks 
quickly. deeply and broadly can assess its environment more effectively 
and promote its own survival under adverse conditions.  For this 
reason, "tradition", represented in our minds as fixed in memory, 
provides us with one way of thinking: refer to known examples in the 
past and use them to assess a future position.  Of course, it isn't 
always easy to see seven moves ahead -- especially in a complex world 
which has not only the challenges of primitive nature, but those of 
many diverse species and subspecies of dominant animals. 

In this easily-visualized situation, with nuclear warheads poised all
over the globe, it is clear that only animals who can think faster than 
their colleagues will have a fair shake at managing the game to win. 

Value analysis is way of thinking comparable to programming the computer
to assess the relative value of each board piece and board position, as 
described above. In the case of an actual board game, you would not 
think in terms of successive moves of pieces, but in terms of value for 
each square on the board.  This changes for each competing side, on 
each move.  You would also dedicate time and research before the game 
to think about what value to assign each piece, and what value to 
assign each step in its random walk toward a goal.  Then, using a 
calculator, you would devise one board position after another, evaluate 
it and discard it (if the position is worse than the previous move).  
Pretty soon, you will realize that only this move or that move should 
be made.  From here on, it is easy to look a couple of moves ahead and 
to move the most favorable piece. This strategy doesn't guarantee 
winning every game: it increases your likelihood of making a favorable 
move. If this isn't real honest-to-goodness power, I don't know what 
is! 

Let's see how to apply that new kind of thinking to a simple, everyday
challenge. Peter has gotten way behind in his weekly correspondence, 
and wants to write notes to several of his friends.  The original 
"program" that immediately leaps to mind is to get some notepaper, then 
write the first friend, then the second, and so on.  This is 
"traditional" thinking.  If the notes get longer, each will take more 
time, and Peter can't be sure of reaching all his friends. 

If you were Peter, the new approach, along the lines above, would be to
assign a value to each friend (the board), and assign a value to what 
you want to write each one (the pieces).  In an instant, you will see 
that your note will say much the same thing to each friend -- with a 
few added variations in each note.  By assembling the board and the 
pieces, you can visualize writing a single long-running note, 
mentioning everything you want to say to each friend.  Then address the 
envelopes, copy the letter and mail out. 

Clearly, this way of thinking has higher total value (the goal) than the
traditional mode.  You have just written dozens of your friends a long, 
newsy letter in the time it would have taken you to compose original 
notes to only two or three of them.   This way of thinking is used 
every day: we call it direct mail (which uses mailing lists). 

In this example, we have come up with one "flip side" of traditional
thinking patterns.  But since thought is a non-dimensional entity, 
there are really other ways of thinking that we can call on to our 
advantage -- an infinite number of "flip sides", much like a 
hexa-hexaflexagon. 

Seattle, April 18, 2009 - Gerald X. Diamond - All Rights Reserved. 


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