Misguided Behaviour

I was reading one of my favorite book of all time, Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser, and came across this quotation which I find it appropriate and relevant to my inner process of reclaiming my power today.

Man: Doc, my brother’s crazy.  He thinks he’s a chicken.
Psychiatrist: Well, why don’t you turn him in?
Man: I would, but I need the eggs.

– Woody Allen

During my meditating this morning I start to realize how I drained myself psychically by putting my power outside me. Psychically I could feel a part of me linking to something outside me, equivalent to the experience of anger hooking on to someone. The attachment I give to is draining my power away from me.

Now if I need approval from you, I am already draining myself as I need to continously give attention to you waiting for your approval. The attention I give to the person is the energy I invest in, thus putting my power outside me. It could be anything from I need love from you, I am jealous of you, to something trivial as a complaint, like, why are you so grumpy today. In short, any meaning you give to the world is an investment of your part.

All this investment gives your power away. Let me illustrate to you an example. If I need approval from you, I am saying inside me that I can’t approved myself and thus needing approval from someone outside to fill the gap. Now if I were to question my thought I will be inevitably lead to the source of that need, which is my incapability of self-approvable. To replace that I have to heavily invest my attention or power outside to complete what is not inside me.

Now If I am wise at at point, I could see through the illusion of this needing approval, and by doing so reclaim back the power I invested outside. You will know for yourself whether the power is been reclaimed by the freedom towards the person you targeted, or by the dissollution of the illusion.

Another method I could work with is to recognize the illusion of the idea that I have about my need for approval and replace it with a new idea of I am approving myself unconditionally. Recognize that both too are ideas except that one brings bondage and the other freedom. You need the contrast to nullify the other. This method could only be performed if you truly see idea as illusion.

Now all of us know through hard knocks and bumps in life, that it is never possible to consistently get anything from the world (world meaning outside). If we get anything from the world, it only make us want to get more as the getting does not truly replace what is within us except the illusion of it. Somewhere deep within us we are aware of that truth, and yet, and yet we still hope and hope that one fine day we can oppose that truth.

Isn’t that needing the eggs though we are aware that “he’s not a chicken”?

To quote from Byron Katie “an unquestion thought is the beginning of suffering”.