9. Where things are trending for the querent. (This is not predictive of the future as your free will may alter the outcome, it is an indication of current trends likely to shape the future.)
In the early Eighties, my friend, the late artist Keith Haring, would travel the NYC subways with white chalk. When ad posters in subway stations were due for replacement, transit workers would first cover them with black paper. Keith would use the black paper covering to express some amazing images, including this one. I describe my connection to Keith in the epilogue of my sci-fi epic, Parallel Journeys, which can be read free on this site. If you prefer Audible, Kindle or physical versions, those are all available on Amazon.
Many forces seek your disempowerment. One of the most classic forms of castration (for males or females) is to keep your attention madly focused on the pursuit of a glittering external object — the hottie, money, social status, worldly power, consumer goods, etc. Like traveling through the wrong end of a telescope, you shrink as you pursue these objects. Like a Ring Wraith pursuing The Precious, you wither and hollow out as you become ever more removed from your real power source — the neglected core of wholeness within. When you seek wholeness outside, it forever eludes your grasp, and you fragment and become weaker.
"I ask for so little. Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave." David Bowie as the Goblin King, Jareth, in the movie Labyrinth.
"Love me, fear me, obey me, and I will be your (leader, lover, guru, savior) forever" is the most classic and deadly form of enchantment.
Worshiping something or someone you see as more powerful than yourself is self-castration. The Sanskrit definition of God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
You are at the center of the circle, and so is everything else.
If, instead, you worship an external savior and therefore place yourself outside the circle of the divine looking in, then you betray your soul and descend into fundamentalist madness.
In the relatively recently discovered gnostic Gospel of Thomas Jesus says: "He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him."
The Gnostics understood the need to discover divinity from within rather than from without. If you worship a sacred text, savior, political leader, object of romantic infatuation, nation-state, ideology, church, object, or machine, then you become a hungry ghost never able to be filled up.
Power may be given away to an idea, an ideology, a fundamentalism (religious or secular), a movement, an addiction, a romance, an exciting, dangerous activity, and so forth. There are myriad things that people give their power away to.
You automatically disempower yourself when you inflate another person into a God. This happens with romantic infatuation, guru worship, fundamentalist worship of a savior, populist/fascist worship of a dear leader, and other relationships that have an unhealthy asymmetry of power.
"I have a theory of the often astonishing appeal of psychopaths, cult leaders, super salesmen, and demagogues of various sorts that uses magnetism as analog. Most people are highly fragmented and oppressed by what Jung called "psychic entropy" — the anxious tape loops and other distracted thoughts and fantasies that crowd their attentional space. When a person of single-minded focus and confidence appears, it is analogous to placing a powerful magnet below a sheet of paper on which iron filings are scattered. The magnet immediately organizes the scattered filings into a coherent pattern that reflects its magnetic field."
A cult of personality is born when a dominant personality structures scattered personalities from the outside. The scattered feel an immense relief from psychic entropy. They crave further contact and submission to the magnetic personality who can relieve them of their default state of psychic entropy.
People are similarly motivated when they give their power away to a fundamentalist religion, a new diet, a multi-level marketing or financial scheme led by a charismatic leader, a conspiracy theory, or a dominating partner.
People who get sucked into cults have higher IQs than average. Being more mental, they can more easily get conned by a mental construct that simpler but street-wise folk can see through in a heartbeat.
When conspiracists are given personality tests, the strongest correlate is narcissism. They're one of the select who've taken the "red pill," are in the know, and onto the puppet masters. They're entitled to be contemptuous of the sleeping sheeple. There are, of course, dangerous actual conspiracies at work in our world, but the conspiracists are usually the last to know because they've given away their power to faux conspiracies.
Resentful folk are easily conned by populist leaders who can channel their resentment into rage against (fill in the blank — Jews, elites, the deep state, another political party or nation-state, the opposite gender, the differently gendered, etc.). As soon as there is such a scapegoat, the resenters feel elevated. It's not their fault they're incels, in debt, etc. it's because of the _____. Now, the complexities of life are satisfyingly structured from the outside. Personal shortcomings and anxieties are redefined as victimizations. Instead of the daunting task of working on themselves, they can simply conform with the leader/group to fight the oppressors.
Even in cases where there are actual oppressors, you would be giving the enemy your power if you define yourself as the one, or the group, who is against (fill in the blank).
Are you part of a subculture that is supposedly fighting "the system" but where there is high conformity within the subculture or supposedly rebellious group?
Are you nervously scanning social media to see how you're doing compared to others?
Do celebrities seem more important, glowing, and alive than non-celebrities?
Do exceptionally beautiful people seem like gods?
Remind yourself that 100% of celebrities and the exceptionally beautiful have to use the bathroom and, like all mortals, are subject to aging, illness, misfortune, and death.
To what or to whom do you give away your power?
Consider this an auspicious time to reclaim it.
More on giving away your power to others and how to reclaim it:
In A Spiraling, Eye-Encrusted Overview of the Art of Alex Grey (done with Alex's participation) I point out his unfortunate tendency to idealize abusive gurus like Adi Da. Scroll until you see a painting of Adi Da to read my study of this abusive guru. It's a classic tale of self-castrating guru worshippers.
