One of the enemies of enlightened power is righteousness. Righteousness: having your heels dug into your perspectives; thinking you know everything. Being righteous means having this type of zealous conviction around some ideology, or philosophy; perhaps your religion, your belief system. This righteousness is somehow grounded or strung to this part of yourself that has a heroic nature. Perhaps this aspect of you is the white knight, somehow needing to save someone, save anything, save the world, and make sure the virtue of their actions is seen.
Any type of righteousness, although it might be connected to good intentions in your being, ultimately turns enlightened power off within you, which repels those with great wisdom. Being of the ego, righteousness only attracts to you people who are turned on by egoic power.
Yes, you might gain followers, yes, you might get people involved with your mission and passion, who are attracted to your flaming decree of power that’s coming from righteousness. But I guarantee you, it’s going to have a balancing force. And sooner or later, your ass is going to get kicked to the ground.
This balancing force can manifest in any number of ways. In your relationships, you might experience betrayals and breakdowns. You might see your health deteriorating. You might suddenly lose your business, or experience strange things happening out of the blue. Inevitably, your gig’s going to be up at some point, because righteousness always blows up the righteous – always!
So it’s better to drop it now.
If you’ve got a righteous bent in you, take a look at what are you so righteous about. What have you attributed so much importance to? I guarantee, there’s something that you think is important in your life philosophy.
Take an honest look at that, my friend.
I’ve been righteous many times. I’m probably being righteous about something right now. What I do to become aware of my righteousness is exactly what I suggested to you: I look at the thing I find so important.
As the great sages of the past said, we must find our sense of importance, the root of it. Once we do, the most difficult and spiritually provocative part is to relax and let go of the importance. We must turn the dial down on what we find so important, to make it less important.
In Buddhism, we say, “Release the attachment.” This is the practice of not making any particular circumstance, experience, or idea so valuable that we’re attached to its outcome.
So, what, my friend, are you righteous about? Can you address this question with humility today? Are you willing to find something that you can lower the importance on? Can you release the grip of control? It is perhaps turning you into an egomaniacal monster that you don’t even recognize, but that our friends and family are afraid of rousing. Because we’re assuming a power position, they might not say anything to our face directly.
Even if you are not getting this feedback from your closest friends and adherents, I’m telling you that there is some righteousness we can always weed out in our consciousness. Let’s choose to be aware and responsible for this energy through our own self-reflection. Lower the importance in what you cherish. And I promise you, something new will emerge. Your true power. It will be gentler, more direct, more easeful.
I’ll let you figure out what happens. Let’s drop the righteous act and bring back true virtue, the virtue of being who you truly are.
