"awareness is not power"

In the current issue of the excellent journal Agni, Sven Bierkarts writes six pages about the process of going for his morning walk. It is a tour de force of mindfulness and writerly skill. What seems, as you read it, “of course” becomes remarkable. I am left with a sense of wonder and excitement about the power of consciousness. Surely it is something—something—to be able to thrum the so often invisible strings that move us through our lives? Virgina Woolf, too, one of the greatest writers I have read, found power in the quality of awareness. Her books are testaments to the power of careful observation of the process of unfolding consciousness.

Woody Allen is quoted as saying “awareness is not power.” I have been doing a lot of stream-of-consciousness writing as I go through my day. Allen’s quote, then, sticks. Is there no value in “catching” some—charting—some of the mind’s maneuvers?I have been practicing yoga now for seven years. Meditation, on and off, for longer. Solid helpings of psychotherapy too. I have learned the skills of awareness. They are not easy but they are, like all things, get easier with practice.

I think it is wrong that there is not power with awareness. It is perhaps, a first step to power.

Maybe it depends on what we mean by power. Is power the ability to influence others? If so, then perhaps awareness if a detriment to power, since the drive toward power is so often blind and comes at the expense of so much else. However, if by power we mean that we have better control over our own destinies, the way we act in the world, and the influence we bring to bear in the world, well then awareness is the first prerequisite to power.