- Joined
- Jan 24, 2021
- Messages
- 1,593
In an earlier thread, I spoke about what tension is, how it operates to move people, and some of the basic ways to use tension in social interactions and begin to master it.
In this post I want to go a little deeper into the role of tension in the power that a man has, shall we say, over his environment, and even over himself. Because tension is not merely a tool that is wielded temporarily to produce a certain effect, but makes up the fabric of the energy fields within which everyone exists, acts, and operates. Just as a magnet without a magnetic field is simply an inert and unremarkable clump of atoms, a man with a poor relationship with the energy fields within which he moves, is no more remarkable or effectual than a signpost on the side of the road on which he walks.
…
Every man is an engine. He has in himself the ability to generate energy, to withhold it and store it, and to spend it on any activity he chooses. This engine is capable of producing enough power to warm his blood and sustain him through the coldest winters of the human mind, to lift him head and shoulders above his fellow man and, through his words and actions, move thousands of them this way or that. And through drawing the power produced by his engine back into himself, he makes it fairly crackle at his fingertips, so that when he speaks, or moves, or looks at something, his presence reaches out and instantly crosses the space between him and the object of his attention, and touches it powerfully and effectively, so that it bends toward him and to his will.
If every man is in possession of such an engine within himself, why are so many men weak, ineffectual, lacking presence or will, and easily moved to and fro by others? Why are they so lost and confused, unable to bear difficult times, crushed by their own destructive emotions?
To explain this, I would like you to consider man as a coil. According to physics, when a coil is moved through a magnetic field, an electric current is produced. This current is electricity, one of the most versatile forms of power in the known world, capable of heating up entire cities and powering cars and all sorts of other devices.
If man is a coil, then he does not produce the energy himself, from nothing. No, he produces it by and through his relationship with the energy fields in which he moves. This is why staring at yourself in the mirror and trying to feel good or motivate yourself doesn’t really work. To generate energy, you must present yourself to energy fields which can impart electricity into you, which you can then choose to store, to transform, or to spend.
The problem is that when a man moves through an energy field, and this electricity is created within him, it creates tension. And if he is not able to withstand it, this results in anxiety and the impulse to dump it.
Anxiety, I believe, is what happens when you aren’t doing what you subconsciously want to do, or believe you should be doing. It is a form of psychological ‘internal bleeding’ where the mind attempts to kickstart a specific action or activity by beginning to spend the energy it had allocated for that action or activity in random and chaotic ways, or, failing that, to burn off that energy altogether, to avoid a sort of energetic hemorrhage.
The problem is, the principle of energy, and how it is created in men as they move through the energy fields of the world, is responsible for all of his power, all of his effectiveness, and all of his success. And so many men have such a poor relationship with their own energy, it creates so much tension and anxiety within them, that they are impulsively moved to dump that energy, either by disconnecting their faculties from it and becoming comatose and lethargic, or wanking to achieve the same effect, or drinking to achieve the same effect, or spending that energy on video games which assure them of a felt reward, while requiring little in the way of patience or the development of real ability. In effect, men try to shake themselves free of the power which they have, since it burns them up inside, and they have given up trying to harness it because of some frustrations they have encountered while trying to use it.
But what lies ahead, then, for them? Because the same way a coil without electricity is simply a hollow and useless device, so a man becomes a husk, and his face bears witness to this fact to other men and women long before he opens his mouth, if he would, to give an account of himself. If he is lucky, someone will fill him with their own energy, directed toward their own ends, but a man’s existence can never be complete in the service of another’s power. Yet this is what happens with his boss, and his wife.
…
So far we have talked with a certain language to try to describe the power that is created in a man as he moves through the world, and how many (if not most) men try to shed that power immediately in the ‘safest’ possible manner – into the toilet, into a glass, or into the virtual world of a computer game, to escape guilt, frustration, or punishment.
Now I want to expand on this power so that we can learn how it might be understood and thereby harnessed.
The mere presence of a man, like the coil I described, produces power in some quantity. Because a man is an agent of change. His mere presence signals the possibility that the world around him might be about to change according to his will. This is how it has always been – men encounter the world and quickly learn that their job is to effect change – to build, to destroy, to hunt, to transform something to another thing, to put a certain order into chaos, according to what moves them. And when they encounter another man, there is a great possibility that one of them will either transform the other into his acolyte, or (at least in more uncivilized times) destroy him on the spot. And with a woman, his presence represents the possibility of a direct transformation of the woman’s reality to his own, and even his physical presence inside her. Thus the role of a man has never been one of a spectator, but always in a role allied with change.
This is why a man’s mere presence creates power – because it creates tension. Tension, as I mentioned in Part 1, represents the impending possibility of consequence or change.
In modern society, while a man’s presence still holds the same subconscious and energetic connotations, virtually all of his impulses to enact that change are frustrated. He cannot thrive anymore by fighting and dominating other men he encounters, and immediately having his way with all the women he meets, or destroying that which displeases him and constructing that which he would rather lay his eyes on. He is forced to withhold the energy that is constantly produced in him by the magnetic fields he moves around in. And, in proportion to the threat which the society poses to him for crossing its boundaries, he attempts to bury it so deeply he can forget about it, or divest himself of that energy by all the means which society allows him to in the privacy and loneliness of his home.
But the reality is that society has not prevented him from having his way altogether, but merely limited the ways he can go about it. And all those who do truly thrive in the same society he lives in, are those who have accepted this state of affairs, and learned how to harness their energy and direct it in ways that society does not outlaw, and which it may even reward him for.
So how can he learn to live with this energy, and to harness it for his own ends?
…
Beneath the surface of every disfunctional young man is a withdrawal to a primitive state of impulsivity, usually mixed with guilt. When he suffers from depression, he will often revert to something approximating a child. This may be for many reasons – but they all basically represent the same concept: that the development that the man undertook thus far has been found to be disfunctional, so he has gone back to square 1. On this first square (represented by childhood) he was heavily dependent on others for his wellbeing and direction. And his conscious decision making (which for many men is essentially the culprit of his guilt, shame, and sense of frustration) is dissolved into impulsivity. And this impulsivity represents the immediate spending of energy after it is created.
A child feels hungry, they grab food, or cry, or express some strong emotion. They feel pain or frustration or are faced with a threat, they cry, scream, or throw a tantrum. They feel like doing something, and in the middle of it they feel like doing something else, they will just drop the first one and move onto the second. They are essentially an input/output device: an input comes in the form of an impulse, and an output comes in the form of an action. And it is governed by pleasure, punishment, and reward.
This means that they can never store, transform, or redirect energy, and thus, they have very little or no influence on the world around them – in fact, it directly influences them. This is what happens when a man becomes disfunctional by his inability to find a good relationship with his energy – he spends it impulsively on whatever feels temporarily good, and becomes psychologically needy and dependent.
And this brings us to the first and most crucial rule of harnessing energy: energy is harnessed by resisting an impulse. When a man encounters tension, and he resists the effect of that tension on his expression, behaviour, and actions, that tension is reclaimed inside him in the form of stored energy. This can be in the form of resisting a wasteful pleasure, or remaining unmoved and unreactive in the face of a perceived threat.
Imagine you have a dog. The dog is off his rocker, jumping around or barking whenever a bird or a car or a person walks past, leaping at food, etc. The dog is full of energy – impulsive energy. Now let’s say you prevent the dog from acting on this impulse, by restraint and/or punishment. The energy of the dog is still there inside of it, but now it has no way to spend it. So the dog sits there trembling with energy, not knowing what to do. Maybe it will even try to attack you in frustration. But if you hold steady, and don’t punish it excessively, and sometimes give it rewarded opportunities to act following your command, it will learn to simply wait for you and your command. And it will learn, over time, to relax while still holding all its energy inside it, calmly, moving instantly when you tell it to move, coming back or sitting down instantly when you tell it to do so. And it does so because it trusts you as a master to give it rewards for doing well, and restraining or punishing it for giving in to impulses, and a good balance of both.
And this brings us to the second rule of harnessing energy: energy is redirected through disciplined action following the resistance of an impulse. If a man merely freezes in the face of a threat, or becomes inert to combat his impulses, he is not capturing that energy but defending himself from it. But if he continues to act according to his own disciplined strategies, not as a reaction to anything but as an original expression of his own will, his energy becomes loyal to him - it is neither taken nor redirected by others. And this, in turn, creates much more tension - since his own actions take by force that space which was created rather for his reactiveness or submission. And (if he again resists the impulse to react or submit) he absorbs still more energy, and this in turn electrifies his actions, so that he merely by turning his head to ignore something, or moving slowly forward, his presence crackles with energy and reverberates on everything around. And even when he is by himself, and is impulsed to waste his energies but instead exerts his will to carry out disciplined action in the service of his goals, the same thing happens.
This is how a man must learn to control his inner beast. A dog that is merely continually frustrated is turned into a beaten, cowering animal, or a vicious wretched creature who will bare its teeth at everything around. But a dog which is prevented from acting impulsively AND given clear paths to a reward, becomes a loyal, devoted, and useful companion. And just like an engine that produces power and locomotion, which you can steer this way or that, or accelerate or decelerate according to your will, is very useful, so is the energy coil of a man, which can prove his worst enemy, or become his abundant source of power.
In my experience, meditation is the foundation of learning energy management. Because meditation is fundamentally a disciplinary activity – it is not particularly pleasant, at least not while the emotions and thoughts are flying around and the impulses are strong. But to sit there and remain calm and still as thoughts attempt to seize control of your attention, and muscular tensions attempt to seize control of your body, and to not even react to either one, is the beginning of becoming your own master. And like the dog, your mind and body, unable to effect their impulses, gradually subside and present themselves at your service, waiting eagerly and calmly for your next command, which you can then get up and give it. And this calmness and control, unable to be disturbed by anything, soothes a man in the middle of the worst chaos of his life. And the energy that is given to him from this fills his blood and his libido with a warm fire that not even the coldest despair can steal.
And, like a soothing glow in the dark, his steady flame and his tranquility beckon to those around him, who have little or none of their own, that perhaps in his service they can find some of what they so desperately need.
In this post I want to go a little deeper into the role of tension in the power that a man has, shall we say, over his environment, and even over himself. Because tension is not merely a tool that is wielded temporarily to produce a certain effect, but makes up the fabric of the energy fields within which everyone exists, acts, and operates. Just as a magnet without a magnetic field is simply an inert and unremarkable clump of atoms, a man with a poor relationship with the energy fields within which he moves, is no more remarkable or effectual than a signpost on the side of the road on which he walks.
…
Every man is an engine. He has in himself the ability to generate energy, to withhold it and store it, and to spend it on any activity he chooses. This engine is capable of producing enough power to warm his blood and sustain him through the coldest winters of the human mind, to lift him head and shoulders above his fellow man and, through his words and actions, move thousands of them this way or that. And through drawing the power produced by his engine back into himself, he makes it fairly crackle at his fingertips, so that when he speaks, or moves, or looks at something, his presence reaches out and instantly crosses the space between him and the object of his attention, and touches it powerfully and effectively, so that it bends toward him and to his will.
If every man is in possession of such an engine within himself, why are so many men weak, ineffectual, lacking presence or will, and easily moved to and fro by others? Why are they so lost and confused, unable to bear difficult times, crushed by their own destructive emotions?
To explain this, I would like you to consider man as a coil. According to physics, when a coil is moved through a magnetic field, an electric current is produced. This current is electricity, one of the most versatile forms of power in the known world, capable of heating up entire cities and powering cars and all sorts of other devices.
If man is a coil, then he does not produce the energy himself, from nothing. No, he produces it by and through his relationship with the energy fields in which he moves. This is why staring at yourself in the mirror and trying to feel good or motivate yourself doesn’t really work. To generate energy, you must present yourself to energy fields which can impart electricity into you, which you can then choose to store, to transform, or to spend.
The problem is that when a man moves through an energy field, and this electricity is created within him, it creates tension. And if he is not able to withstand it, this results in anxiety and the impulse to dump it.
Anxiety, I believe, is what happens when you aren’t doing what you subconsciously want to do, or believe you should be doing. It is a form of psychological ‘internal bleeding’ where the mind attempts to kickstart a specific action or activity by beginning to spend the energy it had allocated for that action or activity in random and chaotic ways, or, failing that, to burn off that energy altogether, to avoid a sort of energetic hemorrhage.
The problem is, the principle of energy, and how it is created in men as they move through the energy fields of the world, is responsible for all of his power, all of his effectiveness, and all of his success. And so many men have such a poor relationship with their own energy, it creates so much tension and anxiety within them, that they are impulsively moved to dump that energy, either by disconnecting their faculties from it and becoming comatose and lethargic, or wanking to achieve the same effect, or drinking to achieve the same effect, or spending that energy on video games which assure them of a felt reward, while requiring little in the way of patience or the development of real ability. In effect, men try to shake themselves free of the power which they have, since it burns them up inside, and they have given up trying to harness it because of some frustrations they have encountered while trying to use it.
But what lies ahead, then, for them? Because the same way a coil without electricity is simply a hollow and useless device, so a man becomes a husk, and his face bears witness to this fact to other men and women long before he opens his mouth, if he would, to give an account of himself. If he is lucky, someone will fill him with their own energy, directed toward their own ends, but a man’s existence can never be complete in the service of another’s power. Yet this is what happens with his boss, and his wife.
…
So far we have talked with a certain language to try to describe the power that is created in a man as he moves through the world, and how many (if not most) men try to shed that power immediately in the ‘safest’ possible manner – into the toilet, into a glass, or into the virtual world of a computer game, to escape guilt, frustration, or punishment.
Now I want to expand on this power so that we can learn how it might be understood and thereby harnessed.
The mere presence of a man, like the coil I described, produces power in some quantity. Because a man is an agent of change. His mere presence signals the possibility that the world around him might be about to change according to his will. This is how it has always been – men encounter the world and quickly learn that their job is to effect change – to build, to destroy, to hunt, to transform something to another thing, to put a certain order into chaos, according to what moves them. And when they encounter another man, there is a great possibility that one of them will either transform the other into his acolyte, or (at least in more uncivilized times) destroy him on the spot. And with a woman, his presence represents the possibility of a direct transformation of the woman’s reality to his own, and even his physical presence inside her. Thus the role of a man has never been one of a spectator, but always in a role allied with change.
This is why a man’s mere presence creates power – because it creates tension. Tension, as I mentioned in Part 1, represents the impending possibility of consequence or change.
In modern society, while a man’s presence still holds the same subconscious and energetic connotations, virtually all of his impulses to enact that change are frustrated. He cannot thrive anymore by fighting and dominating other men he encounters, and immediately having his way with all the women he meets, or destroying that which displeases him and constructing that which he would rather lay his eyes on. He is forced to withhold the energy that is constantly produced in him by the magnetic fields he moves around in. And, in proportion to the threat which the society poses to him for crossing its boundaries, he attempts to bury it so deeply he can forget about it, or divest himself of that energy by all the means which society allows him to in the privacy and loneliness of his home.
But the reality is that society has not prevented him from having his way altogether, but merely limited the ways he can go about it. And all those who do truly thrive in the same society he lives in, are those who have accepted this state of affairs, and learned how to harness their energy and direct it in ways that society does not outlaw, and which it may even reward him for.
So how can he learn to live with this energy, and to harness it for his own ends?
…
Beneath the surface of every disfunctional young man is a withdrawal to a primitive state of impulsivity, usually mixed with guilt. When he suffers from depression, he will often revert to something approximating a child. This may be for many reasons – but they all basically represent the same concept: that the development that the man undertook thus far has been found to be disfunctional, so he has gone back to square 1. On this first square (represented by childhood) he was heavily dependent on others for his wellbeing and direction. And his conscious decision making (which for many men is essentially the culprit of his guilt, shame, and sense of frustration) is dissolved into impulsivity. And this impulsivity represents the immediate spending of energy after it is created.
A child feels hungry, they grab food, or cry, or express some strong emotion. They feel pain or frustration or are faced with a threat, they cry, scream, or throw a tantrum. They feel like doing something, and in the middle of it they feel like doing something else, they will just drop the first one and move onto the second. They are essentially an input/output device: an input comes in the form of an impulse, and an output comes in the form of an action. And it is governed by pleasure, punishment, and reward.
This means that they can never store, transform, or redirect energy, and thus, they have very little or no influence on the world around them – in fact, it directly influences them. This is what happens when a man becomes disfunctional by his inability to find a good relationship with his energy – he spends it impulsively on whatever feels temporarily good, and becomes psychologically needy and dependent.
And this brings us to the first and most crucial rule of harnessing energy: energy is harnessed by resisting an impulse. When a man encounters tension, and he resists the effect of that tension on his expression, behaviour, and actions, that tension is reclaimed inside him in the form of stored energy. This can be in the form of resisting a wasteful pleasure, or remaining unmoved and unreactive in the face of a perceived threat.
Imagine you have a dog. The dog is off his rocker, jumping around or barking whenever a bird or a car or a person walks past, leaping at food, etc. The dog is full of energy – impulsive energy. Now let’s say you prevent the dog from acting on this impulse, by restraint and/or punishment. The energy of the dog is still there inside of it, but now it has no way to spend it. So the dog sits there trembling with energy, not knowing what to do. Maybe it will even try to attack you in frustration. But if you hold steady, and don’t punish it excessively, and sometimes give it rewarded opportunities to act following your command, it will learn to simply wait for you and your command. And it will learn, over time, to relax while still holding all its energy inside it, calmly, moving instantly when you tell it to move, coming back or sitting down instantly when you tell it to do so. And it does so because it trusts you as a master to give it rewards for doing well, and restraining or punishing it for giving in to impulses, and a good balance of both.
And this brings us to the second rule of harnessing energy: energy is redirected through disciplined action following the resistance of an impulse. If a man merely freezes in the face of a threat, or becomes inert to combat his impulses, he is not capturing that energy but defending himself from it. But if he continues to act according to his own disciplined strategies, not as a reaction to anything but as an original expression of his own will, his energy becomes loyal to him - it is neither taken nor redirected by others. And this, in turn, creates much more tension - since his own actions take by force that space which was created rather for his reactiveness or submission. And (if he again resists the impulse to react or submit) he absorbs still more energy, and this in turn electrifies his actions, so that he merely by turning his head to ignore something, or moving slowly forward, his presence crackles with energy and reverberates on everything around. And even when he is by himself, and is impulsed to waste his energies but instead exerts his will to carry out disciplined action in the service of his goals, the same thing happens.
This is how a man must learn to control his inner beast. A dog that is merely continually frustrated is turned into a beaten, cowering animal, or a vicious wretched creature who will bare its teeth at everything around. But a dog which is prevented from acting impulsively AND given clear paths to a reward, becomes a loyal, devoted, and useful companion. And just like an engine that produces power and locomotion, which you can steer this way or that, or accelerate or decelerate according to your will, is very useful, so is the energy coil of a man, which can prove his worst enemy, or become his abundant source of power.
In my experience, meditation is the foundation of learning energy management. Because meditation is fundamentally a disciplinary activity – it is not particularly pleasant, at least not while the emotions and thoughts are flying around and the impulses are strong. But to sit there and remain calm and still as thoughts attempt to seize control of your attention, and muscular tensions attempt to seize control of your body, and to not even react to either one, is the beginning of becoming your own master. And like the dog, your mind and body, unable to effect their impulses, gradually subside and present themselves at your service, waiting eagerly and calmly for your next command, which you can then get up and give it. And this calmness and control, unable to be disturbed by anything, soothes a man in the middle of the worst chaos of his life. And the energy that is given to him from this fills his blood and his libido with a warm fire that not even the coldest despair can steal.
And, like a soothing glow in the dark, his steady flame and his tranquility beckon to those around him, who have little or none of their own, that perhaps in his service they can find some of what they so desperately need.
