How To Be A Spiritual Savage

by Samuel Kronen

The most pertinent human drive is that of the will to power, as Nietzsche so eloquently lays out in his numerous works, but the question still remains as to what is truly the essence of power as well as how one might go about attaining it. In this segment we will explore the nature of power and thereby illuminate what it is to be a genuine spiritual savage, which whether we know it or not is what we all most deeply seek to be.

Let’s start with the nature of power, shall we?

Power is ultimately a profound sense of control, a deeply rooted quality of security, but the mistaken presumption here is that this sense of control must be directed outwardly. It need not be, in fact the need to control the outer world implies an absence of power inwardly. The true essence of power is predicated upon self-understanding, an intimate knowledge of one’s innermost workings. We go astray when we confuse this quality of power as such with “power over”, which is fundamentally a movement of insecurity.

The spiritual savage does not seek to attain power over people, places, and things, for he/she realizes that there is no need to pursue such false ends.

The Spiritual Savage does not attempt to manipulate the present moment, rather merely embodies the utter immediacy of what simply is. It is only from this quality of inner acceptance, which again is an integral aspect of true human power, that we may come to move most dynamically and effectively through the world. As it is within, so it goes without.

Power is attained through the acknowledging of that which is formless within oneself, which could perhaps be most aptly described as the condition of pure consciousness. When it is wholly understood that what we are in the very depths of our being is entirely unnameable, is not a “thing” as such, is not form-induced, then we invariably move towards the unveiling and manifesting of our innate existential power. As long as we remain tied to an egoic mode of perception, a form-identified notion of self, the intrinsic potential of our consciousness cannot possibly be met.

The Spiritual Savage lives beyond the reach of the egoic mind, outside the scope of selfhood. When we tap into that which we truly are in the very core of our being there then ceases to be a need to identify with this or that, and this proclivity to identify with a particular form is surely a co-factor of this illusory sense of power that is based in the containing “power over” the other. When we know ourselves we then know the other, and when the other is known we see rather clearly that having power over others is merely an intricate form of self-inhibition.

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