Humanity's Most Powerful Drug
Rudyard Kipling once said, “Words are … the most powerful drug used by mankind.”
He’s mostly right, but I’ll try to one up him here with a tip for greater power still.
In my book, Who Moved My Chi?, I talk about how humanity has 3 primary consciousness centers (each with a nervous system), which for simplicity I call:
The gut, where we’re driven by physical survival and sex. This is also associated with our past, our traumas, and therefore our fears.
The brain / mind, where we experience thoughts well beyond our own (making this a dangerous place to make decisions from), and where we’re driven by the future and therefore desire.
The heart, where we’re driven by the unifying force of love and have our power in the present moment. Our inner genius flows from here.
Money (for survival) and sex are extraordinarily powerful drugs when it comes to addicting the body.
Money (for status / desires) and words are the drugs of the mind.
And it’s why politicians promise money (in different forms) and sway people with their words: they’re trying to addict the bulk of the population, and we see how addicted many people are to the system, and why government has continued to grow throughout the years.
To Kipling’s credit, words can influence. They can talk someone into sex. They can talk someone out of their money. So when it comes to the lower forms of consciousness, which most of humanity operates from, words may be the ultimate drug. The drug dealers (politicians, celebrities, corporations, and media) feed you the drugs needed to have you act in a particular way.
And people follow this example to become drug dealers at their own scale — everyone is selling something, even if it’s just a viewpoint or selling themselves as valuable to another person.
But when we are fortunate enough — by dint of effort or by God’s grace — to operate from the heart, from our true self or inner genius, words do not sway us. Nor do sex or money.
When people speak of living their purpose, they’re speaking of operating from this inner place. Which is why they’ll often say, “If I had all the money in the world and could do anything I wanted …” because their purpose is separate from money. It needs to be done regardless or whether it generates income, and yet we acknowledge this need to be alive (i.e., money to pay for food and shelter) to accomplish it.
But love — the force that pours through the heart — is a far more powerful drug than words, money, or sex. As it pours through one person’s unique design, it takes on a unique form. A love unique to that person, driving them to live and produce in a certain way. And its radiance calls in the people and resources necessary to fulfill its purposes.
I.e., ultimately, we don’t need to “work first” and then live our purpose. Ultimately, living our purpose will provide, and in a way that makes us happier than any other approach to life.
It’s easy to doubt this, because if we have a passion to live our purpose, we may think we’re doing so. But no one is living 100% from the heart, and actually I believe most of humanity may be living 10% from the heart. Most of our history has involved surviving and, more recently, thinking. We fear and we desire. These are part of the collective consciousness with excessive momentum.
But we’re able to slowly turn that momentum for ourselves and for the rest of humanity when we allow our inner nature to flow through the heart. We do this by:
Coming into the present moment.
Feeling peace, joy, and gratitude.
Following our intuition, and not thoughts disguised as intuition. (One of the greatest challenges, and hard to define except by the outcome.)
Expressing what is uniquely ours to express.
And literally you can cultivate this right now with a deep breath, letting go of tensions and emotions that are not actually yours, but that you’re allowing to hold you, and remembering that right now — in this moment, and stop thinking of what comes next — everything is fine. Feel the peace of this.
The more we do these things, the more we find our happiness is only in living like this, and our addictions to words, money, and sex dissipate. Not our experience of these, or our joy in them, but our addiction to them. They become something we can choose in service of why we are here.