Think about power and how you might use it. Do you assert your desires around family and friends? If you don’t, do you hunger for a time when you can? Do you sometimes feel inept and lost? Do you internalize your emotions, or do you become angry and shout them out? No matter what your answer is, you’re using power. When one of your children behaves badly, do you discipline him or her? Should you? If so, how?

Power is thought of in negative terms among spiritually minded people. Why is that? Even those who seek to be “among the least of them” or to be the proverbial lamb await the power and wrath of their god to set matters straight with those who failed to serve him properly. The divine is the great equalizer for many individuals.

What if power is all a part of being spiritual? Jesus is credited with refraining from calling down the armies of heaven and halting his arrest, and he’s considered to be among the most powerful of all who have ever walked this earth. What if the right use of power is as Gandhi applied it, “right action”? In other words, use power to resist corrupt or unlawful power in a nonviolent way.

Inaction is action, which as John Locke said, amounts to tacit consent. Right action is doing the right thing—but what is that? When is there a higher good to be served by doing something we think of as repulsive under different circumstances? If you could save your family by killing a home intruder, would you? If you could save a neighborhood by killing a dozen individuals, would you do it? If you could save your country by nuking another nation, would you do that?

When individuals squarely face conflicts and deal honestly with them, they discover things about themselves. Who are you if you know not what you would or could do? Who are you when you take responsibility for the farmers and the tiny fish, for the restaurant employees and their job security, for the actions of a nation to preserve the lives of its citizens? In other words, who are you if you must be the one making the decision?

What if you get it wrong? Do you take responsibility for your own choices, or would you prefer to abdicate your power to someone else in order to avoid possible blame? Is this why there’s so much corruption in the world—because so many choose to hand over their say-so to a select few (governments and other leaders)? What would happen if everyone took full responsibility for everything in their lives? Would the world become a better place, or would current problems just be replaced by new ones?

What if the right path to your spiritual unfoldment depends upon the extent to which you get involved? What if?