Zen and the Art of Autocratic Power
The Conscious Practice of Owning Your Inner Autocrat
Zen Noting is a practice which brings together two things: Zen & Noting.
Zen
The core idea here is to become one with the living reality as it is. There should be no separation between you and “this.” Just this.
Noting
This is the practice of noticing what is happening and being able to identify it. In this case, we use words or labels called “notes.”
In this present moment, if I am noticing what is happening, I might notice thinking (about what I am going to say next), uncertainty (because I don’t know what to do next), amusement, reflection, or settling. As I notice, I just see what is happening moment to moment.
The question is: how can I combine this real-time mindfulness with the Zen aim of becoming one with reality?
Instead of trying to combine them in the same moment, we start with Zen. We start with the acknowledgment that our birthright as human beings is to have access to the full range of human experience in its fullness. That range includes everything, even the things we don’t like or want. Zen acknowledges and includes it all.
If you start from that position—which is also the position of full awakening—everything is available. You can just be any of it. This was the key insight that animated the Big Mind process: if you start with the assumption that it is already done, that you are already awake, everything looks different. In Zen Noting, we hold open the possibility that we can become one with that which we want to notice.
The Practice Instructions
Zen Noting is the practice of becoming one with what you want to notice as. This involves a choice and an intention. “Everything rests on the tip of intention,” as they say in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.
What do you want to become one with? What matters right now? In Zen Noting, we become one with that, and then we see what we notice. We practice mindfulness as that. We locate ourselves as the “all” somewhere particular and merge with it.
The practice works like this:
1. Identify the state or perspective you are becoming one with.
2. Say the phrase “As [blank],” filling in the blank with that state.
3. Now, describe what you are noticing for a breath or two.
This allows you to slow down, relax, and take a step back into the unknown. You might ask: “Are we just LARPing? Is this real or authentic?” These are valid questions, but the instruction is to allow yourself to act as if you are that.
Once you are in that position, you perform a basic noting practice as I learned it from the lineage of Mahasi Sayadaw. You pay attention to whatever is present in your body, heart, mind, environment, or relationships. You connect with the inner and outer world and simply notice what is there.
This is like doing vipassana as whatever it is that we are exploring. It is a coming together of the “first and second turning” views and technologies. This merger allows us to shift the subject of awareness to whatever position, state, point of view, or identity we can imagine, and then to notice what it is like from that first-person experience. This is Zen Noting.
Zen Noting Autocracy
I want to offer an example of an area that I am actively exploring, which I find very important to me right now. It feels significant in part because of its relationship to the world and what I see happening globally, which then feeds back into what is important to me, the people around me, and the people I care about.
I will describe this area as autocratic leadership and a power-centric worldview. I am pulling this material from the Stagen Leadership Academy, where I have been enjoying one of their programs recently. I think it is connected to the integral model I learned from one of my first mentors, Ken Wilber, and it relates to a specific part of our own human development.
1. The Egocentric Stage
Everyone reaches a point as a young child where they begin to say, “Me, me, me.” This is the egocentric, power-centric stage of development. Autocratic leadership emerges in this stage, where it is believed that the most powerful and dominant individuals should stay in power and deserve that power.
2. The Motivation of Followers
People are motivated to follow autocratic leaders because they themselves are within this power-centric worldview; they see the world in those terms. While we might assume these people are being subjugated by an autocrat, that may not be the case from their point of view. To understand this, you need to enter their perspective.
This is where Zen Noting comes in. If you enter the point of view of someone willingly following an autocratic leader, what do you see?
One way to find out is to look at the experience of being an autocratic follower and describe it:
1. Attraction to Power
As an autocratic follower, I am attracted to people who have power and know how to wield it well.
2. Vigilance for Safety
I am always paying attention to who has power so that I can better know how to respond and keep myself and my people safe from it.
3. Ambition and Self-Preservation
Ultimately, I am looking out for myself. I am doing the same things I see working for powerful people because I want to be like them. If I were like them, I would be protected, safe, and have resources. I would be the most powerful.
In this worldview, there are always threats and dangers, but that is simply the way life is. To ignore or run from that reality is seen as being naive.
So you see, what I’m using Zen Noting for here is to explore a part of me that is reflected back from the world and from others, because it’s also a part of them. This is a deep part of all of us. It’s part of our human developmental heritage, at least from this point of view of Integral Theory.
Because of that, it behooves us to acknowledge, embrace, and even completely inhabit—sometimes this is called “to own”—what it means to completely include in yourself your own:
Autocratic dictator
Drive for power
Fear of power
Respect and acknowledgment of power
Force of strength (in whatever way it’s wielded)
If we are able to own that in ourselves, then ironically we become more effective agents, both with wielding our own personal power and with interacting with others in the world. That power struggle does not go away, even though we may become quite highly evolved in our ability to see it, describe it, and name it, just as I’m doing here. Others can do this as well, especially those who’ve spent their lives studying these patterns, such as academics and scholars.
Yet, according to this Integral Developmental Theory, we all still include the earlier parts of ourselves that resonate with this power-centric, imperialistic world-view. This is because that power-centric reality is actually part of this reality; it’s not just a social construct. The very battle of social constructs against one another, is a prime example of this dynamic in the memetic space, which lies upstream of our constructs about it.
Do you agree? Do you not?
Mutuality–also known as interbeing–is a reality primitive.
Reality Primitives
Yes, there are reality primitives, those basics truths that are irreducible to anything else.
Integral Theory contends that we have to include all of these basic reality primitives—all of these core ways of knowing, viewing, and seeing reality. These core worldviews of human beings are not independent of one another. Rather, they exist in a kind of stacked holarchy, where they are all interconnected and resting on top of each other evolutionarily.
These things have emerged over human history. The most recent developmental positions we humans can hold are also the most recently emerged; thus, they are the most fragile and susceptible to disruption. We have to be very humble from the point of view of developmental emergence. We must recognize that these more “primitive” worldviews are describing something essential. In this context, ‘primitive’ isn’t a put down of indigenous people, rather it means more fundamental. These are more primitive realities–as in, more essential–that we have to contend with. When autocrats come to power, we have to respond.
This is the basic insight of Freudian psychoanalysis, applied here to our contemporary moment. As an American, living in the year 2026, Donald J. Trump is the President of the United States. He is an autocratic leader who did not leave office willingly the first time he was defeated in a Democratic election, and he refuses to acknowledge that defeat. Still, he was elected Democratically. So why are so many people losing their fucking minds?
If we don’t own our inner autocrats, we are bound to be projecting and transferring them onto others and the world. I see it very much as: when I own my inner autocrat, I can see it more from his point of view.
What is it like as an autocrat? As an autocrat…
Power is everything.
I am not going to admit defeat, even to myself.
There is no way I could be defeated.
As an autocrat I am so grandiose, self-centered, and power-focused that I cannot admit defeat to even myself. That is how powerful this denial of the possibility of defeat is, it’s a core survival strategy of autocrats. Even real defeat is not defeat; it must be someone attacking me, or those nasty “witch hunts.” As an autocrat, to acknowledge defeat, I would have to be defeated, and I cannot ever be defeated (you see the tautology?). If you are defeated, you are out of power and likely to be killed or banished.
So, if you want to maintain power as an autocrat, once you get to the top, you cannot let go.
This is the way Trump thinks, feels, and acts. I can inhabit that space. It does not feel great; it feels very contractive. My body is tight, and I notice my breathing is labored. There is anger and disgust. And yet, this is part of me. I have access to this. I can attune to this reality. You can to, unless you’ve completely disowned it, and then you’ll just get a strong self-righteous response back, “No, I’m not an Autocrat, I’m better than that.” Ah, there it is, there’s that disowned autocrat. You have to be right, don’t you, about not being like HIM. “No, I’m not like him. He’s… He’s… what?” Irreprehensible? Evil? Inhuman?
You see, if you disown your inner autocrat, you are dehumanizing yourself & others. The disowning is the dehumanizing. You’re saying that this part of the human experience can’t or shouldn’t exist. There should be no autocrats. Isn’t it the autocrat, alone, that could whisper such a statement? Who else, but an autocrat, could think they know better than everyone else, what should be for everyone?
If I can attune there and own my inner autocrat, then I can more effectively understand how to respond to Trump, or to any kind of autocratic leader who has an impact on me. It could be a religious leader, a corporate leader etc. From this more integrated position, I can see how I am leading, and the ways in which I am able–or not–to lead autocratically.
As a Mature Autocrat…
One of the things I really appreciated about the Big Mind process was the recognition, through its encounter with Integral Theory, that all of these parts of our self are included and can mature and grow.
If we look at the self as a multiplicity, we can see that this multiplicity includes its own inner agency & autonomy. These semi-autonomous individual agents—what we call “parts of the self”—can also develop and mature.
One such part we could call the “autocrat.” We may be owning this inner autocrat, but it may not be very mature. From the point of view of Integral Theory, how much you own a part and how developed it is are two different things:
How much you own it describes how much shadow work you have done.
How mature it is describes how developed you have taken this part and how much it has grown in you and in relation to others.
I suggest that we have the possibility of both owning & maturing our inner autocrat. It’s only through engaging consciously with our own tendency toward autocracy and power drives—the desire to secure ourselves with power—that we can mature. These processes support one another in deep ways; it is “cleaning up & growing up,” as Ken Wilber would put it.
What does a mature autocrat look like? Using the Zen Noting method inspired by Big Mind, we can explore this perspective.
As a Mature Autocrat:
I notice when there are moments that I need to exercise power in order to protect what matters.
I am responsive to the moment and how power is being yielded around me, toward me, and through me.
I treat the movements of power and the intersections of power as being more important than the wielders of that power.
I am aware of the Drama triangle and the dynamics of egocentric relating.
I am aware of the Empowerment Dynamic and how we can be more mature in our relationships using these same core energetic dynamics.
I see that energy itself is not bad or wrong; rather, it’s how energy is harnessed, and for what ends, that determines its moral character.
I am attuned to ethical and moral issues. I care about my impact in the world and see that wielding effective power, or creating power alliances, is sometimes the best way to protect what is most valuable and important in our corner of reality.
I do not project my views onto the rest of reality, but I am willing to assert them and have them tested by reality, because that is the way views evolve.
As a Mature Autocrat I am interested in evolving–I want human beings to do well within the bounds of the ecosystem they inhabit.
Deep gratitude to the Dumbledores out there who inspired this reflection.
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