The Slow Death of Empire
Power, Politics, and the Longing for Soul
Every empire begins with a dream of order and ends with the hunger for control. It builds temples, systems, and walls to preserve its greatness, yet, in the end, collapses under the weight of its own forgetting. What it forgets is simple: that the soul cannot be ruled.
The story of empire is not just political; it is spiritual. It is the ancient myth of Babel repeated in every age, the belief that by building high enough, owning enough, or knowing enough, we can ascend to the place of the gods. But every tower built on pride eventually trembles. Every structure divorced from love becomes hollow.
And yet, even in collapse, there is grace. For when empire dies, soul begins to breathe again.
The Myth of Power
In mythic time, power was once sacred, the strength of life moving through creation, the energy that upholds and animates. But over centuries, we mistook possession for participation. Power became domination, and the living flow of Spirit hardened into hierarchy.
Every empire, Rome, Babylon, or the corporate empires of our age, follows the same arc: expansion, consolidation, arrogance, decay. It is not the fall that destroys it, but the forgetting of soul.
The mystics have always been the quite counter-current to empire. They speak of another kingdom, one not of this world, where greatness is measured by service and might by mercy. It is no accident that the Christ child was born not in a palace, but in a manger. God entered history not through a throne, but through vulnerability.
The Death Work of Empire
Empires do not end suddenly; they wither slowly, from within. They die the way a field dies when over-farmed, not for lack of soil, but for lack of rest. Our own empire of productivity and image now trembles in similar exhaustion. We have conquered information but lost wisdom; connected the globe but severed the heart.
And yet, decay has its own holiness.
The compost of fallen empires becomes the soil for new life.
History’s ruins are the womb of renewal.
What looks like the end of power may in truth be the return of humility.
The Return of Soul
Every death of empire opens a space for remembering.
The soul does not seek to overthrow; it simply refuses to cooperate with untruth.
It resists not through violence but through presence.
In the Gospels, Jesus subverts empire by washing feet. In the Tao, Lao Tzu says the greatest ruler is like water, nourishing all, contending with none. And in the mystic vision of Teilhard de Chardin, evolution itself moves toward union, not domination.
To live as a contemplative in an age of empire is to become quietly subversive, to live by another rhythm.
To work, speak, and create without feeding the machinery of fear.
To choose gentleness in a world addicted to noise.
The Hidden Reversal
The slow death of empire is not only external; it happens within us too.
Every false self is a small empire, a system of control built to secure our worth.
But when life begins to dismantle that structure, when the cracks appear, something luminous emerges through them.
This is the same grace that The Golden Mirror and The Scroll reveal again and again: the unmaking that makes room for truth.
The moment when power fails and presence takes its place.
When the self’s empire crumbles, what remains is the kingdom of the heart, small, humble, radiant.
The soul finally breathes again.
A Blessing for the End of Empire
May the walls within you soften.
May every tower of fear begin to lean toward love.
May you find, in what is collapsing, not despair but space.
And when the noise of power fades,
may you hear the quiet pulse of the Real,
the heartbeat of a world being remade,
not by might, but by mercy.
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” — Matthew 5:5 9
Bruce & Sue Reflect
Sue: “Well, Bruce, sounds like every empire’s just another version of trying to be in charge, eh?”
Bruce: “Yep. Starts out tidy, ends up tired. Even inside me there’s a little empire trying to run the show.”
Sue: “Same here. My mind’s Parliament, Cabinet, and Opposition all at once.”
Bruce: laughs “And they’re all talking over each other.”
Sue: “Exactly. The trick’s not to fight the noise, but to let it crumble till love has the floor again.”
Bruce: “Yeah. Maybe the fall of empire’s not the end of the world, just the start of humility.”