Personal Battles

Our Predicament

 

“It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell.”

–Buddha

 

We are fighting a battle, not realizing that our opponent is a mirror — the force against us is our own reflections and, like the gorillas in that youtube clip, things only make sense when we zoom out a level. This brings up the question of our hubris—or one of our human-specific ignorances. Do we have the capability to zoom out here and become aware of who and what is responsible for this battle?

It sure seems like we can. When we realize the nature of this battle; that domination is not the objective, that force is not the tool, that we are not accessing the deep, precious wisdom unique to our species, naturally, we will realize that a truce is the only ‘net’ win. With this realization, we may lay our swords down and watch peace prevail.

So when I say we are “battling ourselves,” what exactly is at war, and how is it being fought?

The war is raging between the innate beings that we are and a structure of living that does not fit who we naturally are. Ram Dass refers to this illusionary sense of self as via the model of a “Space Suit.” Basically, we don a space suit at birth and for our time in our bodies, we are consistently complimented and critiqued for this suit. We bask in the delight of being told how nice our suit is. Yet though all of the praise, we know that the suit just doesn’t quite fit. It just doesn’t. We eventually realize that, beneath this suit, lies a being that is permanently naked. That this being is free of the discomfort of the suit, and elates in the simple joy of being, free from identity. This is the war—it is between our heads and our hearts. We are telling ourselves that we need to strive towards identities, which manifest in forms like the greed for capital or the purposeful self-induced separation from our environment. This ego-driven identity is fighting the part of us that knows the illusion that this model of reality really is. The heart knows, intuitively, that it—and therefore we—are, by nature, free of identity. We are born naked. This is our second Revolutionary War, and it just happens to be going on internally. This is a War on Consciousness, undoubtedly the greatest in human history, and we are undergoing the most profound revolution in history. This is the Consciousness revolution, where that part of our being that our egos have been oppressing, through the different ignorances of our species’ history (bluntly in the last few hundred years), rises up and demands, in the name of truth that is the light, its right to shine. This is where we realize our nature as inherently free, inherently wise, beings capable of profound love for ourselves and one another. This is where we wake up to our interconnectedness, our capacity for compassion, and our incarnated genius that is limitless in potential. This is the natural uncovering of our nakedness; it is the peeling away of an uncomfortable suit, of pleasure that is reliant on causation.   This war ends when the army that is our ego lays down its sword of righteous ignorance in surrender, as only then do we realize that the only way to “win” this game is by surrendering.

Naturally, considering the massive amount of money, time, and propoganda that the US spends on any war, you may wonder how this war is being funded. Good question. It is being funded by a societal structure intent upon promoting and defining identity and thus, maintaining public ignorance. We see this in every facet of the way we live our lives. It is an absolute assault on our natural beings—a constant waging of war against truth—a truth that we all, intuitively, know. This war is being funded by the media, it’s being funded by Capitalism, by traditional American value systems fixed within inertia. This war is being funded by institutionalized social hierarchies, by an imposed status quo with laws prohibiting any alternative; it is the enforced ignorance on the public by the profit-mongering narcissists. This is a disgrace to the American pride of Democracy, and a tragedy in the missed opportunity at accessing the divine bliss we contain. We all know the discomfort of our space suits—for many, it may be completely subconscious. Listen to it! When we escape this model for just sporadic moments of self-less awe, we glimpse the light of nakedness. We feel it on our naked skin, and, though we may get burnt at first, we know that it feels right. We just know it. This is a revolution to honor that divine “right-ness.”

Only when we realize the nature of this war, can we win. Only when we realize the sources of funding, can we consciously escape enslavement within them.  When we realize that this IS the revolution, right now, right here, and that resorting to a life of ignorance simply is not an option, we will rest in the sweet nectar of our being as our heart opens to the light like a flower. Truce.