When I’m faced with an apparent enemy, I am being shown myself. I am being alerted to an accusing voice within me that colors the world in a negative light and limits my options for engaging it.
My first job is not to conquer the enemy “out there,” but to conquer the enemy “in here.”
For instance: if I encounter a tyrant “out there” my first job is to conquer the tyrant within: the thoughts I’m believing that have me seeking to control the world for my narrow faction and punish everyone and everything that stands in the way of my “perfect” vision for the world.
When I am free of the accuser within me, the nature of my “problem” shifts: I recognize that it was never “out there” only “in here.”
Well what about the real tyrants of the world then? Just let them rampage?
No. I meet them with love, not tyranny.
I recognize that if I think I can eliminate tyranny by engaging in tyranny, I’m crazy. All I do that way is add to the tyranny. So I focus on questioning the thoughts I’m believing that make me believe I must, at all costs, force the world to align with my narrow preferences. And, oddly, when I’m finished, I can’t find any tyrants, only people like me, unsurpassably worthy of love and belonging, doing the best they can with what they’re thinking and believing.
So now I’m dealing with a person with whom I can now engage effectively (which doesn’t mean I don’t keep appropriate boundaries). And when I can do it, when I can meet what is with love, the effect is an increase in connection and the undoing of tyranny.
So my job is to conquer tyranny “in here.”
Will that destroy the tyrant “out there?”
That’s not up to me.
If I think it is, I’m being shown myself again: I’m getting another glimpse of the tyrant within.