Winning The War Against Yourself

Let's do an experiment:

Imagine a tree and ask yourself, "Am I seeing the whole tree?"

Upon asking that question you may realize that there's much more to a tree than what automatically comes to mind.

Do you see all sides of the tree?

Do you see all the branches and each individual leaf?

Do you see the roots?

Do you see the inside of the tree?

Do you see all the trillions of organisms that support and are supported by the tree?

Do you see how the entire surrounding ecosystem must be in a state of relative harmony for the tree to exist?

Do you see how that ecosystem is supported by the Earth as a whole and how the Earth is co-dependent upon the Sun and the Moon and the forces of the entire solar system, which is but the tiniest drop in the bucket of whole of the manifest universe.

Now imagine what would happen if the tree decided that parts of itself were not good enough and were no longer worthy of love and support? Imagine that the tree decided that it needed to reject and fight against those parts of itself? What would happen to the tree as a whole?

What if that tree was you? What if you decided that there are parts of yourself that weren't good enough or that needed to be fought against and resisted?

We often talk about our "shadow" or our "demons" as some part of ourselves that's not good enough to be expressed in the light, and therefore must be repressed and hidden.

What many don't realize -- and what took me a long time to realize -- is that the moment you decide that there's a part of you that you don't like and that you must "get rid of" or "overcome," you are simultaneously cutting that part of yourself off and making a declaration that that part exists as separate from your idea of who you think you're "supposed" to be.

In other words, you can only fight against something that you see as separate from yourself (at least in illusion) and the very act of fighting against it continues to give it energy.

A fight can only exist if there's an enemy to fight against.

No enemy, no fight.

What you resist persists.

So what's the solution?

There is none because there is no problem outside of the one's you're creating for yourself.

A tree thrives by creating harmony with ALL parts of itself.

A fight is only necessary to come to a place of greater wholeness, not to strengthen the illusion of separation.

Therefore, the only way to "get rid of" the shadow is to see it, accept it, embrace it, and learn to love it as part of yourself.

In this way, all the energy that was once tied up in fighting against yourself is now free to help you move towards growth and wholeness.

And in this journey of growth and wholeness, you come to find that the parts of yourself -- seen through love -- that are no longer serving you will drop off on their own accord.

The tree doesn't fight to get its leaves off in the fall. The leaves let themselves go in the natural cycle and season of life to continue the growth and evolution of the tree, even if that evolution is moving towards the phase of death that provides the ground for new life.

My invitation for you is to look at the parts of your life where you're experiencing the most pain, challenge, and resistance and ask yourself, "What parts of my Self am I not willing to love as part of myself?"

Sometimes that other part of your Self is another person...

Let it all in.

Here's a video I made if you want to take a deeper dive into this.

I trust this is resourceful for those that are ready to receive.

With love,

For ALL,

NB