Raging War for Freedom

A lot of us wanted to change the world but only few truly wants to change ourselves. The message of the song is simple yet direct, we need to start first with the person we see in the mirror and that person is no other than ourselves.

Its funny that we would often try finding answers to problems in our lives by immediately looking outside without going back and examining the source of it. We often complain about our sufferings and fail to realize that whenever something happens to us whether good or bad, we are there. We are ALWAYS there; always present.

Indeed, it is time to take a hard look of ourselves in the mirror. Often when we see ourselves in the mirror, yet we only pay attention to what we see on the outside, our image. We fail to pay attention to what is really happening inside. We fail to look at ourselves in the eyes of the observer and ask, “What thoughts are constantly running in your mind?” “What are your dreams?” “What is money for you?” “What makes you worthy of love?” “Does anyone love you?” “Who are you?”

I have met and mentored a lot people in this lifetime, often they open up to me their financial, business, personal problems and ask me how they can get unstuck. The funny thing is that I refrain from giving solutions; I only guide the person to discover the solutions to their own problems. This leaves some of them frustrated for not getting immediate answers, they fail to see that the answers lies hidden in their own self and its for them to discover it.

This is also what we do in the community, we let aspiring Core Team members discover that they are the only person who can solve their problems. We let them come face to face with their fear, doubts and reservations. We let it penetrate them into the core. We let them dive to their emotions of fear and doubts. Some quit even when they haven’t fully started yet some stay. Those who stayed are those who allowed themselves to experience those thoughts and emotions fully and completely, in the end, they were the ones who learned what fear is, what being scared is, what grief is and finally learn to detach from it and take action and as Morrie Szwartz, in the book Tuesday's with Morrie said, “as you learn to die, you learn to live”. The dying that happens is dying of one’s old self.

No amount of coaching and encouragement will make a person who already decided to be a failure, succeed. In the community, we make aspiring Core Team members aware that they will never solve their problem from the same mindset that created it in the first place. It’s a total confrontation with the man in the mirror. In the community, we hold that mirror. What they see might be something harsh for them to accept yet, what separates a warrior from a fool is that “a warrior acts only a fool reacts”.

There is a war going on and it’s a war between thoughts that constantly tell us, we can never succeed, we are not worthy, thoughts that feed us fear, thoughts that tell us we are not lovable, we are unattractive and thoughts that tell us we are great, we are successful and we are the best. We hear this running in our minds constantly yet we fail to recognize that we could always CHOOSE what to plant in our minds, “whether trees or weeds”.

I remember a story of a prolific British Writer, Collin Wilson. His ambition was to become the next Albert Einstein. He was forced to quit school at very young age and ended up working in a laboratory. That time he went into despair and thought of ending his own life by drinking hydocyanic acid.That moment when he was about to do the final act, he came into a realization that there are two Collin Wilson running his life in the same body, one is the boy idiot filled with self-pity and the other one is his real self. The boy idiot is about to kill both.

The war does not happen outside, it happens INSIDE each and everyone of us. We are in constant battle and the battle that truly happens is what’s goes on with our thoughts.

The kind of war happening inside of us is best told in the wonderful story in the Navajo tradition. An old Navajo told his grandson that sometimes he feels there is a fight that is going on inside him. He said, “ it is a fight between two wolves: one wolf is evil. It is the wolf of anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, superiority, fear of healing my body and mind, fear of succeeding, fear of exploring what has been said by others to be truth, fear of walking in others’ moccasins and seeing glimpses of their reality through their eyes and their hearts, using empty excuses that my heart knows to be false.

The other wolf is good. It is the wolf of joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, empathy, caring for those who have helped me even though their efforts have not always been perfect, the willingness to forgive myself and others, and realizing that my destiny is in my hands. The grandson thought about it and asked: “But grandfather, which wolf wins?” His grandfather replied: “The one I choose to feed.”

What do you feed?

As I listened over and over to this song, I realized that this is what we all need right now in this world of uncertainty. It is time to start with ourselves, that's why I'm starting with me... and as Mahatma Gandhi said, we must be the change we want to see in the world. Indeed, we must.

It might be that there are people who should be responsible for our suffering however, thinking about this does not make us accountable. When we consider this, we fail to recognize and accept that we OWN our suffering. If we only come from a space of acceptance, that we are the source of our own suffering, we can do something about it and start taking responsibility instead of blaming other people. We cannot control what happens to us but we do have control to how we will react to what life throws at us. Once we realize this we can now the take the necessary actions to transform our lives.

We often speak of freedom yet we do not pay attention what kind of freedom are we fighting for. The world right now is going on a downturn. What we believed that worked before no longer works for us. The beliefs we have about ourselves, money, life etc…no longer serves us.

It is time to rage war for freedom. It is time to win the war between the thoughts that imprison us and the thoughts that sets us free. We have been prisoners of our thoughts and unless we accept that we are, we can never plot our freedom.