”Resist not evil.”
– Jesus The Christ
In a cave between my ears there hides a
terrorist who has been waging a holy war for a very long time. He believes that
he is justified in using force and fear tactics, and that it is necessary to
hold my inner child hostage to create real change and growth. He presents a
running list of demands – all the things I must accomplish before I can feel
good enough about myself to love myself unconditionally. The list is
never-ending, and somewhat insatiable. Whenever I meet a demand, three new ones
automatically pop up on the bottom of the list.
Sometimes my attitude toward this list has been
to acquiesce to its tyranny. I'll push myself with fear and guilt to accomplish
as much as I can, and usually have little or no fun in the process. Other times
I will seek to overthrow the terror-list with a labor strike. "No I won't, and
you can't make me!" my rebel shouts in defiance, while making sure I am engaged
in his favorite form of peaceful, passive, political protest…being a couch
potato. When the rebel strikes, nothing gets done, and two more demands get
added to the list: overcome procrastination and laziness.
The terrorist feels threatened whenever I am
relaxed, at ease, content. He thinks that if I take it easy I will not be
interested in getting all the other things I should do done. And, by the way,
'should' appears on the list more than any other word.
Time and experience have proven to me that my
inner terrorist does not yield when I fight him, which only seems to make him
stronger. Since what we resist tends to persist, waging a war on inner terrorism
is just as endless and pointless as an outer war on terror.
What can make the peace is the practice of
observing him with compassion, making contact with the deeper feelings (fear)
underneath the surface show of aggression. Also, it helps to see clearly, from a
detached witness place, the game being played out. It goes like this: First we
imagine that there is such a thing as human perfection, and that we are falling
quite short of it. Then we summon our childhood friends from the old
neighborhood, guilt and shame, to march in a holy war to rid ourselves of our
faults and weaknesses. Pumping me up with adrenaline, they drive me to put the
pedal to the metal and get my ass in gear. Does it work? No, because rebel
forces are determined not to be driven around by a terrorist, and they make
quite sure that one foot stays on the brake, making for quite a rough ride.
So what is this terror-list, really? An old,
outdated, fundamentalist way of thinking and relating…fear-based, unconscious,
mental masturbation. And, like many old-time religious folks believed about
masturbation, this kind does indeed lead to going blind: losing sight of the
innocence in myself and in others.
I started learning about this myopia of the mind
when I was practicing The Morning Pages, a discipline outlined in Julia
Cameron's book The Artist's Way. It consists of writing every day three pages of
uncensored thoughts, freely associated without pausing to direct their flow. I
found myself amazed at the degree of negative chatter spilling on to a page at
any given moment, and how much of it related to perceptions of 'not enough-ness':
I'm not good enough, she's not good enough, the money's not enough, …not enough,
not enough, not enough! By about the third page, I had enough already, and would
often spontaneously bring forth positive, life-affirming, loving messages from a
deeper place within me. And so I discovered that if I let my terrorist have the
pen for a while, it eventually would feel heard and give way to the musings of
my higher self.
Since the day the Twin Towers came down, I've
had more success negotiating a cease-fire with my inner terrorist. I realized I
couldn't necessarily control or prevent crisis in the outside world, but I could
focus on creating peace and solidarity in my inner world. Now, when I become
aware of struggling to meet demands on the terror-list, my higher self reminds
me to lighten up and let in the light. As the lightworker that I am, I have a
job to do (be) and that there is nothing that I need to fix before doing (being)
it. I got the job by answering a classified ad that I saw in the employment
section on September 11th, 2001. (The ad had been running way before that, but
since that date there has been a dramatic global increase in response.) Here is
what I saw:
HELP WANTED: FANTASTIC HIGHER SELF-EMPLOYMENT
OPPORTUNITY!
NEEDED:
Sincere human beings to give their gifts and be the light of the world.
Doesn't matter how flawed you imagine yourself to be. Perfection not required,
just willingness. Must be willing to give and receive love, voice your vision,
stand for truth, face your fears, forgive mistakes, own your shadow, be the
light, trust the universe, and enjoy mystery, paradox and change. Come as you
are. On the job training provided. …Oh, and must be willing to consider that
you are mistaken about being damaged goods. God doesn't make junk.
On September 11th, I asked myself
more deeply than ever: Does this planet have the luxury of the time I waste when
I indulge in my addiction to shame and guilt? There is work to be done. Humanity
needs me (and you) to joyfully heal inner terrorism and to be a channel for
love. Unconditional, across the board self-acceptance is what opens the conduit.
I con du it. You con du it. We each con do our part, once we stop giving our
power away to the con artist inside our head that makes us feel small, scared,
and inadequate.
The choice has always been this simple, but it
has never been this abundantly clear: love or fear. Both are quite contagious,
and both are spread quite rapidly from mind to mind and heart to heart. Whether
facing inner or outer terrorism, in each instant we have the choice to respond
with love or react in fear. What will it be in this moment?
About the Author:
Scott Kalechstein, M.D.T. (Modern Day
Troubadour) lives in Marin, California and lightens and opens hearts and minds
for a living. Described as a cross between John Denver, Eckhart Tolle, and Robin
Williams, Scott has been a full time inspirational speaker, musician, writer,
traveling reverend and transformational humorist since 1990, with nine CD's of
his being distributed internationally. Scott has provided music at the lectures
and workshops of Deepak Chopra, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, John Gray,
Ram Dass, Byron Katie, Joan Borysenko, Alan Cohen, and Marianne Williamson,
among many others. A pioneer in the field of music improvisation, Scott creates
therapeutic ”Song Portraits”, original compositions of voice and guitar,
recorded onto CD’s, spontaneously composed for people wishing greater clarity or
guidance on specific issues. His entertaining website is at www.scottsongs.com
.
