In the presence of your enemy

If everyone in the world acted exactly like you, would the world be a good place to live? Would you want to live there?

In big and small, would the world work if your way of going about your day were to be repeated at scale? When things go wrong around you, do you make things better? Do you look to take responsibility? In big or small, does it cost others when you get ahead?

What part of your life is zero-sum? Where is your life win-win?

The highest acknowledgment, respect, and honor of the divine is to be yourself. From here alone might we do anything that withstands the fires of time. Outside of who we are, we always bring some degree of corruption and decay. Without who we are proceeding as the first banner seen and heard by those we encounter, purpose feels thin and moments of clarity are full of lack. Without yourself leading yourself, you do not bring anything to the table. You always take. You are formed by whatever is around you. When we live this way, in every moment, we do what we need to feel safe, and those actions steal from what is being built around us. Whether it is a conversation or a relationship, we will find or make chaos. When we act this way, we kick the ladder out from where we actually need to go. We live as an interruption to great moments. We disrupt the golden thread weaving beauty around us.

Where are you an emotional slave? You are a slave wherever your past anchors you to cyclical sameness, where you haven’t a vision of the future.

What do you have to do to survive? Misery is all of our shadow; when we let go of emotional enslavement, we make space for what we really want. What is your fear addicted to? Our next step demands that we figure it out.

What is your story while you are at your lowest points? That self is someone you need to know. We need to meet that person in that place, in peace. If you do not know that self, you will find more and more ways to end up there. All restoration is built from the place where fear lived.

Are you producing enough to be loved? Are you doing enough for everyone? Is that who you are, a battery of production? Is that your value… your worth?

Who you are is the prize. Who are you?

Until we can meet ourselves in this place we will burn beauty down wherever it finds us. Wherever there isn’t any chaos we will be sure to make it.

We demand the chaos we are used to. We all find the chaos we need. And yes, it is a need. It is an addiction, a safe place. The familiar chaos which we reproduce leads us to the hardest thing… the next step in our journey… a new song… this song sounds different, it is played in a new key with a new rhythm and with different instruments. At first, this song will likely sound harsh. The more needed the new song, the more likely it will sound 180 degrees in the opposite direction of what your old mind has convinced you of… if you only listen from where you have been, its notes will always ring dissonant. Yet, if you did not need its melodies, you would already know its tune.

Without conquering our repeated chaos, our new life will forever be something that is coming, but never something we are experiencing.

Until we know how we wholeheartedly deserve good things, we will destroy anything or anyone trying to share that goodness with us. We will blame the good thing or good person, we will demonize them, we will call their good, evil and we will hate them. If something bad happens to them, our hearts will leap with corrupted joy.

“Though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you will fear no evil.” Why would you be afraid? It’s your valley. In fact, you are the valley… everything about it is by your making. It’s you, it has always been you, but it is from this valley alone that you must re-begin.

“A table is prepared in the presence of your enemies.” That table is the complexities and vastness of yourself. You are the enemy, it's your hell you must dine in. It is your fear that is your greatest foe. You must share a table with your most hated self, look it in the eye with love, and be at peace. From this place, your head is anointed with oil, and your cup again runneth over.

When you have turned and strengthened yourself in these places, surely goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life.