We like to create enemies.
The ego is that part of our consciousness that when we were tiny infants, forms and informs us that we are a separate self – no longer a part of our mother, but US.
This separation is necessary and healthy to developing an identity, but as we mature, we find that, like most things, there are pros and cons wrapped up in the ego.
Eckart Tolle says that the ego is the part of our mind that needs an enemy to survive.
“The content of the ego varies from person to person, but in every ego the same structure operates. In other words: Egos only differ on the surface. Deep down they are all the same. In what way are they the same? They live on identification and separation.
When you live through the mind-made-self comprised of thought and emotion that is the ego, the basis for your identity is precarious because thought and emotion are by their very nature ephemeral, fleeting. So, every ego is continuously struggling for survival, trying to protect and enlarge itself. To uphold the I-thought, it needs the opposite thought of “the other.” The others are most other when I see them as my enemies. At one end of the scale of this unconscious egoic pattern lies the egoic compulsive habit of faultfinding and complaining about others. Jesus referred to it when he said, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” -Tolle
I’ve been in some conversations with friends recently where talk of “the enemy” came up. In religious-speak, I hear this a lot. Something bad happens, and it’s the “enemy”. These friends had stepped out into a new realm spiritually recently and had started to explore spiritual places they’d never been before and give forms of healing to the world that they’d never given before. Two got quite sick and one had very stressful issues arise in her family. All three interpreted this as Satan (the enemy) trying to block their endeavors.
It’s not just religious folk who use this frame. We all do. In our lives, we are just going along our merry way, relatively satisfied and something happens to upset our apple cart. Maybe it’s something we initiated (as with my friends and their new spiritual endeavors), maybe it’s some tragedy or loss that befalls us. Whatever the case, our sense of self is threatened, we lose our bearings, the rug is ripped out from under us.
Our ego, in an attempt to recover our sense of self, will want to create an enemy to fight against, rather than allow some part of us to die so that something new can be reborn.
Consciousness is like a deep, wide, swift-flowing river. On the surface many things are happening and there are many reflections; but that is obviously not the whole river. The river is a total thing, it includes what is below as well as what is above. It is the same with consciousness; but very few of us know what is taking place below. Most of us are satisfied if we can live fairly well, with some security and a little happiness on the surface. As long as we have a little food and shelter, a little puja, little gods and little joys, our playing around on the surface is good enough for us. Because we are so easily satisfied, we never inquire into the depths; and perhaps the depths are stronger, more powerful, more urgent in their demands than what is happening on top. So there is a contradiction between what is transpiring on the surface, and what is going on below. Most of us are aware of this contradiction only when there is a crisis, because the surface mind has so completely adjusted itself to the environment.
– Krishnamurti
In our attempts to maintain our equilibrium, what enemies are created?
Satan?
The person who hurt us?
God?
Or perhaps we make an enemy of ourselves and become self-destructive through addiction. For some, life itself becomes the enemy and depression sets in.
It’s easy to get stuck in a cycle of fighting against one enemy after another. In religion, we pray, we enact “faith” in an attempt to overcome doubt, sickness, sadness or grief. Outside of religion, we may fight the enemy of loneliness with relationships (of many kinds). We may fight the enemy of sadness with drugs, alcohol, recreation. We may fight the enemy of boredom with entertainment, shopping, travel.
Maybe you have your own set of enemies and weapons you use to fight them.
What if we actually LOVED our enemies?
If we loved our enemies, then enemies would cease to exist.
What if there were no enemy?
What if the thing you have placed in the role of enemy could be seen as a friend?
In other words, what if my friends, rather than rejecting their sickness and stress, saw it as a friend that was arising from their depths as a teacher? They had embarked on a spiritual quest, and had hoped to deepen themselves, and yet when two very powerful teachers – the body and relationships – spoke up and said, “here! Pay attention here! There is pain here and if you listen to it, it will teach you something profound and life giving,” they shut it up and shut it down.
Once we decide that something or someone is the enemy, we don’t have to listen to him. We don’t have to respect, embrace, learn from or welcome her in.
You are nothing. You may have your name and title, your property and bank account, you may have power and be famous; but in spite of all these safeguards, you are as nothing. You may be totally unaware of this emptiness, this nothingness, or you may simply not want to be aware of it; but it is there, do what you will to avoid it. You may try to escape from it in devious ways, through personal or collective violence, through individual or collective worship, through knowledge or amusement; but whether you are asleep or awake, it is always there. You can come upon your relationship to this nothingness and its fear only by being choicelessly aware of the escapes. You are not related to it as a separate, individual entity; you are not the observer watching it; without you, the thinker, the observer, it is not. You and nothingness are one; you and nothingness are a joint phenomenon, not two separate processes. If you, the thinker, are afraid of it and approach it as something contrary and opposed to you, then any action you may take towards it must inevitably lead to illusion and so to further conflict and misery. When there is the discovery, the experiencing of that nothingness as you, then fear—which exists only when the thinker is separate from his thoughts and so tries to establish a relationship with them—completely drops away.
– Krishnamurti
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFGs7HP15d4
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