Forget any war that you thought was the worst, most tragic war of all time. All the carnage, bloodshed, lives lost, families torn apart, societies ruined. None of that would be possible if it weren't for an even greater war. One so powerful, yet so unique, that it's rarely, if ever, spoken about.
I'm talking about the war that each individual has with reality. Are you familiar with this?
It's the war that we all take on from an early age - resisting things we don't like, and clinging to things we do like.
More of this! Less of that! Life needs to be this way for me to happy! Any other way, I'm miserable!
We store every single thing that ever bothered us inside of our mind rather than letting it pass through, and then we tell our mind to figure out how to make the world be so it doesn't bother us.
And the mind works around the clock, day and night, figuring out how to do this.
We move through life creating our own unique preferences of how things should and shouldn't be. Over time, those become our psyche. Before we know it, our entire identities are formed based on our pasts, present, and future life conditions - the traumas we endured in the past become wounds and things we try to avoid. The bliss we experienced become our quest to manifest and re-experience. Those all became who we are... or so we think.
Then we believe we have to influence reality in order to get to a point where we can be happy. We must avoid anything that could possible seem like that trauma we experienced 10 years ago! We must seek and find that glimpse of happiness we felt with that one significant other that left us 15 years ago!
What we end up doing is trying to manipulate the world so that it doesn't disturb the mess we've created inside ourselves.
The problem is, everybody is doing this. Wars, sicknesses, injustices - they all stem from people like you and me thinking they need to bend and break the outside world in order to feel good inside.
Instead, what we need to do is bend and break ourselves on the inside, and remove all that's causing us to be disturbed, so that what's left over - love, joy, enthusiasm - can shine.
We need to remove, and let go, of all those past traumas and blissful experiences, because they're over and done with right now. We need to detach our sense of identity from all thoughts, struggles, ambitions, and life conditions. Those are all external to who we really are on the inside.
You are not your past. You are not your thoughts. You are not your likes and dislikes. You are the one who's aware of all those things. There's a difference there!
Who we are, is simply awareness. The real you is the one inside who is conscious of all those things. Only you can feel it, and know it.
When we lower ourselves to the experiences we have, we forget who's actually in there experiencing those things. No wonder why we're so miserable.
Everybody is at war with reality. Everybody thinks they can only be happy if things go their way, and they cannot be happy otherwise.
The problem is, when one person does this, they interact with the world, and with other people, with a not-so-hidden agenda of trying to be okay. Multiply that by 8 billion, and that's the world we live in today.
Of course there are wars. Of course there's hatred. Of course there's injustice. Everybody's lost. Everybody's disrespecting forces way, way, way beyond all of our control, and thinking things need to be exactly the way they said they should be.
I hope this is as alarming to you as it is to me. It's the greatest tragedy. That's why we must go within. To save ourselves, to save our planet, and to save our species.
It's the only way.
Live with substance!
Gabe Orlowitz
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