war inside | war outside

I have had a very active “Wounded Child” inside of me much of my life. Recently, I have been making a conscious choice to tend to the wars inside of me that have created a lot of pain in my life. I’ve found that as long as I wear my “victim” hat around, I attract other victims as well as “abusers”.

Seeing everything through filters of my childhood and projecting these wounds on every other relationship in my life has gotten me nowhere but right back where I started. With this new awareness, I am consciously choosing a different path.

Deng Ming-Dao wrote:

“Weapons are tools of ill omen
Wielded by the ignorant.
If their use is unavoidable,
The wise act with restraint.
The greatest sorrow is to be a veteran,
Witness to the atrocities of humanity.”

Our word is our sword. If we use it wisely and with clear intention, we will create peace. If we are “wielding” our (s)word as a weapon to defend ourselves or prove ourselves in some way, we only create and perpetuate war inside of us. I have often used my words offensively or defensively, as weapons rather than as tools. It is a hard pattern to re-wire but worth the effort. I am learning that the intention behind the words of myself or another is very important. It’s so easy to “say all the right things” in a very politically correct, “non-violent” way while private thinking, “take that!”. All we do in these situations is harm ourselves. There is nothing “outside” of us.

I have noticed that when I ask someone to take responsibility for themselves or honor their commitments, they will sometimes deflect, blame or shame. This has to do with a deeply held belief inside of me that I am now consciously re-wiring. The more I am treated with honor and integrity and do the same with others, the less tolerant I am of people not living up to their commitments. These particular reflections from the mirror of my soul are slipping away, with Grace. I don’t feel judgment about it, I am simply moving away from that way of being. I know there is another way. I don’t have to rebel against anything to get what I need. I can heal what is happening inside of me. The more I love myself, the more loving treatment I receive.

I had a recent email exchange with a friend where I felt the “war” inside of her in her words and felt the stabs and deflections. I witnessed my own initial, war-like response, and decided to chose a different path. Not the path of proving something but the path of choosing to take responsibility for myself and my own well-being.

I no longer wish to play on the field of war and the more I do my inner work and create a sense of peace within myself by truly taking care of myself, the further I get away from that field. I want to be on the mountaintop singing and making love, not down in the valley of war defending myself and doing battle with my own shadow.

I am learning that there is nothing outside of me. I am beginning to reprogram this belief that anyone is doing anything to me, but rather see that I am pulling in experiences to my matrix that are what I am conditioned to receive. That is the old way. I have no interest in projecting my childhood wounds on my relationships. I also am not interested in having others project their wounds on their relationships with me. As I learn to clean up my own energy field and take all the “stories” out of it, I am seeing life and love in a new light and it feels very good.

The expression “Wherever you go, there you are”, is so accurate. No matter what relationships or communities we find ourselves in, the patterns just keep repeating until we choose to change them from within.

I am choosing a new pattern by tending to the war inside.