Warfare
We live on this earth with constant battles to overcome. From birth, all through life, to the day we pass away, we face obstacles, challenges, setbacks. Life comes wrapped up with our failures, flaws and falls. We’re fragile creatures in the wilderness of this world. We’re in a wound-up state of warfare, battling to win.
Thus, we see a global army of self-help gurus teaching self-development, motivation techniques, inspirational lifestyles, and success tips. Many people now even train to become life-coaches, developing life coaching skills that they teach in global virtual classes. Demand for such essential skills soars. People look for any formula, tip, technique to help us overcome, beat the odds, and win.
We face that inner conflict of wanting to be able easily to do what we want, to succeed, to walk through the world with ease, comfort and happiness, but reality hits us slam bang in the abdomen, often knocking us down with the sheer force of how hard is this world, how difficult it is to build our dreams.
From our days as little children, we tackled this life with gusto, learning to walk, talk and navigate society. And we spend all our life occupied with this constant learning and navigating and overcoming, to conquer our handicaps and disabilities and lack, and to become able, equipped and empowered.
Our life, then, lives in the reality of all types of battles. The warfare encompasses our mental state, mindset, emotions, body, soul and spirit. Fact is, life is full of problems, and we spend our life overcoming enormous odds.
It’s a hard road, this constant fight to overcome, thrive and win. We become tired, exhausted, worn out. So, billions of humans settle for a sort of security, safe in mediocrity, and even a drifting lifestyle; not daring to venture out into unknown territory. Few souls muster the courage, strength and deep resolve to tackle the obstacles, challenges and odds we encounter.
We face such pressing life problems. Problems come wrapped up in one or more of three categories:
- Relationship; people
- Resources; money
- Robustness; well-being
Ask any person what problem he or she faces in life, and you’ll see the root of that problem happens to fall into one, or more, of these three categories. We face life wanting to be robust, healthy, fit and strong, and to be financially stable with sustainable resources, and to connect with good souls in wonderful relationships.
One would think that with such basic, and so few, fundamental desires of the human being, life would be simple, straight forward, and even fun. However, ask any human being for an authentic summary of life, and even the most optimistic folk would say life’s got problems to overcome. It’s not an easy cake walk through this world.
So, we face what we see as “reality”: the basic need to survive, to build walls of security around us. After all, we’re tumbling along with helpless falling to a mortal blankness, inching with every footstep closer to the grave, to mortal numbness. It terrifies us, this staring into our inevitable outcome on this earth. We suffer deep angst when we stare into the abyss of that future. We live scared, frightened, cowed into submission, subjection, survival mode.
Walls
So, we build walls around ourselves. We name these walls “civilization”, and make them fancy: car, house, bank account, career, spending our entire life doing a job.
With walls, we feel secured, protected, boxed-in safe and sound from the wiles of wild nature overwhelming us with the harsh force of the wilderness. We weed our territory free of wild organic life. We stand on guard against any unwanted encroachment. We walk within our walls feeling secured, never mind the wounded, clipped wings of our imprisoned souls. Never mind our desire to fly. We stay grounded, safe, secured.
However, we refuse to face the fact of our imprisonment. We want to feel free, open, able to fly. We generate such a feeling with windows in our walls.
We carve windows through which we watch what’s going on out there. So while we stand grounded, our eyes elevate our souls beyond the walls, looking through narrow windows into the distant horizon, allowing our imagination to dream, imagine, see visions of possibilities out there.
Those windows become our viewpoints, perspectives, frameworks, worldview. We see from the angle at which we stand, viewing life from our grounded position, seeing within the framework of the window of our view of life, that box that blocks out what we don’t know that we don’t know: our safety net.
And this becomes the weapon with which we tackle that scary-feeling warfare of the wilderness, the harsh character of wild untamed overwhelming nature. Our windows generate a perspective that gives us the feeling that, even as we’re safe here rooted within walls, we’re out there, seeing beyond our little space, that we’re adventuring even as we settle into our comfort zone. So we feel reassured, numb as we gaze with glazed eyes at our view points, rooted to the spot where we feel safe, protected, secured.
Within the framework of our paradigm, we feel protected. We survive. We achieve our goal of survival against the wildness of the wilderness, safe from nature running amok over our life.
We develop the mindset, belief system and mental position that we’re successful at survival. So we feel satisfied, caught in s stance of self-defence. And this becomes our blueprint for victory over this deep-seated angst we face over our own mortality. We come to believe that if we stay rooted in one position behind these walls we call civilization – once we could escape our condition with those windows opening the wider world to our point of view – then we are okay.
Wounded
Thus, we live this life on earth, passing through our sojourn here, as wounded warriors.
We face the warfare of harsh nature, scared, frightened, focused on surviving, on security, on scanning the horizon for hostile attacks. Our souls stay on guard, watching with weary resignation.
Yet, deep in our heart, we desire to be winners. We want to win. Our deepest desire sees us yearn in anguished quest for freedom, to soar above our self-imposed position of rooted, walled-in security. Wounded, we want to become winners.
How could we free our souls to become winners? How could we escape our walls and walk through doors into the wide open, fearless, strong, courageous, wise with the knowledge that we could conquer nature’s warfare against us?
We could only win if we transform our blueprint, if we open up our windows to see the whole world out there, freeing our minds from narrow viewpoints, limited paradigms, and our straight-ahead worldview.
How could we escape our position of self-imposed locked-in security?
Only the winner wins.
Most of us lock the doors and throw away the key, staying safe inside our mindset of survival, protection and feeling secured. Never mind the ravages of time on our bodies, minds and energy. We believe we would always be safe.
To free the mind of such a false paradigm, the winner mentality becomes of paramount vitality. Only the winner thrives, marches out with assured footsteps to carve a new path through the wilderness of this life. Only the winner mentality becomes the kind of warrior who fights with bravery, courage, strength and wisdom to defeat the fears of facing the brutal warfare of this earth’s mortal coil. Only winners break free of the walls, walking into the wide open, wounded warriors setting out with determined steps to become winners.
So, we who determine to become winners free ourselves of the stultifying walls, march outside, and escape the limited views of mere windows. We face the harsh wildness, confident in our human ability to master every storm, to tackle any failure, to overcome all obstacles, challenges, setbacks.
Winners know how to master the body, soul and spirit. Winners develop shields of knowledge. Winners learn to play with swords of self-pruning, refining of character, and constant learning. Winners practice dancing through grave darkness, only seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Winners refuse to listen to the moans and groans of limitations. Winners sing songs of glory, while advancing with assured footsteps of gratitude to encircle life with the sheer power of being human.
Winners conquer the warfare, refusing to live safe within walls while only gazing through narrow windows at what’s possible. Winners carve a new path through the world for generations coming to navigate our well-trodden footsteps to be elevated higher up the summit of what it means to be a human being. Winners make it happen. Winners open up our worldview into gateways of possibilities, and conquer this world’s warfare.
