Many times I find that people will only speak of their deepest selves when they are in crisis. I ask then why we should wait until the last minute to get real with ourselves and others. What do we do about the rage, the regret, and the unintegrated parts of our psyche? What do we do with the lost and stolen moments that have now become loneliness and isolation? We laugh publicly and we cry privately. Why spend another moment being other than who we are when we can take steps to become our most true selves?
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Facing our own fears and intolerances is a martial art. Painting on a blank canvas takes the courage of a lion. Stepping out of the skin we have known takes bravery and sublime humility. If we are to awaken from the nightmare that is our own lack of standing for inner peace, then we must go to war against our own ignorance and learn to become tolerant of the intolerant selves that we are. To judge others is to condemn ourselves; to co-dependently allow others to enslave our minds to their untried ideas is slavery. To step beyond ourselves, we must do battle with our own reactiveness and learn to respond to the world as it is.
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Warriors pick their own fields when they can, but accept that the terms of battle can only be accepted when one faces himself. The opponent is always the self, and the other guy is merely the delivery system by which we have chosen to engage our own egos.
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runningturtle87