It is Better to Fight

I love Swami Vivekananda and often sit down when I have a few minutes just to read a bit from any book in his complete works set. The beauty of Vivekananda is that he has a way of cutting through the mystical and getting right to the heart of Knowledge from a place that the western mind can cognize. He is profoundly rational in his approach to Jnana Yoga, or yoga of the mind, which is the same work we teach at The Kumara Center for Spiritual Awareness. I came across a passage a couple days ago that resonated very strongly with me concerning the challenge I see seekers dealing with now. He says this:

“Even forgiveness, if weak and passive, is not true: fight is better. Forgive when you could bring legions of angels to the victory. Krishna, the charioteer of Arjuna, hears him say, “Let us forgive our enemies,” and   answers, “You speak the words of wise men, but you are not a wise man, but a coward.”  As a lotus leaf, living in the water yet untouched by it, so should the soul be in the world. This is a battlefield, fight your way out. Life in this world is an attempt to see God. Make your life a manifestation of will strengthened by renunciation.”    Volume 8, p. 227

It takes experience for the serious seeker to begin to see themselves as a manifestation of the will of God, and then to use their understandings in order to move that will forward in the world of polarity.  Living in a state of detached, loving equanimity is a necessary step to being able to take action in the world without attachment and judgment. Many seekers get stuck on the concept of forgiveness.  They still believe that the actions of others deserve their forgiveness. In truth, the judgment that one feels toward another’s actions is only there to show you where you haven’t forgiven yourself for the same underlying action. Therefore, in forgiving another, you truly only forgive yourself.

There is no forgiveness outside of polarized consciousness. What could there possibly be to forgive when all know themselves to be divine and all function from their hearts? If we get locked in the concept that you have wronged me and the right thing to do is to forgive you, then we are missing the point.  Patterned consciousness is a program that can only reflect to us where we are identified with the program. You can’t judge another based on the fact that they are identified with a program. The program is not the person.

The program is the personality, but not the person.

When Jeshua said, “Forgive them father, for they know not what they do,” he was pointing exactly to this. People who are identified with the program of separation have no will of their own. They react to the world around them from the programming that was imprinted on them from birth. There is innocence in that, you see. You wouldn’t judge a child raised in the Midwest because he can’t speak Russian, but we judge the essence of the divine all around us every day because consciousness is identified with the story of separation.

You have to see it all as God.

Now the battle begins. At this place, you don’t stand in personal judgment anymore, but you can recognize when the program, through an individual, is working to undermine or sabotage Truth. From this place, you can take action as the will of the Divine in order to bring Light to the situation at hand.  You see, the spiritual warrior doesn’t lay down to die quietly, acquiescing to a fictional story. He fights the battle of good and evil going on at this level of reality while loving everything equally at the same time.  Jeshua overturned the tables of the money changers in the temple not because he faulted the individuals and judged them as evil. He was well aware that the money changers were lost in maya and functioned from within the program. However, he also was not going to stand idly by and watch this behavior continue, accepted by others, if there was something he could do about it.  In essence, the Christ called the lower mind out on its lies. He was communicating, “I see you and I (God) am stronger than you and your false story.” When done from this level of consciousness, taking this form of right action in the world can, and does, have a huge impact.

Easy for Jeshua, right?  You are all on your own paths to mastery and you won’t jump from identified, patterned consciousness to experiencing yourself as God in form and bringing higher Truths to the world for others to witness. But, having an understanding of the journey is a step on the path home.

Witness yourself in your life. Where do you see things come up that don’t sit right with your conscience? Do you take action in those situations, or sit back and do nothing? Do you hesitate out of fear of what people will think of you, or what they will say?  It is time to be the warrior in the battle of your own life. Your conscience is Divine and it is your responsibility to honor that conscience.

Now, take up arms and march into battle!

Shusara