The World Is Not Your Enemy!

What if we adopted the attitude that the world is not our enemy? There is no one out there to "get me"?
Would we drop our guards (conscious and unconscious) and live a freer life?

This contemplation is about exploring this question in different ways and finding a way that resonates with each one of us. The goal is to invoke the insight that we are all in this together.

Transcript

One of the points that I heard my teacher say, In one of the videos I was watching, Was this attitude. The attitude of, What if this world is not my enemy? What would that attitude look like, Feel like? And where would that attitude take us? Maybe for some of you, Just listening to this sentence might feel very intuitive. Yeah, The world is not my enemy. It's so obvious. Because we never sit down and formulate that the world is my enemy. However, Many of us act, Feel and behave as if the world is our enemy. Someone is there to come get us, Emotionally, Financially. We are almost always in a self-preservation mode because of this implied adoption of the attitude that the world is my enemy. We're trying to protect ourselves from thefts, From being bungled, Being mugged. That is more of a safety standpoint. But then, When it comes to an emotional standpoint, That is where the real issue lies. We are preserving ourselves from our loved ones, From our co-workers, From our friends, From our bosses, From our parents, From our kids, As if they are there to come get us. We are marking territories verbally, Many times. Someone else is marking their territories as well. So it suddenly becomes a war, A conflict, In relationships especially. Firstly, I want to encourage all of you to see if we are falling for this attitude by accident. It's very easy to fall into this due to our survival instincts based on evolution. But right now we are not in survival mode, Especially if we have the privilege to listen to something like this. All our needs are more or less taken care of. When I say needs, I mean survival needs. Then why this self-preservation mode from being hurt by other people? We are not holding ourselves back in giving, In receiving especially. We talk about emotional hurt, But check. Right now I insist you take a stock of how many times, Maybe countless number of times you have been quote-unquote hurt in your life. So I'm insisting you take a stock if you feel as if because of all those hurts caused by different people, Do you feel incomplete? As if you are not fully you, Like parts of you have fallen off somewhere. You are only partially you. When you call yourself I, You are an incomplete I, Withering away, Depreciating as if you are a car or a house. I'm not talking about your physical body, I'm talking about you. Or is it your experience that right now no matter what has happened. . . Before I go there, Let me give you another analogy. If to my first question that is, Do you feel any less you? Your answer was yes. For any reason, I want to ask you to play a little thought experiment with me. What if we pause your memory? For this experiment, You have no memory. All your skills are exactly maintained. The only thing is you can't go back in time. All you have is now. And if you exist now, You don't need any memory to talk about your existence. Ask yourself, Am I incomplete right now? Am I partial? I feel. . . Do I feel less me than I was a year ago? Or are you this sun that is just there? No matter how much it burns, How much it is heated and it gives off heat, It's there without any change in its intensity. And this experiment is available for us at any point of time, In any situation. Whenever we feel we need to preserve ourselves. We have tried to preserve ourselves in the past, We have been hurt. But no matter how much we have been hurt, Emotionally, Psychologically, At this point, See that all the tears, All the pain that we thought was too much to handle has left us untarnished. And the proof of this untarnish is in our own experience when we ask ourselves, Do I feel any less me? Do I feel incomplete in the absence of memory? And if we don't feel any less me, Myself, Despite all the hurts, Then why this aversion to getting hurt? I'm not saying we should seek hurt. But what's the point of holding ourselves back from living a full life? That's what the gist was when my teacher asked us, What if the world was not our enemy? Because we can only see it that the world is not our enemy if we jettison this idea that someone will hurt me and if I get hurt, I will be diminishing. It will diminish me. Yes somebody could chop off our limbs. We're not talking about the physical state, We are going to age, Yes. Our memory is going to decline, Yes. But you, The one who is noticing the decline, By definition has to be static. Otherwise how would you know what has declined? It's like if two trains are moving in the same direction at the same speed, If you are on one of the moving trains, The other train will look static. But for you to see the movement of the train, If you are on the platform, Then you can see things moving. You can see the change in speeds of the train. Maybe one of the bogies comes loose. You can see that something is diminishing in that train. But you don't get diminished just because you are watching the diminishing happening. So could it be that we are not diminishing, We are not getting hurt and despite getting hurt we are not losing any part of us. It's just theatre that is happening. But just because there are some tears in the theatre, Which means any of the characters is any less of themselves. Could it be like that? There is no point in trying to prove or trying to maintain our image or point of view. Our relationships can be experienced much, Much fuller if we don't hold back. Hold back on our love, Care, Attention. You know there is an age old saying of wearing your heart on your sleeve. And if someone who does that, They are more frequently hurt. But so what? Even if you are hurt, Even if that was true and you were hurt, Nothing is happening to you. Is there anything happening to you? You can at least say if you are bleeding, I am losing blood. But right now, Think about it, Every time you have been emotionally, Psychologically hurt, What has lost and what has been lost that was later recovered? Or was it just theatre? I have a family member who keeps reinstating how right they are. And for kicks, I try to corner them and methodically prove how wrong they were, Just for entertainment. They still don't accept it, They still don't see it because this desire to preserve our image, To preserve myself, How can I be myself if I accepted that mistake or accepted what is being said? I will lose a part of me if I apologized. If I went first and hugged someone, That would be accepting defeat. And if I accepted defeat, I will lose that part of me. If I went first and hugged someone, That would be accepting defeat. And if I accepted defeat, I will lose the war. But think about it, What do you lose when you say I am sorry and mean it too, For that matter? If you really saw your mistake and accepted it, Yes, I was wrong. It might feel a little painful, But ask yourself, Just because it feels painful, Am I losing anything? And the pain is just the shattering of the image that we have built. And all those images are in our own minds, They don't exist outside. And all those images are in our own minds, They don't exist outside. Yes, I was wrong. It's my responsibility. What if we said these words? Would I be any less me if I said those words? Instead, What would the relationship be like if we accepted what belongs to us, What came from us, And not fought and not fight for it, Defend it, Justify it, But just accept the truth? Whether the other person does it or not, Doesn't matter because we are 50% of the equation in a relationship. The relationship can get at least 50% better if we took our mistake away. And by mistake I mean this going first that comes from wisdom, Not from prescription. I'm not prescribing you to accept. No, I want you to see that once you see that it's your responsibility, We don't accept it, We defend it, We justify it, We ignore it, We are in denial of it because we have to maintain this image, Otherwise I'm diminishing. But is it true? Can we pause and ask ourselves? What's the point of defending? What's the point of denying? And denying by definition means that we have seen it. And once you see it, You can't unsee it. If you don't see it, Then might as well accept it and be done with it. If you don't see it, Yes, It's not your responsibility. If you don't see your mistake, Yes, It's not your responsibility. But we all know what denial looks like, Feels like in our own lives. We all know what justification, What defending feels like, Looks like, Sounds like in our lives. We all know what being stiff in relationship feels like, Looks like. Not going first. We know how it feels. But we seem to not know that despite what has happened, Our experience of ourselves hasn't diminished. Then all this gymnastics, Circus that we have continued for decades can just stop. I'm not kidding. It can just stop. Once we see ourselves as the untarnished sun, That is untouched by any of the previous defenses or lack of defenses, We can stop defending. We can let the love, Friendship, Celebration flow. I'm not saying we don't need to be strict at times, We don't need to stand up for ourselves at times. No, I'm not saying that. But there is no need to defend ourselves, Protect ourselves emotionally, Psychologically. Because there's no one there to come get us. We can just let go of our emotions. We can just let go of our emotions psychologically. Because there's no one there to come get us. We have to protect ourselves financially, Yes, Physically, Yes. But emotionally, A few sensations, How can they reduce me? A few feelings, How can they reduce me? Something that comes and goes, How can that affect me? What will that world look like when we show up in it without any necessity to protect ourselves? Without any necessity to protect ourselves. Thank you.