We stay in opposition to ourselves.
We deny or fight our sadness or depression, rejecting that burdensome tightness within us.
By befriending it, by holding your darkness’s hand and openly loving it, you diffuse the fight and can begin to alleviate the pain.
Tag: conflict
- Theme: Self
Fighting yourself
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1–2 minutes - Theme: Self
Wolves at the door
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1–2 minutesYou built a nice place. Oddly, it attracts dysfunctional people who attempt to tear it down and poison your harmony.
You cannot simply retreat: you must use the nice space as a power source. Let them in or fight them off, but hiding enables the destruction. - Theme: Self
Your renunciation binds you
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1–2 minutesTo renounce something is to tie yourself to it forever: you are now in a constant battle.
Your energy spent fighting empowers it in direct proportion.
The only way to drop a desire is to understand it: to see through it, then it drops itself.
(from Anthony DeMello) - Theme: Self
The Fight Only Lasts a Minute
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1–2 minutesConfrontation is a fight. A fight only lasts a minute, but how you feel (scared or content) can last your whole life.
You can avoid the minute for decades, letting it haunt and shape you, or spend one minute to know you took action to save the rest of your life.
~ Teddy Atlas - Theme: Self
The opportunity to steal tells you a lot about yourself
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1–2 minutesI had the opportunity to walk away with over $200 worth of lumber yesterday. I walked back inside, found somebody, and paid for it.
I thought about stealing, which contradicts who I think I am. However, it became more painful to do the right thing once I was open to a cheaper option: I opened my mind to justifications and rationalizations.
I talked myself into paying by considering that 1) I am not a person who causes problems for myself tomorrow by taking a shortcut today, and 2) If I want to be a good person, it has to be done every day in the most minor ways.
- Theme: Self
The Energy of Combat vs Comrades
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1–2 minutesInterpersonal conflict drains you. Anger and despair create desperate energy, which exhausts.
The better path is to collaborate with comrades: generate creative energy, powering you for days with no hangover. - Theme: Self
The Evil of Expediency
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1–2 minutesIt is not in anyone s political interest to stand up for you. To do so incurs risk without expedient reward.
We must live beyond expediency: it makes cowards of us all.
The evil consequence of waiting (i.e., letting others fight their own battles) hardens those we should cherish into callow monsters and slick-talking relativists.
- Theme: Growth
Enemies become cheerleaders
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1–2 minutesAll you have to do is hang on. We all change, and familiarity may breed contempt, but it can also motivate grace.
One day, to your utter surprise, your enemies will become your cheerleaders. - Theme: Self
To kill a symbol don’t fight it: trivialize it
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1–2 minutesThe true believer and the blasphemer share the power of the symbol: a reverent or desecrator both act from fervent belief.
While irreverence can be an antidote to weaponized piety, what truly kills the sacred is to make it abundantly commonplace, from whence it is trivialized into the secular.
Watch commerce parasitically affiliate with the sacred until the transcendent transforms to tchotchke.