This morning I was watching the raids in France that killed 3 terrorists, including the two wanted in the Charlie Hebdo attack. “How do you fight against radical ideologies?” – this was a question that a panel of people were discussing on CNN. I have the answer.
There are no enemies. I wrote in Inner Anarchy:
But consider the possibility that the current futility of the world is actually no one’s fault. The world is simply the way it is as scientists describe it. There are no people to blame or scapegoat for the suffering and misery of our existence. There is no person or people who are the enemy. Then what is? Isn’t the enemy the beliefs that rule and drive us from within, and many of those beliefs have existed for thousands of years?
Solving the crisis of our world is not a matter of removing certain individuals or groups from positions of power. It goes deeper than that. The enemy is not the people, but the attitudes, narratives, mindsets, and belief systems that have poisoned us all and rule in our minds. These are the principalities and powers that have cast a darkness over our world, and they must be challenged and struck down. If you want to get angry about something, get angry at the false myths and ideologies that are governing our existence. Here’s something else to get angry about—these ideas, myths, and ideologies are living inside your mind and ruling your life right now!
The truth is there is never any real conflict between any of us… ever. Any significant conflict that happens between people is happening on the level of beliefs – it’s when those beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that are ruling within us clash with the beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies inside another. At its most horrific level, the manifestation of these warring belief-systems within us is what we saw happen in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and all the inner volatility that led to it.
There is never any conflict between the real you and the real me. There was no conflict between the real person inside the Kouachi brothers and the real person inside the Charlie Hebdo victims.
No person is the enemy. In our real selves we are not in conflict with any person. The enemy is the stuff that has been programmed into our heads and running our lives. How do we solve this? Anarchy!
We need anarchy! It’s time to revolt.
Yes, anarchy! Not political anarchy, but inner anarchy, in which we topple, dethrone, defrock, kick out, and cast aside the current ruling ideas that are programmed inside us. Those ideas have failed miserably. They were given plenty of time and opportunity to prove their legitimacy, and they have not succeeded. They cunningly and ruthlessly rule over us and continue to argue and fight among each other on the battleground inside us. This is the day of reckoning. Let all ideologies be put on notice. This is an indictment against all the bankrupt and powerless precepts that are governing our lives from within. They keep driving us relentlessly. Their authority must be decisively stripped away. They block us from being who we truly are. It is time to free ourselves from their power and control. It is anarchy or die!
Those ruling mental constructs must be expelled from within us. They are standing in our way. But they are not going to go easily. As futile as they are, they have become our security and our friends, and we fear striking out from them in independence. We have all built our little kingdoms and worldly statuses by using these beliefs, so they accuse the hell out of us if we try to drop them. We must get unreasonable to overthrow the current system that is ruling our world from inside our psyches. The old system is not going to fade quietly into the night without a fight. Our habitual way of reasoning has a titanic amount of energy driving our world and lives forward. We must unplug ourselves from the source of these powerless ideas.
We have to wake up! It is time to overthrow the system of ideas that rules our world and fills our heads.
When are we going to refuse and deny the false mindsets and ideologies that are ruling us from within and running our lives, and start listening to what we know is real in our deepest feelings? The world is constantly trying to find unity based on some sort of shared belief system. It makes no difference how open, progressive, educated or tolerant that belief system is, it will never bring about true unity, and at best it will only create a man-made, pseudo, fragile, and temporary getting along. We cannot have true togetherness based on any beliefs or belief system.
There will never be unity in this world until people turn toward what is real deep within them. What we must do is turn toward what is real and natural in our deep feelings. It is there that we are truly one. Yes, different and unique as we are as individual people, but one on the most fundamental and foundational level. We must speak from that real and natural place within us to each other.
That’s how you “fight against radical ideologies.” You rid yourself of those false beliefs, mindsets, narratives and ideologies that pit us against each other. You switch sources – you stop taking your cues from all that stuff that has been programmed into your head, and you turn toward what you know to be real and true in your deep feelings. I’m not talking about flighty and sappy emotionalism. I’m talking about what you know is real – those substantial and powerful deep feelings that rise up within you when something triggers them. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You have felt it! We need to have the courage to lift up out of us what we all know is real in our deep feelings. People are stuck in their heads. I don’t give a damn what you “think.” Tell me what you feel in your gut!
