Imagine yourself at a game of tug of war. See yourself, which side you’re on. Feel the rope twisting around your hands, the weight of it, the roughness on your soft skin. Feel the tension gathering in your shoulders, your neck, the furrow in your brow, as you use all of your might to concentrate on winning. Your feet set firmly on the ground, pulling and bracing against the opposition. Feel the people in front of you and behind you, the energy they amass as you all focus as one. Notice the resistance, how hard you have to pull to move an inch or maybe not even to move, to just stay where you are.
Who is the opposing team? How are they managing? Who is gathering more ground, who is slipping back?
Now let go. Feel the rope unwind from your hands, shake them free of the strain. Feel the tension release as you roll your shoulders back, as you tilt your head this way and that. Standing up straight, feel the strength in your body as it grounds into the earth, no longer in a push or pull, just being. From this newly relaxed state let yourself zoom out, out past the immediate game being played in front of you. The distraction of struggle. Come back now to your body, the strength of it, how capable it is. Eyes closed. Body heavy. Breath steady. Notice the thrum of your heart, the chorus that beats alongside billions of others, the capacity it holds for love. For connection. For harmony. Each cell in your body poised and ready, not for a fight, not for a struggle, but for unity. A divine connection exists within.
Eyes open now, back to the game you were engaged in. Seeing anew, seeing it as a storyline you were born into, one you agreed to without maybe even meaning to. What else exists outside the game?
In our complex earthly experience within the spectrum of light is a rainbow of colours. We can only see it when it’s refracted, through a prism for instance. But it still always exists. We can only see it when our perspective changes, when the lens we look through is different. What’s a different lens in which we could view the current crises of our world?
I’m watching the world spin at a pace that is so far out of rhythm with me. There is this game of tug of war being played, them against us. Good vs evil. Wrong vs right. Division. Divide and conquer. There’s nothing new about that. Time after time, century after century, history goes on to repeat itself. Separate into groups. Polarized views. Choose a side. Stay in the fight. Life is a struggle. It takes on different forms, different politics, but it’s always based in fear. Shapeshifting through time, picking up steam, slowing the pace, seeming to fall into peace, only to rear up again over and over. There is always something to fight against. To fight for.
We forget that anything exists outside of it.
It’s designed as a distraction, to hold the entirety of our attention, because the real game is being played outside the rope. A parallel reality, created from different beliefs and choices.
Back to your meditative, expansive, limitless, connected version of self – see the game as it’s being played out before you, the struggle, and observe:
What is the playing field?
What is the ‘rope’ itself?
Who is cheering?
Who is orchestrating?
Who wins, who loses, and – more than that – what’s the difference?
Who are you outside of the eternal struggle?
I’m curious to know your conclusions, share below if you like. If I imagine the rope and what it signifies – control, rigid beliefs, morality based upon someone’s views – if I drop the rope and pursue what possibilities lie outside of it, then to me that is choosing peace over fighting. I wonder often now, what would I even be fighting for? Because the very construct of the life ‘they’re’ selling isn’t one that resonates with me. And I don’t believe that fighting achieves winning, not on the terms I’d like to consider anyway. If we keep choosing to pick up the rope we are constantly engaged in ‘their’ version of life as struggle. Wouldn’t the biggest show of resistance simply be to live your life on your terms anyway, to forge your own path regardless of what you’ve been told? ‘They’ want you to believe it’s not feasible, and that you’ll be lonely, an outlier with no comfort or companionship. I promise that’s not true.
Who is this ‘they’? Perhaps it’s my naïveté that I just simply can’t get my head around the notion of an evil force that’s trying to pin us down, to imprison us. And trust me I’ve gone down all the rabbit holes. I believe we imprison ourselves – we’re tangled in this web of consciousness, one that connects all life. I know some think I’m too dreamy, too idealistic, to think that there isn’t a dark energy trying to consume us. I don’t see it as outside of us, more so the unhealed parts of ourselves, the edges of ourselves we haven’t yet met. A vibration we can downgrade into or upgrade out of. An annoying hum like a persistent mosquito that distances itself from you then buzzes by your ear.
Can we collectively decide that to choose the way we live is the ultimate freedom? Can we offer the understanding that all versions of life can be lived simultaneously, one not better than or less than the other. Just parallel, two paths that meander through the same landscape of life, alongside and meeting once in awhile. The biggest threat to ‘the establishment’ are empowered self reliant and content people who need nothing, who choose their truest human nature over anything else. I do think that for the “powers that be”, those on the upper rungs of global control, that they understand very well what this game of tug of war is. When they enforce a big push they know there will be some push back, they depend upon it to keep our attention fixed on the game. And thus the war rages on.
There will be disruption, but that is part of the cycle of life. I think we’ve been conditioned to believe disruption is negative instead of a catalyst, the destruction is as necessary to creation as intention can be. We can wield it to our advantage, use it as a time of reevaluation and reflection, a chance to choose differently if needed. That vibrational upgrade, a shift in consciousness, a remembering even of love. I made you a book about it, you can find it here – a self-guided work book that helps you work through three pillars of creating your own life on purpose.
I wonder if for some the game of tug of war is why they are here, they are fully engaged and will always be, some seem so hellbent on life as struggle. I don’t fault them for that. I desire simplicity. Peace. Connection. Ease. Joy. And I’m curious so I naturally am drawn to the ‘what else is possible’ scenarios. Again we needn’t live the same life, but we should protect our freedom of choosing. Even that notion though…isn’t that evidence alone of how thoroughly we rely on an outward authority to grant permission? In this collective of people starting to draw the same conclusions I am, I imagine them as standing up on a cliff, just on the cusp of realization that maybe they can be the chooser of their own destiny. Maybe they can disengage and use their energy in fully supporting the life they do desire. Not the one they were told to have, the one they feel stirring within them.
When I get really overwhelmed by it, as I am wont to do, the tug of war between my head and heart taking over – I try to take a small timeout. I sit with myself, I go back to the idea of creating a life I love to live and I see what versions feel expansive, what feels contracting. And then I stay in wonder as much as I can, not holding on with attachment to the way I thought it should all go, but an allowance of what else might be possible.
This isn’t an act of passivity in the way you may be thinking. Yes I’m a peacemaker, but I’m also fiercely devoted to my values and will go to any length to live in the way I desire. I feel this disengaging is the supreme act of power. It’s not an easy way out by any means, it’s often fraught with challenge, risk and loss as unwinding from the prescribed way of being is. People will notice if you’re no longer consumed in the same way you once were, in the same way they are. It takes courage and huge amounts of faith. But if you think that what I’m suggesting is an act of powerless surrender, imagine instead all of the energy that you exert in the fight and the collective energy of those who would be joining you on ‘your side’. Now see all of that strength, that aligned effort, pooling instead the force to build and create the idealistic version of life you inherently know is possible. To bow out of the fight you were born into and to become the steward of life you desire to see. Now that’s power. Like tending a garden alongside the war zone, I’ll be there toiling away for what I know is possible and in wonder of the limitless universe we’re a part of, planting seeds for the generations of lovers, peacemakers, freedom keepers, wisdom holders, creators and idealists.