War is a moral contest, and they're won in the temples before they're ever fought - Sun Tzu

In many ways the temple that Sun Tzu referenced in his quote could also include our own vessel, the sacred temple for our divine spirit.  The moral contest that happens in that temple determines whether we win or lose the war, long before we even fight it.  That contest happens within each of us!

I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do. - Georgia O'Keeffe 

This moral contest requires courage to confront ideas, actions and behaviours that violate the ethical standards that we use to govern our life.  But even those standards must be confronted to ensure they are true, loving and honourable.  To confront the lies we tell ourselves and others is tough work but necessary to ensure the ethical standards are of the highest quality.  No sense blaming others either as those are lies we tell ourselves to justify violent behaviours.

Statue of Sun Tzu
By 663highland [GFDL,CC-BY-SA-3.0orCC BY 2.5],from Wikimedia Commons

Like Georgia O'Keeffe hinted in her quote, fear will present itself as a test to see if we REALLY want to do the work.  Only those who are willing to confront and push through that fear will be the ones that grow from the experience.  I've talked a lot about my own growth as I started out being an abusive, violent, depressed, suicidal individual.  Through my efforts to confront my own fear, I managed to do some significant healing.  I still have lots to learn and grow in that process.  I don't think anybody is ever done.  However, declaring peace and making a commitment to non-violence requires a similar leap and results in a huge shift in consciousness.

We have all been trained to follow, honour and respect authority, no matter how violent.  When we walk away from authority due to its violence, coercive and abusive behaviour, the stress, anxiety and fear can be absolutely debilitating.  The colonization of our mind runs so deep that it requires a completely new level of courage to confront these lies and programming.  But by growing our comprehension of what peace, love, prosperity and joy is all about, we must integrate that into our ethical and moral standards and rebuke that authority as it violates the highest standards.  

Portrait photograph of Georgia O'Keeffe — by Alfred Stieglitz in 1918. 

The war that rages on in our world manifests with physical conflict.  But that conflict is based on a much deeper issue.  Those issues are founded on the moral and ethical standards each individual uses to govern their life.  If our standards are in line with the state, then war will rage on and we will lose.  However, if we find the courage to increase our standards within so that they far exceed that of everyone else and especially the state, we will win.  

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.  And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, ... all from continual lying to other men and to himself.”  ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The journey to that point is wrote with fear as our colonization programming hemorrhages feelings of fear to keep us in line.  Confronting authority is even worse.  However, it must be done or authority will continue its downward spiral into the abyss.  

When we stand on the highest moral and ethical standards, we win the war within.  Each individual is a temple upon which those moral contests reside.  They don't exist any where else.  Each of us has within ourselves, the capacity to win or lose the war.  Each of us has the authority, power, influence and spiritual jurisdiction to end the conflict without violence.  No excuses.

 To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill - Sun Tzu

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