The Myth of Opposing Forces

"Conflict must be between two forces. It cannot exist between One Power and nothingness." -- A Course in Miracles

What decision, choice, or conflict exists in your life that isn't based on the perception of opposition? Even seemingly benign choices are seen like this... on the one hand, this... on the other hand, maybe this. Always two, sometimes more. When I was younger, my family would tease me for being unable to 'make up my mind' about the simplest of things, like which shoes to pick, or which type of donut to eat, or which guy to choose. The myth of opposing forces has its root in the belief in a wrong. A wrong choice. A wrong power. A wrong force wins, and evil triumphs over good. Whew.

A Course in Miracles says that even the simplest of conflicts are fearful, because they are the birth of the core illusion of fear. ACIM goes on to say,"Yet what is born of nothing cannot win reality through battle. Why would you fill your world with conflicts with yourself? Let all this madness be undone for you, and turn in peace to the remembrance of God, still shining in your quiet mind."

There is a way of widening back and resting in the quiet mind even in the midst of things, and allowing the still, small Voice of sanity and Oneness to guide us without resisting and battling our illusions, our own projections and stories about it all. In this widened state of Awareness of Self there is no enemy, and all choices are easily made. It is only the contracted sense of self that imagines itself separate. It is only this imagined separate self that battles and struggles.

The myth of opposing forces is an age-old archetype that holds together the illusion of the world as we have known it. The hero's journey. The search for romance. The quest for good. The battle against evil. The effort to be a good person. Striving to succeed. These are all the stuff of story and illusion, and they have not served us. We are a world at war with each other and with ourselves. Each of us IS at war within ourselves, in the illusion.

Yet Who We Really Are is no illusion, and has never been at war in reality. It is only our tenacious clinging to these stories that causes us pain and blinds us to the Oneness, Peace and Joy that are always present, as the very Ground of Being, our true Self. There is only One.

"Whenever opposition arises, simply say to yourself... Not two." -- The Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen