In her latest personal development article Intuitive Healer Katarina Winslow reflects on the external and internal enemy.
Why is it that we feed on the fear of each other and believe in the idea of an enemy? Maybe it is time to ask more questions about why the concept of the enemy has taken such a deep root in our societies. Evidently, the Brain’s Negative Bias is a reason as our biological and psychological programming reacts more intensely to threats and dangers to protect our survival. We also learn more and faster from dangerous and threatening situations because these are the experiences that we need to remember for our sheer survival. Our life doesn’t depend on our happiness, so to ‘register’ all that is happy and beautiful is not crucial for our physical continuity, whereas threats and nightmares are.
But are there other causes we have ignored? The many conflicts in the world are not new, but this doesn’t explain why people at top of it indulge in feeding on fear and violence.
It is, of course, logical that our existential fears and our instinctive brain must take some blame for people focusing and feeding on negative information. But is there perhaps another truth closer to us than we can imagine? Could it be that on a deeper level we are afraid of ourselves and our own inner enemies? Are we afraid of the one part of us that has difficulties in giving ourselves permission to live, the part that is fearful of a happy and peaceful life? Could the reason for sustaining an exterior enemy be an attempt to escape our interior enemy and our personal fears? To push it even further, the root cause could be that we are afraid of life. There would be no reason to buy into and feed on the concept of the enemy if we weren’t also scared of something inside of ourselves. There must be an internal psychological reason for our exterior behaviour beyond the Brain’s Negative Bias. Surely, what is within is without.
Let’s face the uncomfortable truth: separation, fear and the concept of an enemy are about to destroy our sense of security. The idea of an enemy is both detrimental to the global climate and slowly killing our joy and happiness. We could regain our power and change the trends of society if we took a closer look inward and fought our internal enemy rather than focusing on the dragons in the fairy tales and on our TV screens.
The psychological truth is that what we focus on also resides within. Maybe the focus on the external threats is to compensate for the part of us that is not sure we have the right to live. Are we prone to feed on conflict and separation as a compensation for not addressing our inner conflicts?
If we all stopped believing in the outer enemy and the idea that we must defeat each other, we would focus on overcoming ourselves, on conquering our inner conflicts and be at peace. Before things escalate, it would be helpful to make a switch inward and make peace with ourselves and thereby contribute to world peace.
Things would rapidly change if we aimed at making peace in our internal separation instead of feeding on it. We would help the world by becoming more conscious and making a firm decision to supply our mental, emotional and psychological selves with peaceful sustenance. You can’t feed on conflict and expect to be at peace.
It is true that it is not easy to be happy in a world that is getting more conflictual by the day. Still, you do much more for the world if you allow yourself to be happy instead of sustaining a glooming feeling of ‘it is too late.’ Even if it is difficult to ignore the many worried and sad-looking people who walk the streets, try to smile and ignite a little flame of hope. We can all agree that it is tough to live in a climate where there are significant threats to the survival of our planet. On top of the growing decline, society becomes more competitive. It is not strange that people panic about losing their jobs and that mistrust grows at work, leading people to burnouts and suicides.
