At the core of reality, there is no battle. There is no fight for planet, no battle against nature. There is no fight for a cure, no battle against cancer. There is no fight for women’s rights or for gender equality. There is no race war or fight against gun violence. There is no battle of good versus evil, no battle for our souls. No God versus Satan. No us versus them. There is no battle at all.

This will be hard for many, maybe most, to understand, which may in a sense make my point. May these words serve the world toward openness, greater love, and deeper consciousness.

I can hear it already. “To say there is no battle is naivety at best and a complete lack of empathy at worst. Have you been listening at all to those who are oppressed, diagnosed, defeated, and destroyed?!?” Naivety as a word rings of childishness, unsophisticated thinking, innocent ignorance. Track with me to the end, if you can, and judge for yourself the level of naivety when it is said and done. The mystics talk about first naivety, which happens before knowledge and experience… and they talk of second naivety which comes after knowledge.

I cannot and will not deny that battle language, thinking, enacting, and experience exists in our world. It is all around us, an insidious distortion of the truth of reality and the unity of all living things. People experience “the fight” all the time. But it is not true. Let me put it this way. If I were to say, “Sex sells,” anyone would know what I mean. What I am referring to in this saying is that if someone wants to make something attractive to the general public, enticing, and desirable all they would have to do would be to add some culturally fabricated ideas of beauty and sexuality to market their product. At the root of it, though, is a certain degree of objectification, false image, and marketing… because it appeals to our desire. Now think of it this way: “Battle sells.”

In reality, “the battle” sells even more universally than sex sells.

The battle paradigm is everywhere and it draws people in. It is at the core and foundation of basic human dualistic consciousness. Politics, race, Hollywood, environment, medicine, gender, religion. Our religions are based on this, almost as a dualistic response to human individuals’ dualistic problems. People have experienced a battle in themselves of what they want to do versus what they actually do. The religious response is that this is the sin nature or the flesh or the devil or evil or whatever. It generates shame and a toxic self-loathing that only God or salvation in Jesus can “save” us from. So people have good reason to be frustrated at religion for these types of things… but ironically those who say all religion is bad and that religion is the problem operate at the same level of consciousness. Because again, its a battle against religion. But there is no battle. There is no battle for or against religion. There doesn’t have to be.

We have seen the destruction that battle-thinking, that oppositional thinking, has done to humanity and to our world. Genocide, world wars, extinction of species. To maintain the paradigm is to say we must fight against these things. But all this does is perpetuate the destruction and further the dualistic consciousness. The prevalence of battle consciousness in the world and the continued destruction is evidence in itself that this cannot be the way towards love and wholeness and unity. It is impossible to maintain complete love with an oppositional or battle-minded consciousness. The two are not simultaneous and one gets sacrificed when we take up the banner of the other.

I would completely understand anyone’s opposition to the concept that there is no battle. After all, it is so radical that it would change everything. So for those who immediately disagree, I understand. But for those who awaken to this, who are softened by it, there is freedom. To mature is to see past the battle. This is the journey to healing and to being a healer in the world around us. I would challenge you to look for the battles around you and begin to tell yourself, “There is no battle. It’s not real. It doesn’t have to be this way.” There is no battle… there is understanding. There is no battle… there is love. There is no battle… there is unity. There is no battle. We don’t have to fight anything. Everything is enfolded in love.