There is a hidden joke in the title of this blog. I approach the protection of my garden in very much the way Baba taught me to handle security in the Ganeshpuri Ashram. In Ganeshpuri there were walls with broken glass on the top. Intruders came in through the drainpipes or the front gates. After we put screens over the drainpipes, the only way in was the gates. People would come in and attempt to steal from the many fruit and nut trees.Always a great game. In the garden at my house, deer come in and devour our plants. Over the years, we have used repellents and most recently a barrier of live willows, but nothing has been successful. Until now.
We are now taking a tactic from The Seven Samurai; we are using bamboo. The bamboo on our property has provided amazing material to create an eight foot fence around the acre of landscape garden, except where evergreens have closed to form walls. There is one place where some evergreen trees have not yet grown together, and this is where the buck came in. A solitary buck came looking for female friends. He did not even eat anything. But he couldn’t find his way back out. He escaped by jumping through the fence in the back, taking it down. We have now fenced off the gap in the trees where he entered. The buck was a lone, not very bright enemy. He will not be back. The buck stops here.
How does this apply to anything spiritual? Very simple. Every project, every event, is facing the enemy. Who is the enemy? We are. But in order to understand this, we need to see how those we regard as adversaries actually reflect our own inner state. The buck stops here.
In my case, who appears as my enemy? My enemy is the “proudly inert”. The buck was “proudly inert”. Not being the most conscious of creatures, he just wandered into the area of play. Once something is in my field of play, that means I have an attachment of some kind that I need to confront. To resolve that attachment, I can use a foursquare.
The opposite of “proudly inert” is “consciously growing”. The positive of “proudly inert” is “grounded, down to earth”. And the negative of “consciously growing” is “chameleon”.
Proudly inert Consciously growing
Grounded/Down to Earth Chameleon
My enemy arrives not only in the form of deer, but also in the form of a certain kind of student. With each of these, I am tempted to believe that “I cannot win”. With the deer I did, by creating an environment in which the deer could not enter my playing field. I had to consciously grow and change in order to remove the deer. With people it can be the same, but if the buck does stop here then I am the enemy and will remove the outside agitation only when I face myself.
First, I have to create a foursquare about the enemy.
Second, I must get eight yeses consistently in order to own the enemy within myself.
Third, I am then able to see what I do and the universe reflects back at me. In order to get free of the battle, I have to neither resonate nor react. I have been dancing a beautiful foxtrot for too long. It is a set dance, my dance, which I get others to join. They may even think they are in charge, just as I thought they were in charge and I could not win. But at this point I see I was always in charge and could change the game at any time.
Fourth and finally, I can now get off the grid of the foursquare. I can now discern the appropriate action in any situation. The personal is removed at this point, and I can function for the greater good. The play and all the action moving forward are no longer personal.
The outside may continue to play the way it has always played, but now we no longer lose our Subject in objects. We can now stay focused on the Heart and are not distracted by the game. We can now win by acting appropriately. Many years ago, I wrote an aphorism: the only way to win is not to play at all. The only way not to play is to look in the mirror, see ourselves as the enemy, and stop the fight. Once we do that, we can act with an integrity that has no personal attachment in it. We are then acting in every way for the greater good.
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