The Enemy

Do you ever just step back and admire the mind, with all its stories and games and tricks? All its envying and resistances and fears, all its ‘what-ifs’ and ‘why me’s’ and ‘oh no’s’?

I know I do. I mean, it never stops its play. Oh, maybe here and there, at a life highlight or an amazing meditation, but mostly the mind just goes on and on and on. And when you have a big thing like a child with autism, the mind gets tons of grist for its mill.

I have consciously tried not to blame my son for his autism. In something reminiscent of the Christian policy of loving the sinner but hating the sin, I have loved Joseph but I have hated autism. I have despised autism, cried over autism, obsessed about autism, resisted the fact of autism, worried relentlessly about autism, and cursed God because of autism.

It’s different now. This is because I recently heard a spiritual teacher, Gangaji, speak about the enemy. I am paraphrasing her here:

She says that the mind, in its restlessness, seeks out entertainment. Obviously there are many ways in which the mind is entertained, but she got specific, singling out how profoundly the mind is entertained by war.

This war, I assume, is not just nation against nation, but conflict within one’s own little world, or even with oneself. And in order to have a war, Gangaji says, the mind must first conjure up an enemy.

Since hearing this, I have been watching my mind conjure up enemies. They are everywhere! If I am running late, the red light is an enemy. If my husband snores when I have insomnia, he is the enemy. If one of my closest friends gets depressed and doesn’t contact me for a while, she is the enemy. Basically, anyone or anything who does what I don’t want them to do becomes an enemy.

Ooooh, enter autism. Autism is the club nobody wants to join. Raise your hand if you agree. Ok, don’t — I can’t see it anyway.

Here’s the thing: Gangaji goes on to say that when we’re truly ready for peace, we stop conjuring up enemies. There simply IS no enemy anymore.

It’s really quite simple. We are either resisting, or we’re not. ~ John Astin

Don’t hold me to it ‘cuz I may change my mind (literally), but right now I am choosing peace around autism. Autism is not the enemy. Even God — the one I blame when all else fails — is not the enemy. Autism just is, and I am not going into war over it. I will do all I can to help Joseph realize his full potential, but that, too, can be done peacefully, without fear or worry or even urgency.

When that resistance stops — and when I stop being in a war even with the war — then there is peace. Gangaji defines peace as the absence of entertainment.

It’s a nice place. I watch the attachment to this nice place come up and I smile: There is the mind again. Now it wants to make being anywhere but in this nice place an enemy.

Wishing you presence, awareness, and the ability to witness — rather than believe — the mind in its playing.

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