The Tower

For just a few moments, leave your day-to-day identity behind, and follow me into the sphere of imagination.

Imagine yourself looking down upon a great open expanse of land. See its golden reeds, the green hills in the distance, and the blue sky beyond. See the cloud wisps slowly shifting above. Upon the land, in the middle of an open plain, see a tall stone tower. Make your way to the tower, and climb its spiral staircase, until you reach the very top. Go out onto the balcony, and look out at the land before you.

And now imagine that this great land is the landscape of you, of the person we call _________. The landscape includes all the areas of your life, the ideas in your head, the various desires and impulses and beliefs inside of you. It includes the memories and hopes. It includes the wounds and the joys.

Look out onto it. There is all kind of activity in this land. Some things areas are being built, others are slowly decaying. There are areas of color and vitality and areas neglected or hidden in the shadows.

And there you are, in the tower. If the landscape is all of you, the person in the tower, this person looking out on your life is the conscious observer in you. This is the “I” you experience when you observe yourself and your own thoughts. This is the “I” you are in touch with when you reflect on your life. This “I” stands apart from any particular thought or impulse, but witnesses and experiences them all.

This “I” tries to discern between all the voices inside of you, tries to make the right decisions across all the competing ideas and worries and hopes. This “I” asks the questions about the system itself — Who am I? Why did I do that? What makes me happy and unhappy?

This is the only part of you that unifies everything happening in the landscape, and it does so by being the consistent faculty of consciousness. The “I” in the tower is a kind of “eye” in your life—the perceiver of all, the witness of all.

So there you are, standing high above the land in the tower: the I, the eye, looking out onto your life.

If you look closer you will see, in many areas of the land, there seems to be a war going on, a battle being fought. Forces are clashing against one another.

There is a war going on inside of you. This land, the land of __________ is a battleground for two opposing forces, two principles, two entirely separate realities.

We don’t have words for these two realities, so it will take us many words understand what they are. If we tried to approximate them, we might call them the forces of Fear and Love, or Lack and Enough, or Peace and Conflict.

Love asks you to embrace every part of yourself, but Fear stops you, worried what the costs will be. Enough sees the abundance and perfection in everything and Lack sees the problems, the dearth. Peace rests in the truth, and conflict rails against it.

You are here, on this earth, on this plane of love and fear, of abundance and lack, of peace and conflict, for a critical purpose. At the moment your soul entered the physical realm, you were anointed you with a role of great honor: to rule over the conflict of these two forces in the domain of your life, and to choose.

It is your destiny to be like a ruler over a kingdom, building the great civilization of your life as you choose one or the other. It is your destiny to be like a God, creating reality itself as you choose one force or the other.

In other worlds, other states of being, other work is done. Life on earth is about reaffirming the choice our souls made forever in another time and place, the choice to live in love. Our experience here is one of losing it, only for the meaning made by choosing it again, and the beauty created by choosing it again.

Being on earth, is about coming into a realm where that choice is hard to make, where its benefits are sometimes hard to see, where the truth of love is obscured. Life on earth is about, in spite of all of that, claiming love as a way of life again. It is about knowing fear and love and choosing love.

If you are like most human beings, you have spent most of life down on the battlefield, in the middle of the conflict. Being persuaded by one side and then the other. Siding with one team and then the other. This means lots of fits and starts in life. Lots of changing your mind. Lots of not being able to make up your mind.

You’ve been living with the wreckage of conflict in many areas of your life. Getting caught in the crossfire. Spending lots of time in the fight.

Sometimes, it was confusing to tell who was who down there on the battlefield. Which was the voice of love and fear. And it was even harder to tell: which voice was on your side? In some situations, love seemed to hurt you — you lost friends or lost face or approval in this world, when you simply followed love and acted without fear. But love helped you forgive, find joy, and sing with the song of life.

In other situations fear cost you, you lost happiness and freedom and experimentation and the courage to follow your heart. In other situations, fear or and a sense of lack, of the problems of things helped you, it motivated you to work hard, change, build something.

You have been living in the trenches, inside the battle, caught in the cross fire.

Now, you can take up another vantage point. Only if you are seeking one. Withdraw from that territory, for you were made for a nobler purpose. Rise up to the tower. Become the observer of these forces in your life, and begin to make choices about where you would like to place your allegiance.