Can it really be so simple?

 How do you end an addiction? You simply walk away from it.

How to you break free from an abusive relationship? You walk out.

Clearly, you can’t say this to someone who struggles with compulsions or co-dependence and hope for success. These energies have to be understood and let go off. Sometimes these connections, triggers, longings and fears reach back lifetimes and require inter-generational healing. Still, there comes a time when this energy loses its grip, and we simply turn our back on it. As Nisargadatta Maharaj once put it, “the fruit falls when it is ripe.”

 

The inner war cannot be won. One sees it, recognizes it, shrugs one’s shoulders, and walks away from it. Actually, there is no one around to walk away from this conflict. The purpose of the conflict is understood in the first place to recognize the entity that claimed it had a problem, but this entity does not exist. That’s when the quest is finished. All personal energies—just like the longings for some artificial escape or the presence of an abusive partner—are recognized as empty. That’s when the “I Am” energy moves in and takes over.

 

What to do until this final breakthrough has occurred? Enjoy the “I Am” and when the personal energies and interferences take over once again, see them for what they stand for. The realization of Jesus in the desert was depicted as an inner war when good won over evil. It’s deeper than that. Jesus saw his cravings for power to manifest bread, the ability to fly and to rule over people, and stepped away from it. That’s how the inner war is won. You recognize its non-existence. In the presence of “I Am,” there is no one around to have an inner war.

 

Can it really be so simple? Change may be perceived as hard, but the solution to the problem is simple in the end.