Stories and myths abound about making our enemies our friends. One of the simplest and oldest of these is about the boy who removed the thorn from the lion’s paw. There are many other stories with the enemy taking on many guises. Sometimes our enemies seem objective and outside of us, sometimes they lie within us.

We often see disease, pain and death as enemies - the opposite of health, comfort and life. In an effort to escape these dreaded enemies we often desensitize and disconnect ourselves. This desensitization sometimes exhibits itself as addiction -drugs, alcohol, food, relationships, etc.

We can learn to live again and heal by learning to connect and feel. We each have the capacity to be our own healers. Intuition, imagination, awareness and compassion are some of our best tools. Shifting our perspective from getting to giving can help us remain present in our lives. Learning not to give ourselves away and creating joy in our lives is part of the process.

Distinguishing between curing and healing is important. Healing is a process and can be a way of living while a "cure" is result focused and a singular event. The holistic process of healing moves you toward what you desire, it is not a process of fleeing from your fears. You must re-examine your entire life to find your core issues and discard that which will not assist you in creating the life you are here to live.

Fear is an element of life that we instinctively run from, but working with what we fear often moves us onto the path to healing. Our saving element is within us and is often the last thing we wishto look at or recognize or befriend.

There is a war that goes on within us on a daily basis. It is a war within our personal selves, within our family, our community, our nation and between nations. If we stop our war within we will find what we have been fleeing from. What needs to be healed in us will present itself to us if we allow it. It is then that we are able to find and reclaim our lost selves.

The warrior within manifests him/herself through disconnection and non-relationship. The healer within manifests him/herself through connection and relationship. In order to truly heal we must establish a relationship between our healer and our warrior. It must be a partnership where the warrior can protect you without destruction and where the healer is safe enough to expose your wounds without destroying you. To do this we must open to a new perception about our enemy.

As children we learn about "the enemy." We see our family "do battle" and we learn about victims and victors, about blame vengeance, resentment and retaliation. Others tell us we are bad and at some point we begin to tell ourselves the same thing. Eventually we begin to spot what is wrong with others. Some of us become very astute at diagnosing "bad things" or "wrongness" in ourselves or others.

We work very hard at removing these negativities. If the "badness" is cancer we want to destroy the enemy alien cells within. If the "badness" is addiction, we see the enemy as that part of us that wants the bad substance. And sometimes we feel that we brought this on ourselves or perhaps deserved this punishment, that somehow we are inadequate, that we are mistakes in need of fixing. We always see an enemy that needs to be battled.

What if we did not see these "negativities" as enemies to be battled or mistakes in need of fixing? What if we found a new way of perceiving these enemies? Instead of seeing an enemy within us,what if we saw our life as a story that needed a new direction, or  an important path detoured? What if the enemy is seen as a messenger or catalyst or an ally in disguise?

We can help encourage this shift in perception by opening our hearts to what we have been struggling against. Sometimes within our darkest selves we find rich illumination and the path to healing.

Carl Jung expressed the concept that we have a part of ourselves that we are aware of and hold in the light, and another part of ourselves that we try to avoid awareness of and keep in the "shadow" of our psyche. We learn to detach from our shadow by either projecting it outside of our self and making it an external enemy, or by pushing it down and into ourself and making it a disease or an affliction.

If you look at yourself carefully, you will be able to recognize that part of yourself that you have been taught is acceptable and are willing to show in the light. If you look deeper you will see in the shadow, desires, feelings, instincts and forces you conceal - parts you or society deems unacceptable. People often hide what they are afraid of in themselves, sometimes they do this so well that they are unaware of it.

When we detach from our shadow by projecting it outside of ourselves we unconsciously draw people to us who play out these hidden aspects of ourselves. These people show what we chose to hide. These external enemies appear as the people we just can’t tolerate, the ones who frustrate and annoy us. Sometimes people who exhibit our shadows are attractive to us at first. If we are timid and quiet we may be attracted to someone who is adventurous and exciting. After a time of being with this person we may wonder why they can’t settle down and enjoy the simpler pleasures or, when our fear sets in, we may begin to perceive them as wreckless thrill-seekers incapable of commitment. When we make someone or something the external enemy it is really that fear inside of ourselves, that part of us we have disowned.

We are wounded in the world and this is where our fears come from. When we see ourselves as the cause or result of our wounds ("I deserved this, I am bad.") we detach from this part of ourselves in fear. We detach from our shadow and push it down into ourselves by ignoring and minimizing the pain and trauma, telling ourselves " it wasn’t so bad" and that we are really all right. We hide our wounds inside.

Our society encourages us to internalize our problems and then offers us external solutions, implying that the problems and that find the solutions within ourselves, that we don’t have internal resources. As the problem, we begin to focus all of our attention on fixing ourselves but find no internal solutions and feel ineffectual. Our external solutions are things like better jobs or toothpastes, more attractive mates, more money. External solutions don’t work, for one thing they can always betaken away from us. Without recognizing our wounds and our fears we cannot tend to them. Our needs to be nurtured, loved, protected, heard, acknowledged, etc., are unfulfilled. We are wounded, untended to, and we do not acknowledge this part of ourselves - we fear it, we divorce it, we drug it and we abuse it. It is our enemy.

Who is this enemy?

How can we learn from it?

Where have we hidden our internal resources?