Years ago, my father, who was a great fan of U.S. history, told me that President Abraham Lincoln chose not to end the Civil War because he knew if the pressure were off, the amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery would not happen.

I never fully understood what my father meant until I saw the movie Lincoln. One doesn’t have see the movie to appreciate the beauty of this example. I can simply look to my own journey.

How often I wish for just a breath of peace, a moment when the war of life might calm. But it doesn’t. My work, my health, my family, my house—always within those realms, battle rages. These days they are more quiet wars than in years past, and yet they still persist.

Of course they originate within me, each skirmish illuminates yet another place where I’m holding to some idea of finding safety in the lower worlds.

In the movie, Lincoln, who is said to have been a saint, rides his horse through a battlefield strewn with bodies. His great tall figure bows with the weight of those deaths, which really are upon his shoulders.

In that image I see my own Beloved observing the carnage of my life. That Divine power knows how the war hurts me. And yet if the pressure were to abate even for a moment, if a peace were declared, all my incentive to reach higher within myself, to stretch beyond my limited beliefs—to fly—would die.

And thus would die my spiritual journey.

I am here to ratify the amendment to my own constitution that abolishes my slavery. Such an act ends my reliance on the dual worlds, worlds that distinguish between black and white, rather than admitting to the great Oneness that we all are.

And so, each day I wake, do my spiritual practice, and enter the battlefield with my Beloved at my side. I am a great soldier of love, fighting in every moment for my freedom. (Read more about this in We Are Gladiators.)

And with each moment that I stay in the Divine now, I win.

Like star in the sky I sit high above all duality, all condition.

It is no tragedy that President Lincoln left this plane just two months after his great victory. His mission was complete, just as one day my sojourn in the lower worlds will be.

Then and only then can peace come, can I merge back into God’s limitless love.

Until then, let the war rage.

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