The unenlightened mind is filled with what the Buddhists call “mental afflictions.” We might call it dysfunctional patterns or negative thoughts or toxic memories. They are all the same thing, just different languaging. Mental afflictions are states of fear, be it jealousy, rage, revenge, envy, conceit, stress, sorrow, greed, hatred, ignorance, aversion, craving, grasping or attachments. They are all fear-based states.

The source of all our problems, according to the Dalai Lama, arises from our mental afflictions. When we are living in the unenlightened mind state—asleep—we think it is all outside of us. We believe we have nothing to do with being the cause of whatever is happening. When we begin to awake, we come to the realization that, without exception, it is all inside of us.

This is also the metaphysical/spiritual view, but applying this teaching 100 percent of the time is extremely difficult and takes years of practice to master. Buddhist teachers often use the term in describing the effort we must exert, as being “strong like a tree.” We must be strong like a mighty oak or a California redwood, so when the winds and storms of life come, we (like the tree) remain steady, rooted and certain. We remain steady and certain so that we are never tempted to believe a particularly trying circumstance is the cosmic exception and is outside of us where these great truths do not apply.

There are antidotes to these mental afflictions:

Here is a technique to release anger. To become calm, meditate on resolving anger by going within to a place of beauty and connect with the earth, beach or forest.

Breathing in, say, I know anger is here. (You acknowledge the problem.)

Breathing out, say, I know the anger is me.

Breathing in, say, I know the anger is unpleasant.

Breathing out, say, I know this feeling will pass.

Breathing in, say, I am calm.

Breathing out, say, I am strong enough to take care of this anger. I am steady like a tree.

Continue breathing and using the above affirmations until you can sense a deep peace. When this has occurred, you know the anger has been dissipated. You may need to do this a number of times, depending on how deeply rooted your anger is.

This exercise offers us a means of truly releasing ourselves from what the Dalai Lama refers to as “our one and true enemy.”

We are often tempted to believe our enemy is some person—a relative, a boss, a mother-in-law, the government, the system, an organization, our past, a deceased person from our past. We must be strong in our resolve, like that tree, always to remember that the enemy is not outside us.

All the great teachings are the same. They all teach that it is inside us. When we realize that this is so, then we can do something about the situation. The belief that it is “out there” keeps us forever in the unenlightened mind, planting negative seeds in store consciousness, and stuck in victimhood.

The Dalai Lama made an interestingly humorous point about this: “Even when a person seems particularly difficult for us to deal with, he still has other things in life to do, such as others to annoy. But our inner enemy has nothing else to do but just to nag us constantly. The ego, the inner enemy, has to stay busy.” I know such an inner character. Do you?

There are three stages of spiritual practice for overcoming the mental enemy:

We must have a deep and abiding spiritual practice to be successful in this endeavor. Sometimes the Dalai Lama makes his point humorously. A few years ago while I attended his teaching, he said, “You can’t solve your inner problems with a big house, a good car and pretty colors painted on your face! Only through a warm heart and compassion can we solve our inner problems.” I enjoy our medium-sized home, my car and having makeup on my face, but none of that could ever define who I am. No lovely stuff can ever define who you are.

When we have these negative mental afflictions, they cause our minds to narrow, our energies to constrict. For example, if a major mental affliction is judgment, and we do not have room in our hearts for people different than we are, then we become very narrow-minded, constantly judging others. We think that for someone to be acceptable, they must be just like us—the same race, same education, same social status, etc. Such attitudes truly cut us off from the richness of a diverse life.

We can now take this teaching to a global level as the Dalai Lama does when he applies it to world peace. “World peace is not going to fall from the sky,” he said, “and world peace is not going to rise from the earth. World peace begins with the individual.” You are that individual.

When we experience the mental affliction of warring thoughts in our own minds, how can we possibly expect to have peace in our homes, peace in our community, peace in our nation, peace in our world? This is one reason it is so very important to resolve any personal conflicts we may have.

While doing extremely intensive inner soul work with a medical intuitive, my inner ferocious warrior emerged. “He” was quite frightful to my present persona and very different in expression. His modus operandi was to attack, to do battle, most often upon me. It felt like I was being stabbed over and over between the ribs of my back. I suffered from terrible physical afflictions and diseases beginning with the onset of this century. It all stemmed from the force and control “he” once wielded over me. This may seem a bit far out, as it once did to me, but my proof lies in my experiences. After landing in the hospital three times on both sides of the Pacific, after experiencing two hellacious episodes of pleurisy, and after having raging shingles that created a cruel semicircle of painful rash (both outside and in) around my left side, I was willing to take a fresh look at what was going on.

My medical intuitive doctor said it was the residue of a 500- to 600-year-old warrior, a stocky, muscular young man who still lived in me and presented himself in nasty ways, attacking from within and without. The doctor and I did months of work to convince him he had to go.

Where I had once carried warrior energy, it has now been cleansed from me. I no longer need to put on my armor and do battle with the dry cleaner for losing some clothes or with the carpet cleaner for doing a mediocre job. On and on my list could go. In every situation I still communicate what needs to be said and done, not from my warrior, but from a centered, composed part of me. If whatever happens doesn’t go as I would like, I now realize it just doesn’t matter. I realized I can live a full and happy life without my white cashmere sweater. When I reached that state of mind, the sweater returned!

Living without the warrior is very peaceful. My mind is not crowded with mental afflictions. While vacationing with friends of ours, both longtime warriors, I shared my experience, and they both “got it.” John Henry calls us regularly to report on their experiences and to tell us what a difference dropping the warrior is making in their lives.

Many of my generation had to awaken the inner warrior to do what we needed to do in our youth. And in our youth it often served many helpful purposes. The time comes, however, when more skillful means of living our lives emerge. Then the warrior must go.

Those of us in America live in a bountiful land of plenty. When we wage war in our thoughts, how can we expect Iraq to come to a peaceful accord? We expect the Israelis and the Palestinians to stop warring. But have we stopped warring in our thoughts? Have we stopped warring with our families, our colleagues, our friends, with those we dislike, or even with those we say we like or even love?

We have to become mindful of everything we do, because everything we do matters. Our manner of living has an enormous effect on our planet to either continue war or to bring forth peace.

“The concept of war is out of date,” said the Dalai Lama, who received an enormous ovation when he made that statement. Earlier he said, “War is organized, legalized violence.” Ponder that thought. It is the concept of killing people to bring forth peace that is outdated. We are not living in the dark ages but we so often act as if we were.

Let us remember that the enemy is not “out there.” The only true enemy is in us, as our mental afflictions. “We have met the enemy, and he is us,” as the cartoon character Pogo stated many years ago. In order to have outer peace, we must have inner peace. When we have inner peace, it leads to peace in our families. When we have inner peace, it moves in our society. When we have inner peace, it moves into our government leaderships. Then we can begin to have global peace. The focus required to bring about such vast transformations is almost indescribable.

Lama Chonam, the young Tibetan monk who so often speaks to my heart, says, “We Americans [he has become a citizen] expect our political leaders to act like they are our spiritual leaders.” They are not our spiritual leaders. There may be a spiritual side to some of them, but when they live and act solely from their political natures they often disappoint us. I have expected our political leaders to act as conscious beings, and I used to get quite perturbed when they did not. They do not because they cannot at this point in time. They have not yet discovered who they truly are. May the words of Lama Chonam bring peace to you as they have to me.

At one session I attended, the Dalai Lama asked the twenty thousand people in attendance to join with him in setting a long-term goal. Many of you, along with many in the audience that night, are familiar with setting goals. He asked us to set a long-term goal for demilitarization, for disarmament, for the end of war. If we would join him in setting that goal, then we would end unnecessary suffering, if not in our lifetime, then in the lifetimes of our children or their children.

If we are to have an end to war, be it in ourselves or upon our global stage, we must start within our minds and hearts. That is where peace begins. It doesn’t fall from the sky, but rather it emanates from within us. This is where we have disarmament. This is where we have peace.