(Caveat: This article is written by a white female of middle-upper class status who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah and so comes from this perspective. She is mixing the Relative and the Absolute and knows it.)
I’ve recently become acquainted with the concept of ‘attack thoughts.’ Attack thoughts are any thoughts a person (uh, me) has that even at the most subtle level convey a lack of trust in one’s perfect safety and goodness, when there is no actual threat. Attack thoughts are part of a thought system (cleverly contrived by our friend the ego) that is aimed at keeping us identified with the body, and separate from everything (which it is not and never has been . . . separate that is), thereby creating an illusion that necessarily elicits fear. Attack thoughts are based on past events and future worries, which are not real. They include all the strategies for how you are going to defend yourself from someone or something. And they make you feel small and powerless, which of course generate more attack thoughts.
You don’t know you’re having attack thoughts and that they are imprisoning you, so you unwittingly have them all the time. In fact, they are the most common way to go through a lifetime. Constant attack thoughts make the body sick.
Most people are born amongst them, at varying degrees. It’s very difficult to get away from them in your social environment. News, for instant, is mostly comprised of attack thoughts — who is doing what to whom and the terrible consequences that have or will ensue(d). I concede the news is reporting actual events that are objectively occurring. But the kind of events reported are mostly the ones that involve conflict, death, destruction and danger of one kind or other. Have you noticed the urgent tone of voice of BBC reporters? Like you better be afraid of the terrible things happening in other parts of the world! Compassion, grief, concern, yes. Fear, no. If you start to tune into the pervasiveness of attack thoughts, you’ll find them in most common conversation — what’s wrong with this or that or how stupid this person is or the like.
Attack thoughts come up when you are unconsciously trying to defend yourself against unacceptable parts of yourself. The mechanism of defense is: I hate this about myself, or if I am this way I will not be safe, so I am going to get rid of this part of me so I will never see it in myself. I will throw it away, outside of myself by projecting it onto another person or group of people. That way I can actively protect myself from what’s in me that I hate by attacking whatever or whoever I have projected it upon. Like a virulent anti-homosexual Christian pastor who struggles in subconscious hell with his attraction to men. Highly emotional attack can often be a clear indication of projection.
War is the ultimate outcome of collective projection and its attendant attack thoughts gone insane, thoughts that require the complete annihilation of the object of projection (masking an underlying vying for resources and power, which is not acceptable to reveal publicly). Note: I am speaking of modern war; war since the age of science and reason de-mystified and de-mythologized culture. It is possible that war with neighboring tribe could have different dynamics involved, as the indigenous psyche is different.
In a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago, we were talking about the huge increase in mass shootings in the United States this year. A mass shooting is when more than 4 people die (including the gunman). As of May 2021, there have been 247 mass shootings in the U.S. Public mass shootings have tripled since 2011, peaking in 2018.
We mused that rampant mass shooting feels like invisible domestic warfare. I suddenly thought about the World Wars. They were massively destructive and rife with unimaginable horrors at a huge scale. They were also idealogically very clear in the public mind. Now warfare had become smoldering guerilla-style, on a smaller scale but chronic in many places around the world with less clarity about who the enemy is and certainly less public consensus on what is going on. And now, we seem to be declaring war on ourselves, inside our own country, amongst our own people with no clarity at all about what the war is about.
If war is instigated by whipping up attack thoughts, what might this trend of modern war say about our collective act of projection? I have no credentials to make any conclusions, but here’s a thought: might we slowly but surely be waking up to our projections? Are we throwing them out less far away, less clearly? Could it be that more and more of us are becoming more psychologically more savvy and are realizing that there is no enemy at all? That in reality there are only differences, no enemies?
Wisdom traditions and religious mystical thought throughout the ages maintain that at the deepest level, “reality is safe and sure, and wholly kind to everyone and everything.”* If you have ever been outside in the natural world, away from human civilization, listening to the wind, you’ll know how true this statement is. Saints and sages who have come to know who they really are (often by spending gobs of time alone in nature, buy the way), that they are eternal beyond the form of their bodies, have no fear and no need to attack. Therefore they are at peace.
You and I may not be a saint or a sage, but we can become aware that our true nature is beyond form and cannot be, will not be, and never was hurt or destroyed. We can watch our minds and notice our attack thoughts and see them for what they are — illusions. We can speak in ways that do not give voice to attack thoughts and act in ways that do not convey belief in attack thoughts. And we can be a place of peace for others who seek shelter from the nightmare of living inside attack thoughts.
We can choose war, or we can choose reality. Once you see the choice, it’s obvious what to choose.