Society has trained us: where there are threats, there must be defence. Developing the idea, people invented weapons for attack and weapons for protection — an element able to absorb the energy of another element. But there is a law in the universe: the greater always absorbs the lesser. In the spiritual world it reads like this — the more boundless the soul, the more easily it absorbs everything.
Picture an enormously strong man — over two metres tall, a metre and a half across, carrying a huge sword. Looking at him, an ordinary person thinks: «What a monster. How could anyone defend against that?» Now picture someone three times smaller appearing — but his shield is fifty times larger than he is, and he has the strength to hold it. All the terror vanishes in an instant. Why? Because that shield compensates for any threat: it is a thousand times larger than the opponent’s sword. The strength of a sword is measured by the strength of an arm. The strength of a shield — by the scale of the one who holds it.
For any force there is a greater force.
But is defence needed at all?
In consciousness, each of us chooses whom to call an «opponent» — and it takes no more than a change in the course of your thinking to turn him into a «friend». In the spiritual world there is no need to build borders and defensive structures. Your task is different: to be so expanded in consciousness that the potential of your soul can absorb any other potentials — good or bad, it makes no difference. When you absorb someone’s aggression or negativity, you do not even notice it. You can only notice it if you deliberately turn your attention to it — and here is the trap: the moment you start paying attention, the boundlessness of your field immediately begins to shrink.
So every time the thought «I must defend myself» appears, first ask: must I, really? What is the maximum damage this situation could do — and is it real? Might this be precisely your experience of removing all borders? There is no sense in aggressive action, no sense in negative thinking. Spending energy to prove something to someone, or to stop someone’s ugly behaviour, is an exercise of the ego. You would not set about teaching ethics to a man who has lived his whole life in different conditions and does not understand what you are talking about — you would see that he has no use for the information. Yet the moment your ego is stung, the strength to «teach» is suddenly found. Imagine there are a million such people — and you will look at it differently at once.
A shield can be made only of the very thing it defends against.
What the shield is made of
And now the main turn. A shield, in principle, can consist only of the thing it protects against. A divine shield protects against a shortage of divine energy only if it is itself a store of that energy: a small reserve we keep topping up for the moments when energy runs short. Can a shield be made of the bad? Yes — because we so often answer the bad in kind. And then what we carry on our arm is not protection but a stockpile of other people’s aggression.
So check what your shield is assembled from. If it is built of grievances, ready retorts and scores to settle with people — it is made of the very thing you are hiding from, and it attracts exactly that. If it is built of love and knowledge, it does not deflect blows. It makes them meaningless: the sword simply finds nowhere to strike. The most reliable defence is not a wall. It is scale.
The strength of a sword is measured by the arm. The strength of a shield — by the scale of the soul that holds it.
The work on the cover — «The Shield» →
— Evgeny Fleysher
Artist and engineer. Author of WHY? and The Spiritual Alphabet, creator of the Art as Healing project. Paints works built on sacred geometry.
About the author and the method →