Oh How The Mighty Have Risen
- olivierbranford
- Aug 21, 2024
- 12 min read
Updated: Jan 28
The phrase “Oh how the mighty have fallen” comes from the story of David, during Saul, Jonathan, and Israel’s battle against the Philistines. The death of Saul and Jonathan ends the battle of Israel and the Philistines. After hearing the news, David laments and sings, “How the mighty have fallen.”
You have to be very powerful to fall catastrophically. You have to be even mightier to rise again. Let me explain...
How individuals, corporations, and institutions fall
Why do the mighty fall?
See the diagram above. The mighty fall because of the following reasons. Do you identify with these?:
You were unconscious and had hubris born of success
You didn't know how the world worked
You put your ladder against the wrong wall and climbed the wrong tower
You tried to control all the outcomes of your valiant efforts
You were very determined, full of willpower, 'resilience', and hustled your way through life with grit in the undisciplined addiction to external validation and the endless pursuit of 'more'
You had personal power (ego), but it was very limited and did not tap into your unlimited Real Personal Power and infinite possibility
You were unaware of toxicity, risk, and peril
You grasped for salvation rather than leaning into it
Once you have fallen you have two options: Capitulation to irrelevance or death; Or recovery and renewal. It's your choice:
Recovery and renewal
How do the mighty rise again?
See the diagram above.
Make your subconscious (your soul) conscious
Realise that you are powerless and that your life has become unmanageable
Allow yourself to be guided as to how the world really works
Conquer your mind and your Self
Discover your Real Personal Power and your limitless possibility
Your vulnerability is your strength, so take off your mask and your armour
Connect with others, allow them to love you, and ask for their help
Lean into creativity, recovery, renewal, the abundant rebirth of your soul and the reintegration of your psyche through a spiritual experience
Malcolm Muggeridge wrote that “Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message.” Have you read the memo yet? When many millions of people are able to say that the consciousness of the presence of a Higher Power is today the most important fact of their lives, they present a powerful reason why one should have Faith. When we see others solve their problems by simple reliance upon some Spirit of the Universe, we have to stop doubting the power of whatever Higher Power we have as God. Our ideas did not work, but the God-idea does. Deep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God. Faith in a Power greater than ourselves and miraculous demonstrations of that power in our lives are facts as old as the human race." Are you willing to rely on the Spirit of the Universe? The most basic Truth of the spirituality and the Universe is that there is a God, and you are not him!
If you imagine your journey through life as a voyage across a great ocean, keeping control of your emotions (by feeling them, letting them pass like a wave, and then surrendering them) allows you to navigate through the seas whether the water is calm or stormy. Anger, jealousy, hatred, prejudice, projection, and all forms of negativity create huge and turbulent waves in the water, threatening your wellbeing through your journey. Keeping positive thoughts and having Faith in your Self to navigate the storms will allow you to return to calmer waters and plain sailing through kindness, serenity, compassion, and love.
If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace. If peace mattered to you more than anything else, and if you truly knew yourself to be spirit (a Higher Power) rather than a little me (your ego), you would remain non-reactive and absolutely alert when confronted with challenging people or situations. You would immediately accept the situation and thus become one with it rather than separate yourself from it. Then, out of your alertness, would come a response. Who you are (pure consciousness), not who you think you are (little me - your ego), would be responding. It would be powerful and effective and would make no such person or situation into an enemy.
Every new day presents a fresh opportunity. We may encounter new possibilities, meet new people, and gain valuable experiences that can bring positive changes to our lives.
Always start your day with hope. Let go of yesterday’s negative thoughts, grudges, resentments, and disappointments. When you start with a fresh mind, you will feel more positive, active, and productive, which will help you make your day a better day. Don’t even look for peace. Don’t look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there and will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender.
If there is an imaginary ladder that takes you from pain to peace, putting the needs of others before your own, in service to them, is a necessary step to elevate yourself from where you are onto the first rung. As long as you cling to selfishness and self-centredness, where you are is where you will stay. The first rung is only a step away, and your climb away from pain can begin the moment you choose to take that step. What you reflect and meditate on, you will come to understand, and you will grow into its likeness. If you dwell on selfish and valueless thoughts, you will ultimately become selfish and valueless.
The 'Bhagavad Gita', which is in my 'Suggested reading List' is one of the most influential Hindu scriptures and one of the most important texts ever written for a successful life full of joy and peace. People say you can randomly open any page of that small book and find answers to life’s most enduring questions - it is that profound. The story centres on the warrior Arjuna, who faces a moral crisis on the battlefield. He receives divine wisdom from Krishna, an avatar of the god Vishnu. The physical war Arjuna faces symbolises the internal battleground within each of us - the struggle to overcome our mind’s negativity, doubts, and conflicting desires. This is the human struggle for clarity and inner peace. Krishna tells Arjuna that we can overcome this universal inner conflict that plagues the human mind:“For him who has conquered the mind, the mind is the best of friends; but for one who has failed to do so, his mind will remain the greatest enemy.” (Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 6, Verse 6.)
Plato concurred "The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself.” When we talk about the mind, we are essentially talking about thoughts. Without thoughts, there is no individual mind; my mind is not different from your mind. In the complete absence of thoughts, in that silence, what remains is the collective mind or the Universal consciousness – that is, moksha, nirvana, or liberation.
According to the Bhagavad Gita (also known as the 'Gita', each person is born with a unique dharma. Dharma means “right direction”; it is your inherent purpose or true calling in life. It is what you were born to do. Now, dharma is essentially your duty in this world. You have not chosen it; it was written on your soul from the moment you were born into this reality. Out of that duty, intuitively inspired thoughts arise (often during meditation and mindfulness) to carry forward that duty. As Krishna reminds Arjuna: "It is better to perform one’s own duties imperfectly than to master the duties of another. By fulfilling the obligations one is born with a person never comes to grief." (Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 18, Verse 47). This verse emphasises the importance of embracing your own path, no matter how challenging it may be. Accept and play the cards fate has dealt you as if you have chosen them. This is the path of non-resistance, a journey of peace, healing, and transformation. Yet, even when one follows their dharma, why does the mind sometimes remain restless, rattled with anxiety? Krishna addresses this issue by offering Arjuna tools to navigate such fears. He teaches that peace comes from focusing on the action itself rather than the outcome, as it is the fixation on results that often fuels the mind’s restlessness.
Karma yoga is the spiritual practice of “Selfless action performed for the benefit of others” and is one of the four paths to liberation, according to Hinduism. “Therefore, without being attached to the fruits of activities, one should act as a matter of duty, for by working without attachment one attains the Supreme.” (Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 3, Verse 19.) “You have the right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.” (Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 47). We have no control over our genes and environment; in other words, we have no control over our karma. We also have not chosen our dharma. What we can do is discover it and devote ourselves fully. The Gita advises us to act according to our duties and then detach from the outcome. Rather than battling against our fate and our minds, we must focus on the action itself, and once the action is done, completely let go and be indifferent to the results. This is the path of Real Personal Power, abundance, limitless possibility, and love. To do something regardless of the outcome, isn’t that the very essence of love? This is what it means to conquer one’s mind, not to fight and resist intuitive thoughts, but to align with them, act, and then detach. In any endeavour, struggle and pain arise when we expect results, and when there is attachment to an outcome. Yet, what we should do instead is stay true to who we are - to our dharma.
Create for your Self, not for others, and when you create for your Self; you will eventually see that you are also writing for others because, essentially, there is no you; human consciousness has a collective element to it. For him who is in alignment with his dharma, the mind is the best of friends; but for one who has failed to find his purpose, his mind will remain the greatest enemy. Creating for your Self is to create your Self. To create your Self is to guide others to creating themselves. Finding and following your dharma will ease the process of making choices, serving as your compass in life. Moreover, by practicing Karma Yoga - focusing on the action rather than the result - you will eliminate any anxiety about the future. That is the key to inner peace, abundance, joy, presence, true success, Real Personal Power, and love. Brené Brown wrote “Worrying about scarcity is our culture’s way of manifesting post-traumatic stress syndrome. It occurs when we’ve been through too much, and instead of coming together to heal (which requires vulnerability) we get angry, scared, and fight with our fellow human beings.” We create our own 'Hell.' The true meaning of life according to Brené Brown is that “The most important conclusion I drew from my undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees in social work was that connection is the reason we are here. We were designed to be in contact with other people; it’s what gives purpose and meaning to our lives, and we suffer when we lack that contact.” This is half of our superpower: The other half is the degree to which you work on your conscious contact with the Universe and the resulting spiritual experience that arises from this. Armed with these two superpowers, you cannot fail.
Your vulnerabhttps://www.transformativelifecoach.co.uk/post/vulnerabilityility is your strength, so take off your mask and your armour. We need to free ourselves from armour and pay the price: To feel pain. Because the price of not doing so is much worse. There comes a time in life when you must stop fooling yourself and realise that if you don’t want to live a simulacrum of life but a real life, you have to open your heart, throw the armour away, and dare to live with vulnerability and accept the consequences. Many people will try to take advantage of your vulnerability, but it’s always better than living over 40 with the armour on since you were a petrified 7-year-old: Simply cut those people out of your life as if they do not exist.
You should not dwell too much on the mistakes, faults, and failures of the past. Be done with shame, judgement, remorse and contempt for yourself. With your Higher Power’s help, develop a new self-respect, self-forgiveness, and self-love. Unless you love, forgive, and respect yourself, others will not. You ran the wrong race, you stumbled and fell, you have risen again, and now you press on toward the true goal goal of a better life in full awareness. Do not stay to examine the spot where you fell, only feel sorry for the delay, the shortsightedness that prevented you from seeing the real goal sooner. Make a fresh start each day. Be here now. You are on the path to recovery and renewal. All is well. Now you rise. You need courage, a guide, and to drop all your fears (untrue limiting beliefs that are holding you back)... You CAN and you WILL: Nothing is beyond your capability; not one thing...
Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you: Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.
George Bernard Shaw wrote that “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Are you ready to change your mind?
Namaste.
Olly
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