Us vs. Them: Inside the Real War We’re Waging
I read the news now less from a place of staying informed and more from a pensive, almost defensive state—one in which I brace myself for the latest horror from our political landscape, and the newest blame game from our social one.
Everywhere we look, division is growing. Families splinter over politics. Communities crack along lines of religion, race, or ideology. Nations pit themselves against each other, convinced that survival depends on raising prices, withholding resources, drawing harder lines, building stronger walls, and doubling down on us versus them.
It’s easy to fall into despair. After all, what power do most of us really have? We’re not politicians. We’re not influencers. Few of us have the kind of wealth that shields against rising costs or unstable policies.
It feels like things are both escalating and unraveling at a dizzying pace. And yet, beneath it all, there is a more profound truth: the real war is not the one on our newsfeeds or debate stages. The real war is the one inside each of us—the one raging against illusion and the false notion that we are separate, living distinct experiences apart from one another.
The Illusion of Separation
As humans, we often perceive ourselves solely as physical beings, defined by logic and limited notions of what it means to be human. We see ourselves as separate from our mystical and spiritual other half, reserving that identity only for people with special gifts or religious salvation.
This is the illusion: separation from a divinity that has always been there, and in turn, separation from each other. When we see ourselves in half-light, we see others the same way—separate, different, wrong, because they are “them” and not “us.”
Nearly every spiritual tradition tells this same story of division—and offers a path back to wholeness: Christianity describes sin as separation from God, reconciled through Christ, who bridges division with unity. Hinduism teaches that the illusion of Maya veils our oneness with Brahman; liberation (Moksha) comes when we realize that the soul and the Source are one. Buddhism points to the ego as the root of separateness; awakening is the realization that nothing exists apart from the whole. Mystical traditions across faiths describe the journey as a balance of shadow and light, exile and return, forgetting and remembering.
What unites them all is the reminder that the loudest powers of our time—political, religious, cultural—do not lead us back to wholeness. They profit from division, preaching separation from pulpits and podiums as if their survival depends on it. And in truth, it does.
Because if we were to see ourselves as one humanity, committed to reunification for the good of the whole, where would fear live? Where would control, judgment, and hate take root? How could money, politics, and power divide us into sinners and saints, chosen and condemned, right and wrong, us and them?
Where, indeed.
Healing the Real War
The path forward is not in fighting harder on the outside, but in laying down the weapons of division within. The more we reconcile our own two halves—humanity and divinity—the more clearly we see that this wholeness belongs to everyone.
As we heal our inner division, we begin to recognize the same capacity for healing in others. The choice is not between saved or unsaved, or good vs. evil, but in seeing that both shadow and light exist in each of us. None of us are above this duality. None of us are better because we perceive ourselves as enlightened or special. The question is not right vs. wrong. The question is: which one are you feeding more—darkness or light? Which one are you pushing out into the world as an absolute, demanding alignment with your view? Where are you seeing yourself as separate from others, and insisting that others see their separation too?
Our return to sacred wholeness becomes an invitation—not a demand—for others to do the same. The more love and self-acceptance we give ourselves, the more naturally it flows outward. When we make peace within, the external world shifts.
The illusion of separation dissolves not through victories in external battles, not through persuasion to “our side,” but through the healing of the war within each of us. And when perception changes, the world follows.
