Is violence “out there” different from me?
Switch on the TV, read the newspaper, social media report it, people talk about it - endless information and news on discrimination, violence, wars, economic problems, crimes, climate crisis. No matter what it is, there is always an abundance of news out there to fill our days with fear and terror. Seems we humans just can get any peace at all. The tragedy of it all is that we are too engulfed in our own little separate lives that we fail to see the relationship we have with the world and each other. We prefer to sit behind a phone or PC and voice our anger, our frustrations with certain people that committed a terrible crime. We like to criticize and blame without ever making the connection that the outside world and me are one and the same.
Sure, I could separate the violence that is “out there” from myself, make conclusions about it, blame, finger point, try and solve, stop, show compassion, show support, and everything else humans have been trained to do, and then go back to my petty little life some time later. When the next incident occurs, I’ll repeat my frustrations again. Or I might become that violence that seeks justice, change, battle. Or I might run away from it all and just accept that the world I live in is mediocre and there is nothing that can be done about it. But as far as consciousness is concerned, unless I can make the connection that that violence, racism, crime, war is part of me, I will always live with that conflict - always. It will always appear in my consciousness whether in this life of the next. No-one who has walked the earth has ever changed this fact - history proves it! Despite numerous individuals that have walked on this planet seemingly “enlightened”, we either turn their wisdom into some ideology, some kind of system to be worshipped, or we try to copy them to obtain that enlightenment, the world remains fundamentally unchanged. Many will walk, but the rest always talks. Until we face the fact that we live in a brutal and corrupt world and we don’t seem to mind until it knocks on “my” door. We would rather prepare our children for battle than to instead try to understand why peace and love are nowhere to be found.
Can I see that my own psychological structure, up-bringing, values, traditions, habits, beliefs, opinions are all contributing to the world we live in - including violence based on racism, nationalism, minority groups, etc? Can I see that living in division is causing wars? It may be thousands of miles from home but I am part of it! I support a structure on this planet that divides, concurs, and separates. Unless one sees the connection to the outside, how can we ever change a thing? We will go on talking about well-being, peace, love, compassion, but all of our action will all be in vain because we fail to understand the basic conditioning of the human being.
We are the world we live in. If we can see this in ourselves, and we honestly, truly feel compassionate about deaths from violence, wars, suicides, murders, etc, and we see the danger of our existence in its current form, why, I ask why don’t we change it?
Are you aware of what you are and the danger of it? What will you change- the outer first? Or the inner? Or see that you are both and therefore, can you come up with a completely different perception of what is without the interference and noise of your conditioning because you’ve come to an awareness of the awful and brutal dangers of it - not for yourself only, not for your loved ones only, but for the entire world?!
Love is not a part time activity for the chosen few. That requires choice - choice is not love. Where choice is, love is not. Where the mind is in harmony, choice is not. Choice demands thinking and analysis. Love is not based on an ideal, or romanticism, or a form of pleasure. It is the universal action that is born of intelligence. When one has deeply questioned the reason for existence, what is life, what is fear, why we live the way we do, and sees for themselves - not because the writer told you to what to see, or some book tells you what you need to see, but for yourself feel deeply the danger of it all, from that stems a very different type of action.
Love and light,
Gab