Peace as the Foundation of Growth
As we all find ourselves deeply heartbroken over the current political affairs of the world, especially in the Middle East region, it is now more imperative than ever to use this time as a time for self-reflection. To say we are all appalled by these violent and atrocious war crimes is obviously an understatement. Now more than ever, we acknowledge the same patterns in our governments, where peace is still looked at as a weakness, but somehow, they hit us deeply and differently, which is, in my opinion, good and a sign of growth. At the same time, we may still find those courageous enough to flaunt their flag and adhere to different propaganda, which is still understandable as most people still find themselves sensationally and unconsciously driven by such propaganda without accurate analysis and critical thought on the current circumstances.
Just recently, I was walking my dog on this tiny island I live on when several airplanes with giant banners advertised for hours, “USA stands with Israel” and “Hamas = ISIS.” Of course, the non-conformist in me couldn’t help but give the middle finger to these airplanes while people were shocked at my reaction. And no, I didn’t give my middle finger because I’m taking a particular stance in this complex dynamic we find ourselves facing in these times, but because I truly and wholeheartedly believe that war is never the answer and that we have the capacity within our governments and institutions to handle things differently.
That same day, I was scrolling through my YouTube feed as I often do in my leisure time. Although I try my best to refrain from watching any news as I’m highly selective in the source of information I like to consume, I was surprisingly hit by a particular video that brought me to my knees in pain, frustration, and anger. I spent an entire hour practicing yoga, both crying and angry. In the video, I saw an entire family running for safety, covered in ash, with two little children in their arms. The mother’s eyes full of terror that I witnessed in that video is something I still can’t get over today as I’m writing these words. I couldn’t help but empathize deeply with the pain and terror that I saw in her eyes.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, India
Before I get into a more psychological and spiritual analysis, as I often do in most topics that come up, I do want to say that I am deeply ashamed of our current circumstances. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth as principles for social order in 2023 are things I believe we all ought to be ashamed of. And I truly hope that regret and remorse, something I will elaborate further on in this post, will come to the forefront of our consciousness from these atrocious acts of war within our societies. If we continue to prioritize punishment over rehabilitation, we will obviously continue to fail to address the root causes of criminal behavior and, therefore, fail to provide actual opportunities for such offenders to reform.
I believe that in 2023, we most certainly have the expertise to do this, and I don’t think that we lack whatever it takes for such rehabilitation through our governments and intelligence agencies to take place. But, if we continue with the same premise for criminal behavior, it can only result in disproportionate and unfair consequences. A lack of forgiveness and empathy, a strict paternalistic government, and exuberance of power are only going to perpetuate an ongoing cycle of violence as it has for thousands of years. If we advocate for human rights, no matter which side of the border we stand on, and consider ourselves an advanced society, then how is it that we still disregard the abolition of cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment or punishment and war crimes, especially on such a large scale?
A Personal Harmonious Life | Peace as a Foundation of Growth
Many people in today’s world feel that a personal harmonious life is not possible. We believe that there isn’t any real answer to all the grievances that beset and affect us, while the most influential teachers that have existed in our world have said that that is the most valuable thing that we can go after. And if we’re hoping to get it, we must earn it by making the necessary adjustments that will help align us with it. To create this quiet and harmonious state within ourselves, we have to understand a core aspect of this process, which is to contemplate the true meaning of regeneration. This doesn’t mean that we must retire from life or retrieve in the mountains of the Himalayas to become a monk in order to obtain such a state within ourselves. We simply have to acquire the skills to retire from confusion. We have to be able to reject the idea of confusion within ourselves, and that is possible by truly learning about ourselves, all the mental and emotional processes of the psyche and mind-body system.
Essentially, the acceptance of confusion is a form of ignorance as it is not real, but we are all subject to it. Confusion means a waste of energy, a waste of time, depletion, and an inability in that state to contact a deeper and higher part of ourselves. In the series of yoga and Vedanta, we find the mysteries of the chakras, which are the seven fundamental universal laws. If and when we practice yoga, we don’t do it with the purpose of dominating someone else or to escape from the responsibilities of living. It is a means of discipline as ordained by the enlightened masters to return home to that spiritual homeland from which we all came. It is part of a journey, and the journey up through the chakras is a journey toward reality, toward the infinite, that we are all consciously or unconsciously seeking to understand while living life.
This physical body that we use as a vessel to participate in life is subject to all kinds of digestive and assimilative processes; in other words, it is receptive and capable of absorbing information, both mentally and emotionally. Now, most problems that arise in relationships and even within ourselves are not because of the body itself, obviously, but because of the dweller of the body. The dweller is the driver of the body, and when we inquire about the driving force behind it, we then find emotions that are related to the fire principle in many esoteric teachings. Neuroscience has already affirmed that emotions are the driving force of the decisions we make in life, regardless of how connected or disconnected we are from them. Even those who believe to be very rational in their thought processes are, in actuality, disconnected from their emotions and the emotions produced by their psyche, which lead to their actions, but it doesn’t make them disappear from their mind-body system. They’re still there and driving their physical vessel unconsciously.
Emotion is life and emotions are sacred, but the energy behind it can be used in ways that are not supportive of harmony and peace. It’s true that we all have values that we are willing to stand for. But we also get angry, mad, and jealous, and our ambitions can often make us feel hopeless and helpless. We don’t like people, and often, we can’t seem to cope even with the simplest challenges of daily life, making us systematically neurotic. With all these disagreements within ourselves, our emotions are constantly battling us because we have no foundation of self-understanding to rely on. When we have a moment to ourselves, a negative thought comes in, then another idea comes along, and there’s always that temptation of thinking if I’m going to work this hard, what am I going to get in return?
Finding Purpose in Living vs. War Crimes
According to the way showers and spiritual teachers of the past, this was the greatest temptation. Because if we are here to truly work for the good of all and participate in the evolutionary process of uncovering the great and beautiful mysteries of life and our purpose in it, then there is no concern about what one is going to get for it as those things, including spiritual and moral necessity of our lives, are the things that were intended for us in the first place. And the greatest thing that we can get is the release from the pain and misery of trying to live without them.
If we get stuck in too much thinking, it can become a disease because it allows us to get stuck in our own reflective hyperconsciousness that becomes a self-created bubble isolated from life and our own authentic experience and self. The emotional factor uses a very large part of the body and the energy the body is able to produce. When we live unconsciously by repressing our emotions and wasting them without our full participation in meaningful processes through acknowledgment and comprehension, it becomes a waste of divine or personal power. The body is then being perverted and mismanaged.
Behind this problem lie thousands of years of tradition. We always thought it was our privilege, whether we were angry or jealous because we didn’t like someone, and with the best rational excuses, to go into warfare and, on a larger scale, this misuse of unconscious or maybe conscious at times of emotional energy is the result of war crimes, and all the recurrent difficulties that we fear most. So, the way to get rid of war is to first get rid of our own inner conflicts, hurtful feelings, and our own offenses and relinquish control over what we cannot control. The way we face these current challenges shows just how much we lack reason within our society and personal attitudes.
Division & Sectarianism | War Crimes
As we truly learn to increase emotional intelligence, kindness, affection, and the natural friendliness of human nature, a change in body chemistry takes place as well. The emotions then no longer persecute the body. Today, people still don’t understand why they find themselves to be so unlikable while constantly stuck in a fog, projecting, hurting other people, competing, and judging with absolutely no sound rationale or proof for their unfounded and biased opinions. For instance, sectarianism is contrary to what we deem to be moving toward, such as a better world and a better future for the generations to come, especially with the increased political polarization of the right and left wings we have all witnessed since 2020.
A political identity can become dangerously core to someone’s self-concept, and all these underlying motives can further lead to the intensity of that polarization and political identification. The problem arises when people remain ignorant of their unconscious motives that don’t really have anything to do with politics at all. The shadow of collectivism, which is our inherent need for group belonging, as it has been since the dawn of our species, exerts its influence in ways that we are still not conscious of. Because we are unable to meet those needs consciously and express them directly, oftentimes, we express them in unconscious ways and try to meet them indirectly.
So, the shadow of collectivism also has an impact on people who have polarized themselves into individualism and embraced a life of a hermit or isolation. This serves the purpose of getting in touch with our deeper sense of self, finding our own voice or north star, separate from the pressures and distortions of the masses, and finding our own authenticity and perspective on what life is and how we want to be in it. We are fortunate to be living in times where this is possible, as opposed to previous eras that weren’t able to do this to the extent that we’re doing it right now. This sets us up for a future where we can come back to rejoin social groups without having to unconsciously sacrifice authentic elements of ourselves.
So, although this hermetic time may be very painful for some, it is an evolutionary design that we are all participating in. Because if before, social groups were people trying to keep themselves together at all costs, even if there were incompatibilities and needing to sacrifice part of their authenticity, which many are experiencing currently in both right and left-wing dynamics, where there is extreme punishment or judgment for a deviation from the norms, now since we’ve gone or are going separate and more atomized, we all come to know ourselves at deeper levels. And when we merge into social groups with more knowledge about how social interaction works and how to make connections work over the long run, we also bring that authenticity back into play.
Obedience to sectarian limitations can lead to desperate situations in personal matters, such as with our family, work life, or social circle, but this fanatical limitation of attitude, whether it be religious or political, is still responsible for some of the worst wars in history. People remain true to these principles they believe in, and evil is not necessarily the driving force behind their actions, but the misuse of power is. As we have an obligation to evolve and partake in the evolutionary process to hopefully leave this world a better world than the one we found, we also have an obligation to carefully examine the principles that we so strictly adhere to and the ones we pass on to the younger generations. We are just as responsible for the things we do and the things that we don’t do. So it is just as wrong not to do the right thing as it is to do the wrong thing. The government’s ongoing participation in censorship as we’ve entered this new decade is clearly a violation of the First Amendment. A government that can censor its critics has permission for any kind of atrocity. As we saw in 2020, the Fifth Amendment was also violated when they closed 3.3 million businesses without due process and just compensation.
Addressing the Past | War Crimes
We cannot continue to commit or witness the same war crimes and the same patterns in history and just forget about our mistakes. We often get told by friends or family just to forget the past while they haven’t forgotten anything about their own past. If we want progress, we have to address the past and learn from our mistakes. Things don’t get better if we don’t address the core issues within our own shadow that need to be addressed for our personal evolution, as well as the one reflecting on the external. We believe that we are not affected by these crimes because we are not close to those regions, but we are certainly affected by everything that happens within this dimensional experience as it is all interconnected, and we all contribute in our own ways with our own path and participate in the same reality.
The mind has a reason for being with us, and it was given to us so that we become historians of our own conduct and reflect upon the consequences of our actions. Instead of waiting for all kinds of things to happen and then trying to intellectualize them, we can start with the mind giving us a proper program. At the present time, in national and international affairs, we are bogged down by a lack of straight thinking. We are unable to face an emergency until it happens, as we all saw with 9/11 and recent affairs, and we don’t know what to do about it. Our minds wander around in a sea of opinions and notions. Life should be well-planned, as a national destiny should also be planned as well.
We still find ourselves, collectively as well as personally, aimlessly wanderers of life with no true purpose or direction. While the framers of our constitution fulfilled their purpose and fulfilled it well, we still struggle to build a society where all our constitutional rights are still well preserved, respected, and practiced, beginning with the First Amendment, the right of speech. People are continuously censored for speaking the truth in the name of democracy, while they wholeheartedly believe that in the name of democracy itself, some rights are worth sacrificing, and some people deserve to be censored and stay silent. A totalitarian society is currently and dangerously woven if we continue to remain uneducated, unable to practice critical thinking, and do our diligent research in all matters of political, religious, or any form of social movement. It’s easy for governments to use orchestrated fear to disable our capacity for critical thinking, but we have a responsibility to practice it and practice it well, not just for ourselves but for the world and its trajectory at large. I will conclude this post a little differently by sharing a song that resonates with me, as I believe that when words fall short, music takes over.
