Tag: War

Unlearning Our Divisions

Happiness, Leadership, Relationships, Success

We are born into this world without prejudice, without judgement, without hate. We are born one with the human race. We learn to name things and catogerise things and to say what is good and what is bad and who are good and who are bad. We sort the world into this and that, us and them. These are divisions, whether they are small or big, and at the heart of every division is a conflict. Two opposing things set apart by the way we think about them. To understand our place in the world we go through this process of organising everything into divisions, this is natural and necessary.

However, the challenge is to discern one thing from another without having prejudice and judgement of others to cloud our view of the world. To pre-judge or to have prejudice is to assume things about a certain thing or person based on how we have categorised them. It has little to do with them. We think they are this and they are that. Often this way of thinking is passed down from generation to generation and we have whole communities that are in conflict with each other because of what they are told about each other.

To break out of such thinking, when all around us our loved ones think in this way, is very difficult. However, the task of unlearning these divisions is essential in order to live a peaceful and happy life, which is the purpose of a spiritual practice. It is the deliberate practice of dissolving divisions, the end result of which is wisdom.

We Can Be Peacemakers

Happiness, Health, Relationships, Success

Much of the world is at war with other parts of the world, but also, much conflict is celebrated in the news and social media, when one celebrity is fighting with another or some situation is pitting one group of people against another. It makes good viewing, because people watch. Some conflicts are real and others are not. However, all forms of conflict seep into our lives through our exposure to them.

We can be mindful of what we let into our minds, what things we agree with because those around us do, what we watch on TV and whether we encourage or engage in divisive speech. We are not in a war zone, but we can be peacemakers. We can seek resolution and not conflict. We can become open hearted and not hard hearted. We can learn to assume good intentions from those we interact with. We can seek out our prejudices and judgemental thinking and remove them. We can meditate and pray and share what we have with those around us. In the end, from the cosmic perspective, we are all in this together.

We are on a planet hurtling through space around a star, one of billions in our galaxy in a universe that has billions of galaxies. We share our DNA with all other life on this planet. We share DNA with a banana, and a fruit fly, believe it or not, because we have the same origin as all other life on this planet. If you choose to, you can see all living things as our brothers and sisters, as many native peoples do. Otherwise we risk conflict and divisiveness, even if unintentional.

We are all brothers and sisters. One human family. The chasm between us and our enemies is but a step towards love and compassion. The space between enemies is decided by how we see them and how they see us. In reality there is no space.

Peace In A Divided World

Happiness, Leadership, Relationships, The Pathway To Fulfilment

I would like to say a few words about the situation in Ukraine. There are many who are suffering, both Ukrainian civilians and Russian civilians, both Ukrainian soldiers and Russian soldiers. War makes victims of us all.

There will be Russian soldiers who do not agree with the actions of their country, but have little choice but to follow orders. There are officials in Ukraine that have the choice to treat all civilians equally, but are separating white and black refugees and prioritising those with white skin and allowing them to leave Ukraine first. War brings out the best and the worst in us all and, in my view, we should not say that Ukraine is without fault or that Russia is without salvation. Things are rarely so simple.

However, Ukraine clearly needs the world’s support in this awful situation, and we should give and do what we can. And we must also remember that there are many other war torn places in the world, and many places where there is violence; between groups of people and between individuals. For some, home is not a safe place. There is much healing needed in the world.

What can we do to make positive change in situations like the one in Ukraine? There a lots of small things we can do like donate to organisations helping support the Ukrainian people. More broadly however, you can bring peace to the world by working on your own prejudices and judgments and to work on creating more peaceful relationships in your live. We can forgive, we can rebuild, and, when needed, we can walk away. We co-create the relationships we have, which co-creates the society we live in, and the culture we have, and the country we have and so on. How we live our lives each day contributes to peace in the world or division in the world. Please choose peace.