Harmlessness – our true quality lost in a world at war
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Harmlessness – our true quality lost in a world at war
The world is at war, no matter which way we look at it.
It is no longer possible to remain closed off to this fact, try as we might to keep the blinkers on to the reality of what is happening all around us, or pretend it’s just not happening at all, ignoring the devastation we feel when we see the news each night, seeing the front cover of the paper announcing another suicide bombing, another mass shooting or killing spree driven by hate, despair and discrimination, or another abusive ritual over who won or lost a football game. It goes on and on, the evidence that tells the story that the world is at war; we are at war with each other.
Every nation is at war; if not so in the traditional sense, then by the fact that its citizens are retaliating and fighting to ‘protect’ their ‘own’ borders out of fear at what might happen if and when other people of the world seek a safe haven in a land that to them right now is a far better option than the one they are attempting to leave behind as victims of war. Countries where they can get raped and persecuted for being black or gay, or where the repression of its citizens is so extreme that they have no voice, the governance and politics of these nations being dominated and controlled by an agenda of greed and corruption; or it could quite simply be that a group of people are not of the same religion as the government or the majority, or the supremacist ruler of that nation, and this therefore warrants abuse, murder and genocide.
Do these people not have a right to safety and to freedom, just as we all do?
But where now is this freedom? There is no real freedom in a country that will do everything in its power to make anyone feel like a criminal before they have clearly had a chance to demonstrate that they are not; just as there is no true freedom in feeling threatened by the arrival of a refugee from a ‘foreign’ land, simply because they are of the same religion that a minority in the world have chosen to abuse out of extremism, tarring all those who align with that religion with the same brush.
We are scarring one another with the argument that separates us, that says we are not equal, and in the absence of a connection to a true state of equality, people of the world are literally running scared, acting out in all sorts of ways, whether it be passive or aggressive – the majority are running for cover, frightened of the fact that our world is out of control.
And right now, underneath the blinkers and the ignorance there is a foreboding sense of loss all around as to where this is all headed and what we can do about it.
We can look at the big stuff and say, “Oh that’s terrible, that’s not me”, but how are we really living, how are we really expressing, how do we live love, how do we express that every day?
The demise of the quality of how we treat ourselves and one another begins at home, on our streets, in our workplace, in our family, on our roads...
But are we being responsible to this, are we letting ourselves feel the responsibility of that, or do we prefer to look at the really ugly stuff, say how atrocious and horrific it is and then for relief turn to our favourite television show for a laugh, have a bitch about the woman at work, complain about the government or slag off about how poorly your sporting team played and how they let you down because now you look like a loser.
Make an experiment of observing all the things you see, hear and read in a day, be it newspapers, radio, people in shops, friends, family, people you work with; wherever you go, really listen to and take note of the level of harm that we are surrounded by, not measuring it against the really ugly stuff, but rather measuring it against true harmlessness.
And if true harmlessness is a pure state of ‘no war’, not a version of it that we call ‘peace’ or ‘tolerance’; then certainly in most people’s lives a day observed in truth and without our conveniently ignorant blinkers on, reveals the undeniable fact that we are at war within ourselves, and with one another.
Ending the war and living a life of true harmlessness begins with us – every single one of us.
Filed under
Abuse, Awareness, Behaviour, Conflict, Harmony, Tension, Brotherhood, Supremacy
