History repeats itself, war after war: on Greek tragedies, Love Actually and a true beginning to the end of war
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History repeats itself, war after war: on Greek tragedies, Love Actually and a true beginning to the end of war
"Time marks how many times we are prepared to hold on to a way of being that does not work, does not truly evolve us and is therefore anti-evolutionary, otherwise known as involution."
Serge Benhayon
There is probably no one who hasn’t heard the phrase, “History repeats itself”, and many who have wondered why one devastating war after another has been occurring since time immemorial ...
The world continues, right this moment, to be torn apart by wars, bringing with them an immense casualty toll and the run-on effect of refugees seeking safety. And then there is the after-shock – the deaths do not stop with the ‘ceasing of war’, as the US Department of Veteran Affairs has found. A 2012 study[1] reported that 22 military veterans kill themselves daily, and that many more struggle with on-going anxiety and depression, leaving whole families distraught and war-torn.
Over the last three years, Bryan Doerries[2], a Brooklyn-based theatre director, has led a public health initiative that adapts Greek tragedies for the purpose of bringing together in community, returned soldiers, generals and drone pilots, to help them deal with the after-effects and horrors of contemporary war. In the open-ended discussions that follow each show it has been revealed that the participants have felt a palpable sense of relief to discover that they are not alone in their horror, and that what was happening in 5th century BC Athens is exactly what is happening for them now.
Our society puts out the message that we are progressing, growing, and developing as a race; that we are moving forward and improving our lot, leaving a less desirable world behind. And yes, we do have bigger, more terrifying weapons of mass destruction. Yet how can we call it “progression”? We can call it what we like, but horror is horror. We are still subjecting our young men to the absolute horror of war.
If viewed with a clear eye, it is easy to see that we have actually not been progressing at all, but rather just going around in circles, day after day, year after year, century after century, making the same mistakes over and over again, albeit against varying backdrops and diverse cultures and costumes. We have learnt very little, if anything, from our past and are still making the same choices that reproduce the same atrocities.
Serge Benhayon presents a real insight when he says: “History shows that what is “not right, not healthy, not harmonious and not loving” is constantly being repeated, which means that it is constantly being chosen”.[3]
In other words, if we did not constantly choose this way, then it follows as the night the day, war could not happen.
There was the famous Christmas Truce in WWI on the Western Front where young men from opposing sides laid down their arms in momentary reprieve, to make friends, shake hands, and sing carols together . . . even though the act of ‘consorting with the enemy’ was just one step away from the ‘crime’ of treason, punishable by court martial and execution.
And not very many years later there were the thousands of soldiers returning from World War II who testified to the immense horror they experienced; that there was not one iota of glory or honour in war, and that it was something they would never want to repeat. The human heart knows this ‘by heart’.
Why are we prepared to hold on to a way of being that does not work, that we all abhor and keep repeating?
- And why haven’t we been compelled to look at what impulse underlies the choice that gives the very ‘life’ to war, that dreams up the machines and strategies of war?
- What force can make men go against everything they, at heart, know to be true?
What allows this, is the sum total and history of unresolved hurts and turmoil that each carries like a badge of identification. When there are no hurts we cannot hurt another.
The choices we go on making to go to war stem from the fact that we allow these carried hurts to rule. We personify an enemy outside of ourselves on whom to offload our misery, thereby denying the truth of the powerful loving beings we all innately are. The time has come to face and deal with our hurts.
The horror that was possible through Hitler came through someone who felt inferior on a personal level – full of undealt-with hurts and rejection. He was rejected by the army for his apparent physical inferiority and then later accepted by the army as a messenger only. He went on to lead the disastrous supremacist movement that would condemn and kill people for their physical and racial attributes. But while the majority of us will not become warlords or dictators of countries, we will be the people that make fertile the ground for war, through a low-grade undercurrent of dissatisfaction, tension, disharmony and abuse held in the home and workplace, the building blocks of every nation – all this being due to not having dealt with past hurts.
And when we do not come clean about our hurts – our own war within – we feed the war machine with our own little mini-wars that we hold continuously with one another. We can only have nation against nation because of the war within us; the inner war that sets neighbour against neighbour, sibling against sibling, husband and wife at odds with each other.
For war to cease, every single person needs to deal with their own inner conflict and tension, as this is what feeds and fuels the continuation of global war.
The inner conflict dealt with, we may find that we are not that conflicted at all and, if not, what are we? Could it be Love Actually! The famous WWI truce was a reprieve from the horror, and the soldiers could spontaneously revert to the natural love that they are, singing together, shaking hands, one with another.
And what if we discovered that the vile warring way of being was not even a part of our innate nature, but an ill-deviation away from our natural and loving way ... and that at any moment we could choose to stop, change course and come back to this true way of being?
This would mark the true beginning of the end of war
"War is not over when the last shot has been fired, but when all hearts return to being love in full."
"WWII 1939 to 1945 (the fighting ceased) – the war is still going."
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings and Revelations, p 260
