Peace on Earth

What do we mean by the phrase peace on earth when many places around us are at war? We may not be directly involved in a war but are we not all involved in the terrible things that human beings do to one another. All the time we take sides with our country, our religion, our family, our beliefs are we not at war, with or without the actual killing of another, with others?

Peace is not about comfort in our cosy little lives. How can we have peace when army's are killing one another even if it is in far off lands? Can we be content that this is done in the nation's name, and therefore our names if we perceive ourselves as belonging to that nation?

Can any religion that has set humanity against humanity call it self peaceful. Why do we join up to the various religions and their dogmas believing it to be the only right one?  As soon as we do that surely we are in conflict. Once we have the feeling of righteousness filling our thoughts we are close to warring with those who do not agree with us. 

Is everybody thinking they are right, whether it be the individual, the family, the community, the nation, the religion? How do we learn from each other with open and honest dialogue if we already have a conclusion to argue for or against?

Surely it really doesn't matter whether I am a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or any other religious group. Neither, does it matter if I am Chinese, Indian, American, and African? Are we not all separating ourselves from each other with my right beliefs so you must have the wrong beliefs and so I must protect my religion and my nation from you so my beliefs stay firm? Are we then not all at war with each other until we change that attitude?

This cannot be done through religious dogma or national pride but only when the individual is truly free from their conditioning from both within and without.

Knowledge

It is not important to know all the minute details of each and every injustice taking place in the world. It is surely enough to know that our inhumanity to each other and our insensitivity to the needs of others is what are destroying us and our world.

Our cult of the individual, family, community, national, religious and ethnical selfishness keeps us separated. We are drawing boundaries between us when we need to be cooperating. We pursue our own beliefs as 'right' and condemn the so called 'wrongs' of others. The fact that we are all doing this surely causes our numerous problems? 

If I call what you do and believe is wrong, then surely you have the right do the same to me and nothing is resolved. This soon leads to conflict with jealousies, envy and condemnation. Hatred follows and all this is violence toward the other which leads to feuds and wars and so our human conflict and misery continues.

To hide behind any nation, religion or system for our own safety, because we ultimately feel insecure, only continues the injustices we are surrounded and involved in every day of our lives.

Can we understand why we do this and in the understanding stop doing it?

At this time of the year the trees are slowly shedding their leaves in an array of colours vivid to the eye. On a clear day there is brightness all around far greater than the low sun may indicate. Even in the northern hemisphere as winter approaches there is a beauty we may miss, as our thoughts are on other visions relayed to ourselves, as we blindly go about our busy business; with thoughts running in all directions, but never seeing what is. 

Scurrying amongst the autumn scrub a Squirrel skits about in playful mode. Unseen birds sing loudly almost able to block out all other noise, so rich is their song. The shrubs are full of berries of many descriptions and the animals will be happy while stocks last.

Are we free to see all this without comparison or are we tied to our thoughts psychologically and cannot free ourselves to see the beauty in everything in our sphere? We cannot be still by thinking about how to be still, we cannot be still by using knowledge to solve our constant chattering and activity, we cannot be still by referring to the text of a so called 'wise one'. Stillness cannot be forced by will or invited through desire. It is only when we cease to search for stillness do we have any change of it being with one.

Where are we now?

We have built a monstrous society where people do not come first. The needs of people are secondary to the desire for conformity, power, wealth and economically run institutions. Why is it any surprise to us when we see abuses in the system from programmes on the media telling us of the horrors of this or that particular tragedy.

Is it not us that has created this society? Is it right that we should always look for someone other than ourselves to blame?

We are surely, in our daily lives, creating this situation we find so horrible by putting money first with conformity and society paramount and the nourishment and care of human beings much lower down the list of priorities.

We have accepted all this as normal. We do not openly question this and we want to keep our petty lives safe and comforting. We go to our work to acquire our selfish possessions and think nothing of the mess we are continuing to promote by our activities.

Here in the west and the north of the planet we are selfishly exploiting people on other parts of the earth and again we think nothing of it and continue to justify it with statements like 'It is human nature', 'we have to be practical', and 'my family comes first'.

It is strange that we can mobilize a huge number of people and resources, of machinery and weapons of mass destruction, but when it comes to understanding how we live, condition ourselves and worship the structures of our destructive society over the understanding of ourselves, we have no appetite for it.

Is not the whole structure of society built around economics and rules which deny any real psychological freedom to its people. We are imprisoned in our insular societies so acting with love and caring for others outside our immediate family or group is so often compromised and the wider population is only ever secondary.

To have all people really equal surely requires fundamental change of ourselves and not just to blame the latest wrongdoer. Each one of us has created the society that allows the problems of mismanagement and economic decisions that overrule the whole care of humans. This does lead to errors in the care of others that we throw our arms up in horror over rather than seeing the real reason why they take place.

What is and what one would like

There had been a conflict in the morning and it centred around what is, what the real situation was and what one wanted the situation to be. The what is was uncomfortable to the one with an ideal of how one things should be; what one would like the situation to be rather than what it was actually was which was in conflict with the ideal. Whilst the true situation was understood the mind still desired the ideal and so there was conflict in the person and this was apparent in the feelings being expressed.

Outside on the same morning the movement of the bus and later the colour of the leaves and the movement of the body through the autumn woodland made a difference and the mind fell quieter. The darkening clouds did not deter one and with little breeze and mild temperatures the voices of the children and adults in the play areas and coffee shop seemed very clear with a calming effect. The crunch of sticks under the feet, the rustle of the small grey squirrel scurrying through the undergrowth was calming too.

How foolish it is to desire something that is an illusion, to hanker after it as if it is real. Why the mind plays these games is difficult to understand. Why our conditioning rules our lives bringing the trials of the past into the present and projecting them into the future as if there is no escape is a mystery until we can observe ourselves without condemnation.  Dealing in untruths however desirable, however socially acceptable, however comforting it seems is of little lasting value and conflict arises and makes its home in each one of us.

The rain started eventually but much of the walk was done and in any event the rain was neither heavy nor prolonged. After the rain the skies brightened and there were glimpses of a warming autumnal sun. Everything glistened and the world was alive. The previous conflict of the morning had dissolved with the understanding that whatever is, is the only truth and self-centred desires and justifications only cloudy the view of the truth.

United Nations

One asks if we can have global sustainable development if we cannot see for ourselves how we are destroying the planet in the present. Surely we have to learn about our internal motives before we can take intelligent external action..

Below is a copy of a web form sent to the United Nations 5th October 2013 in response to their request for global sustainable development goals.

Global education that includes being able to understand ourselves as well as gain external skills. This could be in the form of introductory talks on self awareness.
Programs to enlighten all people the need for sustainable consumption and production, especially in the west where we have simply too much of most things and there is a need to downsize and not keep going for growth.
Nations should not be set against one another anymore than individual should be set against one another. Religions of the world too could learn something from global co-operation rather than the situation we are in now where individual, nation and religion separates itself from one another. Encouraging co-operation through practical programs
at all levels will help an understanding of our interdependence and relationship.
Wellbeing is the personal state that is able to live in any part of the world without fear of abuse and violation, and without fear of aggression toward the individual and freedom from fear of the lack of food, shelter, movement and expression.

I want

What is it that we really want? Is it everything we can think of, everything that we have been encouraged to want, like celebrities parading their ownership of expensive things like ugly trophies? Do we want because we are jealous of what our neighbour, friends and people we admire have?   

Perhaps these wants are the superficial outcome of our deeper desires; to feel loved, cherished, wanted, to feel worthy and secure so when we are in this world without our trinklets of desire and security surrounding us we feel inadequate, naked.

We want wealth, a loving partner, a position in society, authority, people to look up to us, power. How do these things help us come upon the truth and our significance in life? How do these things take you out of your suffering and conflict? How do these things stop wars, religious self righteousness, nationalistic pride, family arguments, and destructive selfishness? 

Surely all that the ambition of gaining more and more external things in life without dealing with the fundamentals of self knowledge does is to make our suffering worse not less as we amass things that we often do not need. They do not address our current problems and they are at best an escape, a diversion and a denial of all the problems that we are not tackling in life.

What is one to do with our unrequited desire to feel loved and secure, keep running away from the problem and stay busy by gathering external symbols of wealth rather than observing ourselves as we gather up our goods unaware of the real reason we are doing this. 

Perhaps if we can kindly observe ourselves without judgement and comparison we can see what it is we really seek and maybe the realization that our self centred thoughts, our conditioning and the pursuit of things is not going to solve anything within us and will in fact increase our problems.

More war?

Again it seems politicians in the West are considering attacking a foreign country so that they may bring peace or whatever else they are planning by force of will and power.

How many times in the course of history have nations taken aggressive action under the name of justification for an earlier atrocity carried out by the attacked country?

Violence begets violence. There is never, ever any justification for it. Yet we continue mulling over the details and the justifications for attacking. When will we say enough of violence, not 'well they started it' or whatever the pathetic reason is. All killing of people can be condemned whoever's side you take for convenience of religion or nationhood.

The media seems to be oblivious that there are people opposed to such action and there are those who question the whole idea of retaliation as they talk on looking for evidence to support their particular governments intended action. Where is the intelligence? Why is any talk of peace and alternatives drowned out by the increasingly loud thumping of the war mongers drum?

Does this warring behaviour solve anything? We are surely running away from the truth that we are indeed also the aggressors. This 'who is right and who is wrong' is so immature and perpetuates the madness and neurosis of war.

The problems of the world are many. There is corruption in many places and the most powerful are not the great and the good. What are we the ordinary people to do with such tyranny and injustice all around us? Should we rise up with a new system to replace the current one? How are we to do this, with aggression because those in power do not walk away and let us take over? Would our new system just replace the old one with another set of institutions that over time would become as corrupt as the current ones? Is this a clue to the problem: that to overthrow the current system does not solve the problem. So it must follow that to try to change the current system is also not going to solve the problem. We are not saying that change is not required; it is the awareness that change must be something other than superficial change using knowledge, which is the past, which is change that hasn't put a stop to the suffering and cruelty.

It may be the current system is very corrupt and in the hands of a powerful few who keep a tight reign on the rest of us but if we replaced them with ourselves without first transforming ourselves the problem would surely persist.

Let’s look into this. Let’s say we devise a fairer system on paper and ‘sell’ it to the population. They like the idea and if we live in a democracy we can be voted into power. With our new power we start to change the laws to ‘fit’ our fairer system. Those dispossessed and those who did very nicely out of the old system would soon be fighting to stop our so called fairer laws and very soon we would be put in the position of defending our new measures with whatever ‘democratic’ means we had at our disposal. What would be the difference between our system and the old system? At best it would be an incremental change that might benefit a few more people but there would be some who were dispossessed and would want to overthrow our system just like we had done earlier.

So can we see the problem of effecting change when we ourselves are in the same prison as the current law makers and keepers? The walls of our prison have to come down and once that has happened they may not be any need for talk of systems. To change the current system with another is still from the same prison. Only when we transform ourselves can there be real change. We have been forcing external change for thousands of years and we are still fighting each other. Surely we can see that external modification is unhelpful and see that what must be required is internal transformation which does not mean rationally changing one set of values for another and telling everyone to follow them. 

The truth is the injustice throughout the world, not the justification of what we have got with our institutions, nationalities, religions and cultural conditioning which continues to bread hate wherever one is.

Babies that are called Royal.

Why is it we are so excited by a 'royal' baby? Who makes the fuss; the media reporting it, or us demanding to know all about it? 

Why is it so important to us? 

It seems we would rather coo over a new born human being that is going to have a rather spoilt and predetermined life than to spend our attention on matters as to why we kill each other in the name of religion, nation, politics and social grouping.

Have we already made the mistake of giving the new born baby power that at the moment it knows nothing about? It will have privilege that many do not get and yet we celebrate this singling out rather than understand the implications of putting one human being above many others. Can we not see that to confer such power and privilege on one individual is a confirmation of the destructive mess man has created so far in this world?

Rather than to look into our own reasons for creating this mess we swoon around a new baby boy who materially will want for nothing but psychologically will probably have all the same conflicts as you and I.
In a couple of weeks the mad clamour and repetitive information will have subsided but only to be replaced by the next frenzy.

Why are we so fickle? Where is the understanding and real intelligence of why we behave this way with our adulation of celebrity and nationalism. Where is the need to see how and why we cause our conflicts and to give our attention to eradicating the destructive behaviour of man that has gone on for millennia.

Surely it is our politics, nationalism, religion and social conditioning that separates us and pits person against person, causes war and internal as well as external conflict both within ourselves and between all the groups and sub groups.

Seeing all this, and please do not take my word for it, why do these groupings continue to exist? Is there anything beyond our own selfish, empty vested interests keeping us in our own little grouping and therefore keeping us in conflict with ourselves and others?

Is there a real inward transformation that can take place within the individual when we really understand what we are doing rather than the feeble excuses we offer ourselves for carrying on without observing ones own behaviour at the deepest level?

It would seem to me we like to feel we belong to the group we are in so we perpetuate its conditioning which enslaves us even more to the group rather give us freedom. Enslavement causes conflict. So for a sense of belonging which we think gives us security we sacrifice understanding, intelligence and truth. Why is belonging, security and comfort so important when in return we get conflict and misery in ourselves and the in the world?

What are we perceiving we lack in order to invent psychological needs? Do we understand our needs at the deepest level? Have we really observed ourselves, our desire for security and to be without fear? Have we asked why we have these needs and watched passively and attentively their movement? Is there a way without these needs that we see cause such conflict within and without us?

You may find that these needs come from the 'me' at the centre, they are 'I' centric. If so, can the individual go beyond that or is the individual enslaved forever in the 'I' of the self putting its own need for psychological safety uppermost and therefore continuing the misery we see all around?

When you see something wrong, in a flash, without the 'me', without thought, which is conditioning, memory and the past, you are acting with perception which is not tainted with previous experience. It is only when one thinks about what one sees it becomes a conditioned response according to the 'I' and the past.

We have come a long way from asking why a new baby should receive such prominence and I ask if you would like to, that you truly look into you own self for the understanding that may go beyond the self, but first we have understood ourselves.

What is peace?

Can there be peace if we take sides? The victor in any conflict only forces the the defeated into submission. There is no winner, only the enforcer and to have to enforce anything does not bring real peace.

There are battles everywhere, people against people, ideas, religions, politics. Does this stupidity have to continue continually depleting the planet until there will be nothing that man has not destroyed including himself?

All this because we are brought up to think we are right and therefore those in disagreement must be wrong. We hang on to what we have got as we fear facing life with only the essentials. We want security but we don't realize that if we stopped fighting each other we would actually have more security.

Where is our real intelligence?

Is to live in beauty our purpose?

Is to live in beauty our purpose or is it to charge around trying to find our purpose as if there is something 'out there' we must grasp? We are not cats but a cat has no purpose in one sense, but it is surely beautiful in its poise and calm during its 'regal' sitting.

Can we live slowly, meaningfully, gently - in beauty? Who actually tells us we must always be in a hurry filling our days with endless, often meaningless, tasks. Living aggressively as other people don't seem to understand our need to have everything we want all the time. Why have we accepted this way as the only way to live our lives? Are we running away from the truth? What do we think we are really achieving with all this frantic activity - mental and physical?

Perhaps real intelligence is required to live slowly, meaningfully, gently - in beauty, without violence. This intelligence is easily lost to the pressures around us, the conditioning from our societies, the fears of not wanting to be outcast from our group, family, friends, nation or whatever else we are frightened of not being part of.

Real intelligence is also lost when internal conflicts reigns within us and our selfish self-centered desires are at the top of our thoughts.

To be intelligent beyond the technical knowledge our lives are full of, and be in beauty and love for its own sake requires complete attention from moment to moment, and it seems many of us are not willing to do this for whatever reason..

We are not 'cured' by knowledge.

You may be able to rationalize or justify a situation to yourself but if you are sensitive to your feelings, knowledge, rationalization and justification will not change you or your feelings. If your lifestyle is leading to abuse of your physical body it does not matter whether you can justify the damage you are doing or not.

Surely it is too understand what you are doing whether it is comfortable or not to do so.

Do not run away from what you are doing or deny what you are doing. Face the facts and live with what is.

How do we solve external problems without looking at ourselves first?

Some of us are interested in global warming that is reported to be taking place due to Climate change which is both people made and natural causes.

 There is a lot of consensus but there is also disagreement. Some scientists say we are exaggerating the problem and we are blaming the human race incorrectly for the rising temperatures. Some say there are no changes in global temperature that are outside of naturally occurring variations or cycles so there is nothing to worry about.

We are polarising around the problem; scientists disagreeing with one another, richer nations wanting poorer nations to stop using fossil fuels and releasing carbon into the atmosphere, poorer countries in their turn requesting that richer countries pay a larger share to fix the problem. Politicians think short term and locally or nationally and sit on their hands because there is a possible economic price to pay and vested interests lobby them hard. We the citizens of the planet have our conditioning to drive us into self-centred defensive positions where we dig our heels in and build a fortress around our ideas so we do not loose out economically or through some other inconvenience.

The whole situation is a mess. If we continue to think fractionally we will not resolve the kind of issues that are global in nature; there are many such issues but the theme is often the same – sectional interests using partial facts.

Fragmented and conditioned thinking according to ones vested interests, national societal status, politics, personal viewpoint, religion, ones perception of what one has to loose, leads people to define the problem and therefore the solution according to all of this immature thinking.

How can we make progress if we cling to the objects of our desires like wealth and property far in excess of what we actually need, that ensures we cannot solve the problem. Are we not at the point of continually wanting and having our cake and eating it?

Can we do this radically differently or do we continually fight our own corner so there are no solutions, only losers?

Legislation will not solve this problem. Legislation will lead to resentment and disobedience because we are not dealing with the fundamental issue. What is the fundamental issue? Surely it is our greed and selfishness and unwillingness to see the complete picture.

We need the facts of global warming and sea level rise due to climate change. We need to know how much of our own inputs are causing the problem to be magnified if at all. We need the truth from all people concerned with the problem: the scientists of all persuasions, the politicians of all parties, and the people with vested economic and corporate interests. If we are concerned with the problem we all need to see the truth of our own arguments. Are we really just protecting ourselves if we just blame human nature or deny there is a problem if there is one?

This includes the scientist who has pressure put upon them to follow the paradigm of the day, the institution that can only get funding if it makes the right noises to the funder. Do you see the enormity of the problem? It is not a simple case of who is right and who is wrong. It surely lies in all of us to see why we look at the problem in our little way, in our desire to keep our selfish ways just going on as they always have. We work hard; we have enough resentment, not openly looked at, about our jobs without having to look to our own behaviours regarding huge problems like global warming. It really might well be an ‘inconvenient truth’ as put to us a few years ago.

So we have many people telling us what are the issues with the global climate but there are very few facts for us to understand because so much of what is said comes from those who are conditioned by their own fears of loosing their funding, of people not voting for them, of people frightened that they will loose their flock or following if they say things that are difficult to act on because it will cause inconvenience.

So what are we to do? Obviously to jump to one side of the argument or the other is futile if we have no facts and only fragmented thinking as our guide.

So we are back at the beginning, with ourselves, with our own conditioning, our own vested interests. Surely only when we can understand ourselves totally and be rid of sectional interests can we know what is the right action, and not just the propaganda of those who shout the loudest.

You can start the process of understanding yourself at any time, you do not need permission and you certainly do not need to pass any exams to be good at it. You need attention and sensitivity; there is no degree that teaches you that. There is no politician, guru, celebrity or authority to tell you what is right or wrong. When you do this something extraordinary happens. It is as if the curtain is lifted on the world and the possibility of seeing everything afresh becomes visible. Your own conditioning, the self centred actions of yourself and those with ‘something to loose’ comes to your attention. When you see how your thinking has been caged by your culture and society without condemnation or judging you can then understand that freedom no longer means the same thing as it used to. You can see the facts of your own self imprisonment and walk free. When you see the complete problem; your need for security driving your fears about your life a new truth of now and not from your conditioned past comes into being.

The experiment is yours; not someone else’s who allows you to do it within the framework they have delineated.

 

With fragmented, partial and conflicting intellectual thoughts and arguments between us we will surely not be able to make progress because my idea of right will be contradicted by your idea of what is right because we allow our conditioning and sectional desires to rule our understanding of the complete problem. We therefore do not understand the whole problem and only see our bit of the world.

Are we capable of being selfless enough to achieve this or will we continue with convenient comments like “its human nature to be selfish” and to put oneself and family or whatever first? Can we see that putting ourselves and our small groups first is actually destroying the wider relationship of all human beings on a finite planet?

If one continues with selfish action then there is no relationship with the world so there can be no love or understanding despite the words to the contrary one may say as all action is centred on the self and therefore not considerate of others. We have turned the human problems we face into a huge sports arena where competitive competition is pitting one idea against another and the most aggressive, powerful and good at verbal arguments wins. The victor has understood nothing and the victor’s solution is hollow, fragmentary and meaningless.

There can be no lasting solutions if we continue to take for ourselves, family, community, nation etc and we will not properly consider those outside our sphere. This is at best isolationist however you dress it up and will continue to leave suffering all around us. How can we be truly happy when we cause such misery? Do not take the writers word for it, look at your own behaviour and see if it has any benefit to the global society? We have divided people up into sections of beliefs and cultural systems in nations, politics, religions and smaller units so we can have the best of everything for our own group. How can we then say we are committed to change when we see this behaviour in ourselves? To do so would be a denial of reality. All change has to begin within. Any other change is superficial and is unlikely to be of any use. It doesn’t matter whether it is political, religious or a global issue like climate change.

Controlling others

It is not helpful to legislate to make organisations, and therefore people, do the right thing. To force or coerce someone into doing the right thing as you, the self made authority, see it, can only lead to resentment and I will ask you who are you to tell me what to do? On what authority do you know what is right more than another?

Surely it is better to look to yourself, to understand completely the way you are, through non-judgemental self awareness, than it is to tell others what to do. To want a world that conforms to the individual with their self centred view must be the act of an insecure person that needs a world that fits only their desires and where only they can be right. That would be such a painful place to be as the world will obviously not be able to accommodate the selfish wishes of one individual.

Where do we go from here?

How do we stop the violence, the hunger, the sadness, the anger and hate in the world? Can we stop being competitive, self righteous, aggressive, judgemental, and egotistical and all the rest of it? Why does it appear that these things concern us so little whilst the pursuit of power, recognition, success and wealth are in our thoughts so much of the time?


There is both external and internal conflict. There are the conflicts between nations, sects, religions and politics and there are the conflicts between what we want for ourselves and what we have; the reality of our own lives. Both the internal and the external are in conflict. So we continue to be in the sorrow that is life as we know it with our resentments, resistances and conflicts.

Is there no way out of this prison we have made for ourselves? We try to make alterations and improvements to what we call our self development but we are nearly always already in the prison whilst trying to make these changes. All change then is born only out of our conditioning, our culture, our education, our family and friends. We can only react in the framework we find ourselves in, the prison. From this position can we ever take the revolutionary and transformational steps required to change our lives fundamentally?

If we are really serious about fundamental change where do we begin? The teachings of others must be put to the most intense and honest questioning. We must seek out the understanding of ourselves by ourselves otherwise we are surely just mimicking others with little real understanding. Will the words of others solve our deepest fears, or help us understand our need for security and self importance?

Question this writing too as well as those in authority in your society. Question too the people and organisations who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Do it with an independent mind, not one born from your conditioned thinking. This requires enormous attention as it is so easy to slip back into our fragmented thinking full of its narrow cultural conditioning and our self centred ways of defining ourselves from our past memories and hurts.

Ask why we are resentful when required to do things we do not want to do. See where the answer comes from and what does it tell you. If you can do this with complete honesty and a genuine passion for the truth you will learn the fact at that moment. The ‘fact’ is the reality not the 'I wish this wasn't so' response.

More thought at the moment of the realisation of the fact or truth is more likely to be your conditioned and analytical response and therefore born of your past reactions and justification of yourself but do not take my word for it, you can find out for yourself. This enquiry, if you are earnest, needs only the truth of the moment, not a detailed analytical analysis requiring conditioned knowledge and intellect. That analysis, full of conditioning, is how we got to this fragmented world we inhabit externally and internally, it is not required for the truth. To paraphrase the words of another I have understood; when there is no observer there is only the observed.

Is it not time to put aside that which has got us to where we are and to understand ourselves from moment to moment in fact and truth so we can take action that is fundamentally different?

This is not the action, constrained by the past and of identification with a goal or an ambition but action born of the understanding of the fact and truth of now and then it can be what is required rather then what we selfishly desire or want to placate our fears, need for security and our so called masters.

If only knowledge and academic cleverness was required to change the way we behave in the world, towards one another and to ourselves we would surely have done it by now.