The greatest act of violence

For me, the greatest act of violence that any man can ever commit on this planet earth, is to declare, I am a Christian, or I am a Muslim or I am an atheist, or whatever they say they are, and really believe it. That hurts me so much. It immediately makes everyone who is not, a Christian, for example, someone other than them. They are not part of their tribe, their people, they are people who fall outside of their circle of love and protection. This then makes it easy to bring harm to these other beings, because that harm doesn’t effect them. But if someone in their tribe were harmed, by somebody outside of the tribe, they feel that hurt. They will come out and fight for them. They will even kill this other person, who is not in their tribe, if necessary. It also means that they can harm and kill people within their tribe, if they don’t follow the rules of their tribe. If every man loves his fellow man as he loves himself, he would hurt if any one of his brothers were hurt, because it would be like he was hurting. In times of tragedy, such as the bomb attack or whatever it was in Paris in 2015, people quickly forgot their idea of who they were and they pulled together to support each other, to support their fellow brothers and sisters. They brought humanity down to a single point, to the fact that we all have life, we are all people and regardless of how we chose to live our lives, we are all humans and they decided we’ll stand together, regardless of our differences. Meet up groups came about after the event in New York. It seems that when something big happens, people lose their bigness and their differences and embrace their sameness. What is this sameness and why is it only embraced when some big tragedy happens? What makes people want to separate themselves from others in the first place? Why do they think they have to tolerate others? What makes them think that they are any different from them? Sure we’ve all got our likes and dislikes, our preferences, the things we are drawn to and things that repel us. So that makes us all the same doesn’t it? If we all liked the same things, if we all were good at the same things, wanted the same things etc, wouldn’t we be more like robots? Can’t we all just like what we want and if we find someone who is disagreeable to us, simply avoid them? Or if we find something we don’t enjoy doing which has little to no value to us, simply just not do it? We’ve all taken on, to some degree, the values and beliefs of those around us. Some keep those values and beliefs, without question, all of their lives. This is good. This is how we build the traditions and practices that we all love. Some decide to question the beliefs and values and some will keep them or reject them, or maybe they’ll chop and change between the two all of their lives. Never gaining any solid ground.

What is it that we all have, that is unchanging, for the duration of our lives, that is solid and reliable and therefore trustworthy? It is life. We all have life, if we are alive on this planet; we have life, that much is evident. It’s the thing that connects all of us. As we come into this world, we start to learn and name and shape this thing we call life, into specific things we can all recognise. This is good. It allows for the building of a form of communication that we can all use to communicate with each other. We start to attach meaning to things. Such as this human who gave birth to me in this human form is my mother and we give meaning to that. It’s an important role, we should love our mothers, look up to them, do what they tell us to do. This becomes a fixed idea that most people never think about let alone question and explore. And if they find that they’re unfortunate enough to get a mother who they don’t even like, who they don’t want to follow, then they can struggle with having love for them. They know they must love their mother. Everybody knows that. Therefore, if they feel hate towards her, because she’s just beaten them, they must naturally conclude that they are bad. Then they can see that of course it stands to reason that they’re bad. Their mother, this most holy of creatures, wouldn’t hit them if they weren’t bad, because mothers are good, so yes, definitely, they must be bad. Traditions, shared understandings, differences etc, are all well and good, so long as each person knows, that underneath all these meanings and labels and words that we attach to people and things, is life and these words and labels and meanings are simply tools to help us communicate with each other. They are not there to separate but rather to unite us. If none of us had a way of communicating with each other, the human race would not advance and life seeks always to express itself. So we found a way to communicate, but that communication and the meanings we give to things, seem to have taken importance over who we are, over what it was intended for. It was intended to bring us together but instead it separates us. Until there’s a big enough tragedy, that is. Is it a tragedy if it brings people back together? If it gets people looking out for each other, supporting each other, risking their own lives for each other and even giving their last penny to help each other. Dissolving instantly, the superficial differences people ordinarily cling onto to so fiercely, so aggressively, so violently. I wonder if it’s a tragedy at all? Of course for those who’s lives were lost, we can say it’s a tragedy but could it be said that it’s an even greater tragedy if we repeat it again, and again and again. We will never get the violence and the wars to stop through violence and wars. And we’ll never get them to stop by trying to get everyone to see eye to eye. That’s never going to happen and would we even really want that? But if everyone loved his fellow man as if he loved himself, the life force within him that connects him to every human being out there, there would be no reason to quarrel or fall out with anybody, not to the degree you would want to harm or take that person’s life. If you love your brothers as yourself, you know that if you steal from another, you are cheating yourself. If you hurt another, you are hurting yourself. And every act is proceeded by a thought therefore if you harm another you must first harm yourself, you have to first have a harmful thought. And who does that thought hurt the most? If I think harmful thoughts I am not free and happy to enjoy the moment, I am busy plotting and hurting and dragging my spirits down in preparation to do the same damage to some body else, with any luck. If we can inflict more hurt on the other person than we are experiencing (as the effect of our own thoughts) then we shall be declared victorious. We can revel in and feel proud that now they are hurting more than us, we are the winners. Is this what winning at life means? Who can hurt the most? Or who can gather unto him the most physical possessions including money and sometimes including power over people. If you can control more people does that make you the winner? I don’t know. I know people seem to like and fiercely protect the idea of conditional love as the highest attainment in life. They love to tell the world how much they love this person or that as if the highest award in life is to love fiercely but to love exclusively. The more exclusive the love the more valuable and important it is and often times, everyone else can go to hell. I know there’s deep value and comfort in human or conditional love and it has a way of expressing itself that universal love/life never could. It’s needed, it’s necessary, but it isn’t the meaning of life. I don’t think we were put on this earth to be separated. We are all individual expressions of the one life, we are not in competition with each other, we don’t have to kill each other for a better life, wouldn’t it just be easier to avoid someone you didn’t like rather than killing them? Maybe that’s just me, I know I’m weird, but I haven’t, so far, found any real sense in murder and fighting, rather I think that life should be a joyful adventure with all the twists and turns and ups and downs along the way. Millions of minds and lives all working towards the same goal, to simply enjoy a happy life. If we all enjoyed ourselves there would be no room to hurt somebody. When you’re involved in enjoying yourself, why would you suddenly stop, and think, let me just kill a few people then get back to my enjoyment? If somebody came along that you didn’t like, you’d just think I’m gonna avoid that fella, I don’t like him and can’t enjoy myself when I’m around him, so I’ll just avoid him because I like to enjoy myself. Why not keep it simple? Of course those with all the human power don’t want that. A long held tried and tested practice is to divide and conquer at all costs and use fear to weaken people so they’re easier to control. But they can’t control us without our consent. But we can give them that consent because the alternative might mean death. But what is a man who has no free will, no choice in life? Is he not just an animal, following orders? What is a man without choice? What makes a man different to a pig, for example, or a sheep? Is it not the power to chose? Must we only chose between certain options that some other mortal man has decided we can have? Does our soul belong to him? He will tell us what we can and cannot do. What does he have that we don’t? Human power. But there is a power far greater than that which man can summon up. His best chance (man made power) is to install fear in people, to divide, then conquer. Is this in line with our true nature? To live in fear of our fellow man? Does it feel good to live in fear. Does fear present opportunities and possibilities, beyond our imagination, or does love do that? Do you feel more energised and open and free when you are dancing with love or drowning in fear? Is fear our natural state or is it just a great tool to keep us from harm that somebody decided they could use to their advantage? The good news is, when you are at once connected to that infinite power within you, that thing called life, then you see love everywhere. You see behind the masks of fear or greed or what other thing has caught the attention of that person and married them so securely to it. Sometimes, you can even wash it away by loves presence alone. Love has the power to stop a quarrel instantly, if it is untainted, and the quarrellers have no idea of what just happened. They don’t need to. If you tell most people about the power of love, they just laugh, and tell you, love is no match for this great president or that great leader. How do they know? They never gave it a chance. It’s not an easy thing to try. It goes against the grain. Against what society teaches us. To love all people? Never. I’ve never heard anything so absurd, they’ll say. I would never love that man, he wears a pink shirt and besides, men can’t love men, it’s just not right. 

Parents
  • I think that if someone declares allegiance to a specific religion, and really means it, it only becomes an act of violence if they can't find it in their hearts to love others of a different religion, or none. It doesn't make sense to me that anyone would have that prejudice, especially if they came to their faith later in life, because surely they can see that they once believed something different themselves.

    Unfortunately people are very good at focussing on the differences in others, rather than the similarities, and you can even end up with wars fought between different variations of the same religion, as with Protestants and Catholics. And verses taken out of context from holy books can be used to justify almost anything.

    But if the message was originally one of tolerance, love and understanding, the fault lies in the person who has distorted and corrupted that message, not in the teachings themselves.

  • Interesting. Have you ever felt any separation between you and another person? For example, has anybody ever annoyed you and you’ve thought, they’re an annoying person? 

    Are you saying you follow a particular teaching? 

    The fault lies neither with the teachings nor the understanding of the teachings by the individual.

    Where does the  message of tolerance, love and understanding come from? I’m not sure I’ve heard that message, which is not unusual, I haven’t heard that many messages. 

  • I follow the teaching of Jesus, now. But I was an atheist most of my life, I wasn't raised as a Christian. I came to it through a personal crisis. I was interested in Buddhism for a few years, and practised transcendental meditation, which I found calming and restful, but not life changing. (At least, for me.)

    In the Bible, Jesus is recorded as regularly speaking to people considered "unclean" or undesirable in his society, including prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, Roman soldiers and people of other faiths. He preached that we should do unto others as we would wish them to do unto us, and said that we should love and forgive even our enemies. (As it's no big achievement if you only love those who are good to you.) That's what I was thinking of.

    I can't be more specific about the "similarities" between people which I referred to earlier, because that depends on who you're talking to. Sorry if that sounds a bit lame, I'll work on it and hopefully post a better reply later.

Reply
  • I follow the teaching of Jesus, now. But I was an atheist most of my life, I wasn't raised as a Christian. I came to it through a personal crisis. I was interested in Buddhism for a few years, and practised transcendental meditation, which I found calming and restful, but not life changing. (At least, for me.)

    In the Bible, Jesus is recorded as regularly speaking to people considered "unclean" or undesirable in his society, including prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, Roman soldiers and people of other faiths. He preached that we should do unto others as we would wish them to do unto us, and said that we should love and forgive even our enemies. (As it's no big achievement if you only love those who are good to you.) That's what I was thinking of.

    I can't be more specific about the "similarities" between people which I referred to earlier, because that depends on who you're talking to. Sorry if that sounds a bit lame, I'll work on it and hopefully post a better reply later.

Children
  • Thank you, and best wishes. :)

  • Hi OrinocoFlo. Here is the link. I can personally guarantee that this process works, everytime, if you follow the instructions. Don’t try to intellectualise is, just trust the process. 

    There is lots of information on the website as well but if you’ve got any questions, please feel free to private message me. I use this process with clients and teach them how to use it so like me, they always have a way to dissolve hurtful thoughts/feelings etc as they arise. Although sometimes, I would still stay with the hurt for a while but I don’t any more.

    I’m not going to be active on this forum any more. It has been made clear to me that sharing my gratitude for the love I’ve been receiving from friends, this past week, is not acceptable and as I’m now starting to feel better, I’m afraid I would want to share how I’m moving forwards etc and apparently, that’s against the rules. I haven’t read the rules so was unaware of what is appropriate and what isn’t. 

    However, getting back to you. I’ll keep my membership open and will keep an eye out for any messages from you because I’ve got so much confidence in this process that I know it can help you with any resentful thoughts etc that arise. 

    If you’re like me, you will have a tendency to devote a lot of time trying to process this stuff and this process changed all that for me. I still use it and I can tell from what you’ve said so far, you’ll find it a blessing.

    Best wishes.  

    www.radicalforgiveness.com/

  • I'd be interested in seeing that page, thank you.

  • How do you let go of resentful thoughts? I didn’t know it was possible. I have some great ways of dealing with resentment though that dissolves them completely. If you’re interested, I can give you the link to one of them, 

    Yeah, I’m finding something similar since diagnosis. I realise the disharmonies were simply a lack of mutual understanding during conversations on both sides. 

  • Loving my enemies certainly isn't easy, but I work on it. Sometimes I have to spend days or even weeks letting go of resentful thoughts, depending on how badly treated I felt. I know when I've finally got there, because the memory loses the power to upset me.

    Actually, realising I'm probably autistic has helped a lot, because now I can look back on past events and understand them better, and know that sometimes the problem was only my misunderstanding of "neurotypical" attitudes.

  • You say you ‘follow’ the teachings of Jesus. You were certainly able to quote him accurately, however, you didn’t demonstrate how you or if you love your enemies. 

    The similarities question is easy. What is the one thing that is similar or the same in all human beings?