by Rev. Scott Ufford
Why does mankind seem hot-wired to plunge the blade of violence into the heart of hope?
Why our worldwide nonstop addiction to war mongering? Why the spastic twitching of fingers on triggers and death-buttons when we could more profitably reach out to shake hands?
When do we start storing up ammunition to make a Great Peace instead of yet another Great War?
If only answering these hellish questions was as easy as asking them!
But here’s a hint:
Of course, our tales of woe began long, long ago. Everything began long, long ago… Makes it easier to pin blame on somebody else, when today’s bloodbath started before recorded history. Meaning, beyond the reach of our self-control.
Why?
Because nobody can exactly explain, with plain logic, exactly where the milk of humanity went temporarily sour. As a result, the pains of our aggressions and victimhoods lie tangled up in a welter of incoherent emotional records:
“Why did you murder that nation’s leader?”
“Because he tried to kill my daddy.”
“Why did you invade that country?”
“Because we deserved to exploit their oil for them!”
“Why did you jail and kill people of that religion?”
“Because five hundred years ago they invaded our religion’s lands because five hundred years before that we invaded their religion’s lands because five hundred years before that they invaded our religion’s lands before their religion even started, which makes them the devils, you see…”
And so on. And on. Combatants with endlessly different names, faces and histories but with the same blood in their angry eyes. Antagonisms fueled by different excuses and different struggles but fueled with the same pathetic malice.
Different battle plans, weapons. Whether by poisonous gas or ambassadors’ pens dipped in the ink of deceit, it makes no difference. Whether by sharpened sticks and stones or deadly bombs dropped from unseen wings, it makes no difference.
Only the scale of the violence has changed. The false logic that’s led to these slaughters, pretends to remain unchallenged…
Because the secret belief in humanity’s helplessness provides ourselves, our neighbors, communities, countries, religions and races with endless ways to pretend that violence is proof of great strength, instead of weakness.
It justifies our sufferings today.
Faced with history’s innumerable hurts and wrongs inflicted and received in all directions, who amongst us can untangle the karmic mess?
Do you believe mankind was born into sin — just naughty by nature? Or conceived in an ancient alien race’s test tube to create an enslaved race? Or that we grew up soaked through with the moral sense of a blob of algae, just given more complex oceans to spawn in?
Whatever.
The secret spiritual fact is–and I fully expect at least half of you who read past this point to jump from my blog in disgust, never to return, so I give you my full blessing in advance to abandon ship, and appreciate your dropping by–
The blunt facts–explained to me by Spiritual Teachers–are:
We attack others because we want them to love us, to approve us–but we despair of them doing this voluntarily.
At heart, EVERYONE wants to receive kindness. (Have you ever seen even the most vicious, hardened, crazed criminal who didn’t secretly wish for a drop of kindness or compassion to ease his pangs? I think not.)
But who wants to make the effort to GIVE kindness?
Who’s going to give kindness first? Who’s going to break the karmic stalemate with a brave act of Higher Power love? Who’s going to take the challenge and say, “Yes, mutual win-win results are possible here. I’m willing to taking the first step. I’m going to stick with this process. We can work this out, and we can see this through to a success we can both agree to.”
Or will both sides battle to outdo each other in their brutality and waste, only for the “winner” to later dole out a few well-publicized drops of generosity to the loser?
Can you conceive of practical ways, in your own life’s battle-hardened situations, to change the tide of “victory through violence”?
Please meditate on this possibility as if it’s already reality. Imagine a world in which the battles of the past are forgotten in the mutual win-win, forgive-and-forget, heal-and-be-healed world of the near future.
A near future we must begin to call “today”.
Imagine the New Christ Energies can empower you to this peaceful everyday practicality. Ask inside yourself for clear guidance.
Do this and you’ll find your first step.
Imagine the words of ones such as Jesus, Lao-Tzu, Gandhi, Buddha, Mother Mary, Amma, Maitreya, Krishna–all inspire your private world and your civilization into confidence in the power of kindness.
Imagine the sacred blueprint of Divine Code Rule Number One that’s leading mankind–yes, our own bloodthirsty, ravenous, deceitful mankind–up a ladder of spiritual self respect. Our foot hesitates just below the next dynamic step up, wondering…
My friend, please pray for peace. Work and play for peace. Be the peace; through all your own struggles, be the peace you want to see shared across the globe.
Give the world’s children a fighting chance for peace.
You’ll discover that the peace you give is the peace you keep.
God bless you for trying.
-Rev. Scott Ufford Copyright 2011
