He started
Not blaming creates peace, but the unconditional acceptance of one's own responsibility.
Time and again, we fall into the trap of blaming others for grievances. This attitude is as understandable as it is destructive. With the start of a new war, it becomes clear once again how futile it is to try to bring about peace by force of arms. The winners, as always, are those who sow discord. Those who want to break the diabolical cycle must lower the rifle aimed at others and start with themselves in the search for those responsible.
By Kerstin Chavent, October 21, 2023 – English translation by DeepThought
I sit there peacefully. My world is in order. Suddenly, it comes crashing down on me. Out of the blue, someone attacks me. Completely unprovoked. This is how most people feel when they get into a conflict. One has done nothing. The other person started it. He did not behave properly. He is the one who crosses our boundaries, hurts us, wrongs us. While we blame our counterpart for having made a mistake, we rub our hands together in suppression of our own influence.
As children, we ran to mom or dad in such cases. As adults, we have often not learned to take responsibility for our own actions. We put the measure where we stand best. After all, we are only defending ourselves. The aggressor is always someone else. In this way, we deprive ourselves of the justification to bring the sharpest weapons into the field, which cause harm to everyone involved, including ourselves.
Chicken or egg?
Many voices describe the attack by Palestinian Hamas on Israel as “unprovoked,” as if there were no reason to protest Israel’s foreign policy. Again, the goal of this conflict is not to bring about peace. It is, according to former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak, about winning a war (1).
We can see where it leads to always producing new victors and defeated, always new victims who in turn become new attackers, if we just look around. Those who focus on the guilt of the other without including their own behavior end up in a dead end.
Just as there is no answer to the question of whether the chicken or the egg came first, we will not find peace by pointing the finger at others and taking things out of their contexts. Even though we may imagine it: Nothing happens just like that. Everything has a back story. Everything has a terrain that is more or less receptive.
War does not bring peace
It is our thinking that contributes to the fact that the world does not find peace. As long as we think that struggle, violence and oppression are the conditio humana of man, as long as we think that wars have always existed and will always exist, as long as we imagine that the good guys are on one side and the bad guys on the other, nothing will change.
We are getting deeper and deeper into wars and conflicts. “Progressive social and technological developments, such as unmanned drones, the use of biological weapons or cyberwarfare as warfare in the digital space,” according to the online platform Statista, “thereby pose new challenges on the way to a peaceful world” (2).
The misconception that peace can be brought about by wars feeds on our view of the world. Do we not live in a world of opposites, in which peace needs war, as it were, just as light needs darkness? Don’t the stars only become visible on a black background? Does not the day need the night and the summer the winter? Does not every beginning also have its end?
Twisted pairs of opposites
In a cyclically oriented world the opposites complete themselves. Birth is followed by death, becoming by passing away. Together they make up life. But does tenderness need violence? Does love need fear? Does the good need the bad to become recognizable? Does truth need the lie? Do we need the feeling of abating pain to be able to feel happiness? Does light need darkness?
The flame of the candle, according to the Veda researcher and philosopher Armin Risi, does not need darkness to exist (3). Nor do the stars need the black firmament. It is our perception that needs it. We cannot recognize the one without the other. Thus, it is not the natural order, but our view of things that leads us to think that peace needs war like day needs night.
It testifies to spiritual confusion to bring together what does not belong together. Whereas in the natural order, couples complement each other, in the artificial order they exclude and destroy each other. Love is not made complete by fear and violence. Peace is not brought about by war. War begets war begets war.
Total annihilation
In a living world, opposites complete each other and together form a whole.
In a dead world, things are juxtaposed to cancel each other out. The natural order is broken up to make way for an artificial order that assimilates the living.
To the extent that the original cycles and rhythms disappear, we are deprived of what makes us human: our creativity. While women and men are becoming increasingly sterile and the two biological sexes are considered politically incorrect, we have gone from being a human being to being a person, from being a resource to being an administrative object.
Transgender, genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender, pangender, agender, demigender? In a confusion that is hard to keep track of, we inevitably lose our innate life-creating power. Instead of bringing forth new life, there are decals from the laboratory. Finally, with artificial intelligence, we are entering an age in which humans are obsolete.
Finger off the trigger
It is the distortions in our minds that make this destruction possible. Nobody forced us to do it. We have done it voluntarily. Voluntarily we have adopted a worldview in which the living is increasingly obliterated. Voluntarily we believe that lasting peace is not possible and that the greatest problem of mankind is overpopulation.
Thus we have become easy prey. We are content to feed our enemy images and do not stand up when blatant injustice happens around us. It takes the uncritical masses to drive humanity into total dependency and ultimately its own destruction. If the masses remain silent, as they have done in recent years, the game is lost for us. However, if we remember who we actually are, we can move on.
We are more than persons, more than masked figures, more than personnel. We are human beings, creative beings who shape the world as they want it to be. Whether consciously or unconsciously, our thoughts, desires, feelings, beliefs, visions shape our reality. This gift to us is at the same time our greatest challenge. Accepting it means taking our finger off the trigger and consistently returning to ourselves.
A question of courage
Whoever is ready for this leaves the comfortable nest from which he judges others. He takes the threads of life in his hand, which converge with him, and surrenders to the natural order of things, in which the complementary opposes each other. He is no longer available for global annihilation, but creates the conditions for us to come together again.
That takes courage. We can see how much by the amount of people who make all kinds of excuses not to start with themselves. They prefer to get excited about others. So they remain trapped in their anger, in their fear and in their powerlessness. They are stuck in their accusations and do not have their hands free. They do not get access to their own creative power and remain good fodder for those who further the destruction.
Coming home
He who works on others is not with himself. He is out of the house, so to speak. While his attention lies where he can’t change anything anyway, others can occupy him and do what they want with him. We see what this looks like in the conflicts, wars and divisions in our world. No matter how much we pretend to want peace, we don’t get it.
If, on the other hand, you are willing to take personal responsibility and feel your way into your own darkness instead of seeking it out in others and denouncing it, you can really make a difference.
Even if there is war around him, he can create peace within himself. By no longer using others as a projection screen for his own faults and weaknesses, the world around him can become brighter.
He who returns to himself ignites a light that can be seen from afar. He no longer darkens his surroundings with his thoughts of revenge and retribution, but begins to shine from within himself. This light does not need the darkness. It can exist even without anyone opposing it, an expression of unlimited freedom to make the world a place of peace.
***
Sources and Notes:
(1) https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/heute-journal/heute-journal-vom-15-oktober-2023-100.html, https://www.manova.news/artikel/finger-am-abzug
This article was first published in German on manova.news
About the author:
Kerstin Chavent lives in Southern France. She writes articles, essays and autobiographical stories. Her publications in German so far include “Die Enthüllung”; “In guter Gesellschaft”; “Die Waffen niederlegen”; “Das Licht fließt dahin, wo es dunkel ist”; “Krankheit heilt” and “Was wachsen will muss Schalen abwerfen”. Her focus is on dealing with crisis situations and illness and raising awareness of the creative potential in people. You can find her blog here: Bewusst: Sein im Wandel.
»We have to build a whole new world later - and every further crime, every further cruelty, we have to contrast with another bit of love and goodness that we have to conquer within ourselves. We may suffer, but we must not break under it.« ~Etty Hillesum (Etty - actually Esther - Hillesum was a Dutch Jewish woman who was deported to Auschwitz and murdered at the age of 29.)
Beautifully thought provoking, and based in deep truths…….
“Protest Israel’s foreign policy”?!
You’ve got to be kidding.
Hamas is a terrorist organization that brutally and savagely attacked villages of innocent people as well as a music festival and killed, tortured, raped, beheaded, and kidnapped, women, children, elderly and men and soldiers who were still sleeping as well. They broke across security barriers on a holiday when they knew it would be quiet and no one was expecting the attack and they were not protesting anything nor were they provoked. Israel never starts it. I pray this time they will finish it.
The territory was agreed upon in the last intervention by other nations. The security fences and cameras etc are there to protect Israel from people who want them wiped off the face of the earth.
The 20% or so of innocent civilians who are not part of Hamas, who constitutes 80% of Gaza, are mistreated by HAMAS not by Israel. The current set up is such that Israel supplies their fuel and water. They could stop at any time but they don’t.
They were in the middle of trying to negotiate more peaceful relations in a way that would benefit the people who live in Gaza more, and had allowed more people to cross into Israel for work over the last several months.
Come to find out that was a ploy on the part of Hamas who used those people to map out villages, homes, security bases and posts, and provide a lot of important information used in this barbaric and sickening attack.
Have you seen the confessions of the men caught? They happily admit they were told to attack and rape women, and to behead people. They confessed to torturing adults and children. They have over 200 hostages, most of whom by now they have killed after doing terrible things to them. They broke into homes and murdered entire families.
Foreign policy?! Hamas’ policy is Jews don’t deserve to live. No other Arab country will take in Palestinians. Why is that? Where do you think Palestinians came from?
People need to do some real research and learn the history. Look at my notes with videos from PragerU only because it was a fast way to give a quick history lesson. But there are also Arab Israelis on their site telling their views.
Lawyers and historians provide the historical and legal background about where this all started and what it’s truly about.
I guarantee you, the land is not “occupied” illegally nor does Israel oppress anyone.
Wake the hell up people!! It is all a satanic battle against the Jewish people using lies and deceit and has been for millennia. Long before there was a group calling themselves Palestinian, (made up) and long before there was a single Muslim on earth.
Unbelievable ignorance!!