New Wealth Connections

by Richard Cawte.

We are all different.

We are all the same.

Which statement do you choose to focus on?

Newspapers and television news reports would have us see ourselves as different from each other.  They would have us believe that we cannot leave our front doors without plunging ourselves into danger.  They would have us believe that we can trust no one and that the world is full of thieves and drug smugglers and people who hate us.  And so it has become.

Life is a mirror and reflects back at us what we choose to think into it and each time you choose to read the everyday newspapers or watch the evening news you choose to fill your mind with thoughts of struggle and chaos and by filling your mind with these images you increase the distrust of the world around you.  Your thoughts create it, your emotions forge it, and your subsequent actions rubberstamp it.

Newspapers and TV encourage people to live in fear.  They focus on our differences.  They put up boundaries where there are none.  They focus on fighting instead of on peace.  They would have us believe our world is one of struggle and terror and war in which the future lies in greater repression and less freedom of choice.  And so it has become.

The 20^th Century was the bloodiest century in the history of mankind and as we move into the century that follows on from it, what is the hope for us as a species?  Will we learn from our history and not repeat our mistakes, or will we continue to make a monumental hash of the whole thing?  A glance at history would suggest the latter, unless we make a quantum shift in the way that we treat other people, and that shift has to start with how we treat ourselves.

“Enforced Peace” is a contradiction in terms.

The starting point, for me, must be peace; peace that comes from within each of us and reaches out to others in the form of compassion.  That is what mankind requires if it is to grow and survive.

We are often our own worst enemies.  We distrust ourselves, we fear for ourselves and we undervalue ourselves.  In doing so, we distrust and fear and undervalue the world around us.  The key to the future lies in changing that perception of our selves so that we can look on others with different eyes, comfortable in our own knowledge.

One thing is for sure: imposed peace does not work.

You have only to look at what happens in any country where UN forces are introduced.  However good-natured the initial movement of troops may be, the simple fact is that you cannot enforce freedom with guns, because by doing so you are merely doing what the dictator was doing before you.

“Sending in troops is like trying to use a band-aid on a body that has scars on the outside, but cancer on the inside.  It has no effect on the cancer.”

Replacing tyranny with an imposed peace does not create peace.  It is not working in Iraq.  It didn’t work in Sierra Leone, or Bosnia, or The Middle East, and it will not work in Afghanistan either.  Sending in the UN troops is like trying to use a band-aid on a body that has scars on the outside, but cancer on the inside.  It has no effect on the cancer.

For a brief moment let us look at some of the figures from the last century before we move on.  You might be surprised to know that the estimated figures for genocide in the hundred years leading up to the new millennium stand at 80 million: that is 80,000,000 people who were killed by violence based on ethnic, religious and philosophical conflicts.  In many of the places where mass genocide occurred, peace-keeping troops were sent in afterwards.  In many of the places, they are still there.

Think of that figure for a moment:  80,000,000 lives in one hundred years.  It is an extraordinary indictment of our failings.  That is 800,000 every year, 66,666 every month, more than 15,000 every week.  Over 2,000 people each day.

More than one person killed for every minute of the hundred years that made the 20^th century and that does not include the murders, rapes, and violence of “civil” life.

How does that make you feel?

Are you one of the ones who would pull the trigger, detonate the bomb or plunge the knife to take another’s life?  Is your partner one of those people?  What about your friends?  Is anyone you know willing to be a part of a society that kills 2,000 people each day?

I doubt it.  Who is?

Yet those are the facts.

Instead of spreading peace, I see the media simply throwing more fuel onto the fires of hatred and anger that are bred in such uncertain times as they bring us more and more reports of riots and atrocities across the world.

We are, it seems, standing on the brink of a time of choice.  Will we choose to focus on our similarities or our differences and, beyond that, will we indeed show the wisdom to be willing to bridge the gaps of our differences with an understanding of our unbreakable unity?

I for one see much hope for change.  We can learn from our history if we choose.  We can remodel the way that we live, if we choose.  The key is to honour ourselves, to find peace in ourselves, for we then can honour and find peace in all others.  When each of us learns to value our own life, we can then see the value in ALL life: and that is the key to global change.

I have often written that freedom and responsibility go hand in hand.  At seminars people usually shy away from this idea.  We are taught not to want responsibility.  We are taught to blame others for the state of our lives.  We blame our parents or our teachers, we blame our friends, our our competitors: we blame the government or the boss.  Whoever it is that we blame, we do ourselves a disservice whenever we do, because we are handing our power to them instead of taking it for ourselves.  That is why freedom means being responsible.

To be responsible is to be “able to respond” to life’s challenges, to be able to take a choice for better or worse and know that life is a consequence of our choices, rather than blaming anyone else for what is happening.  That is why I am so against all forms of government intrusion and legislation that affect our ability to choose, because by removing that ability they make us less responsible, and in becoming less responsible we tacitly accept we are no longer free.  I see people willingly lose their freedoms of choice in the name of “terrorism” or “security” and I wonder when the human race will wake up to what is going on.

Soon is the answer!

Ten years ago I wrote an article entitled “A Vision for the next Millennium”.  In it I talked of man’s similarity to man being hand in hand with our unique identity.  We are all different: we are all the same.  A decade on I’d like to look at this some more.

To begin with, let’s take some so-called differences.  I am a male: you may be or you may not.  I have blue eyes:  yours may be brown or green or grey or somewhere in between.  My waist size is 32 inches: yours may be the same: it may be different.  I speak English: you may speak other languages.  My hair is brown: yours may be fair, or black or red.  The list goes on…

Do such differences matter?  Yes, they make us who we are.  In fact they are signs of a diversity that is necessary for us to evolve and grow.  But let us look for a moment at what we ALL have in common.  Let us look at some of the things that governments and media do not tell us very often.  Let us look at both the big picture and the small.

The Big Picture.

The “world” I live in is a big, big place.  So big, I can’t really imagine it.  I’m told it goes on forever and ever.  I would have to be a lot taller to comprehend that.  Yet it’s the very same world as yours.

My galaxy is 100,000 light years across: so is yours.

My galaxy has somewhere between 200 and 500 billion stars in it: and so does yours.

The universe I live in is 44 trillion light-years from one side to the other: and so is yours.  By the way, one light-year is the distance a light particle can travel in one year – and that is 9.46 trillion miles – so 44 trillion of those must be a long, long way!  If someone built a highway all the way across my universe it and you and I began to walk that road today, we would be walking many lifetimes before we reached the other side.

The place where I am sitting right now spins round the sun approximately once in 24 hours.  Yours does too.

The Small Picture.

My body is 60% hydrogen: so is yours.

My body is 3% Nitrogen: so is yours.

My body is 26% Oxygen: yours is too.

My body is 10% Carbon: just like yours!

My body has approximately 100 trillion cells in it.  Hey, so does yours!

Each cell in my body has 23 pairs of chromosomes in it that I call my DNA.  The same is true for you.

My heart beats approximately 72 times each minute: so does yours.

I have to breathe air, drink water and eat (some) food to live.  So do you.

My ancestors have walked this planet for at least 10,000 years and so have yours.

There are approximately 10 tonnes of air pressing down on my head right now.  Yet miraculously, thanks to the way my body is designed, I don’t feel a thing!  Do you?

When my first child looked up at me from my trembling hands I smiled and I cried.  You may have too.

When my mother tucked me up in bed and kissed me goodnight all those years ago, I knew the world was safe and sound.  You may have too.

I have felt joy and happiness in my life and pain and sorrow too.  Have you?

I have seen people young and old, black and white, tall and short, smile at each other with the smile of love.  Have you?

I’ve done things I am proud of and things I would do differently now I have learned a little more of how things are in the world.  What about you?

I remember and treasure the moments in life when I connected, truly connected, with another person or place, when the world made sense because I saw in them the reflection of my own essence.  Is the same for you?

Are we so different you and I?  And if we are: what of those so-called differences?  Are they enough to fight each other year on year until there is no peace left in the world?  Do we not need the differences within us to ensure the human race continues to evolve?  I know we do.

Let’s make this simple and go back to when you were a little child.

When you were small, did any of you think, “When I grow up I’m going to be a killer?”

When you were a child did you say to yourself, “My religion is better than anyone else’s!”

When you were young did you think to yourself, “When I grow up I am going to fill my life with images of hate and death and inhumanity?”

I doubt it somehow.

And yet so many people grow up to life lives fuelled by religious hatred and even more people fill their lives with the images of man’s inhumanity to man that television focuses on each day.  It does not have to be so.  All life is made of choice and we must each decide what happens to this tiny little world of ours, this miniscule blue planet, swimming in the oceans of galaxies and universes that reach out beyond the scope of thought.

The starting point is to look at ourselves, to stop giving ourselves such a hard time and to begin to show compassion to ourselves.  We did it when we were small and we can do it again.  All it takes is a moment to pause and breathe.  When you have finished this article, take a look in a mirror.  Hold your own gaze for a minute and then for another.  You will see who you really are.  Hold that look.  Keep on looking and don’t shy away.  Give yourself time to recognise who is inside that shell of skin and bone and blood and hair, that body of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen.

I promise you, you are not a killer, nor a drug dealer, nor a person who hates all others.  I guarantee you are not a thug or a mugger.  I know you are not a religious fanatic or a lunatic.  Nor are you alone.  Nor are you vulnerable.  Nor are you worthy of your own distrust.

You are simple and small and yet part of all life.  You breathe and when you do life inspires you.  You are here in the now in that body of yours.  You are timeless and connected to the world around you.  What you feel is felt not just in your cells: it is mirrored in each living thing in the world.  And that’s why it is your responsibility to be who you really are.  You owe it to yourself and to all other life.

Try it some time.  And when you have done that, take a look at the people around you.  You might be surprised at how like you they are.  They are all just the same, beneath all the trappings.  They are all just like you, in their own unique ways.  They are simple and loving and caring and kind.  They are part of this moment and part of all moments.  They want all that you want and they deserve your compassion.

Right now, they are taking their next breath, just as you are.  They are inspiring themselves just as you are.  You can move away from them with fear if you choose, or you can recognise your self in their eyes.

Are you really so different, or are you the same?

The choice is a big one for we stand on the bridge of a time of change.

I for one trust in your judgement.

Filed under: General Tags: by admin Date 5 January, 2010