Right now war is on the minds of many, as Russia continues attacks on Ukraine. At this point in time it seems the majority wish that war wasn’t happening. That peace could be restored between countries. A desire for safety and the well being of others is a natural human tendency, and a desirable goal that the vast majority of people have.
So then, why do we have war? It’s been around as long as people have been on this earth. Despite our perceived level of sophistication and understanding of ourselves through scientific discovery and spiritual awareness, we still repeat this barbaric act of fighting and killing our fellow humans.
In order to understand it from where we are now, we have to look back at the patterns throughout history. Over and over conflict and war has occurred. Every time there is a war an eventual agreement to stop fighting occurs and there is peace for a while. And then tensions flare up again and the process repeats. The players and countries are often different, but the general process is the same.
Each time conflict arises there are standard elements in place. Perceived threats from an outside party (triggered by the fears found deep inside each of us), desire for power and control (over people, resources, land, etc.), and greed (money and related acquisitions). This pattern repeats over and over. War, temporary peace, escalation of conflicts, and back to war.
So why does it keep repeating if the majority, at least on the surface level, desire peace? There are many factors at play, but I believe that most of them can be traced back to something that seems pretty simple on the surface, but is very difficult to root out: fear. Humans as a species have endured numerous hardships and challenges throughout history, and because of this many fears have been buried deep in our psyches. We’ve dealt with natural disasters, food shortages, attacks from wild animals, violence, intolerance and so much more.
These fears that we have in our subconscious drive many of our behaviours. Everything from the clothing we wear – often chosen so we fit in with others (fear of rejection), to our choice of and loyal devotion to our favourite sports team (fear of being alone). It affects our obsession with feeling physical security as well – through our use of police, military, airport checks, over-protective parenting, even enforced vaccination. We want to feel safe at any cost.
So how do we move past this pattern of war? How do we relieve ourselves of fear and work towards a world that is generally peaceful? We need to stop the cycle of fear. This is easier said than done, given our turbulent history as outlined above, and how that continues to inform our behaviour. But I believe there is a big item that needs to be addressed at this point in time. We need to take attention away from events and activities that glorify and celebrate the fighting of wars. This includes a more balanced look at the history of war and further studying the effects it has had on the collective consciousness of humanity.
Our tendency is to look at each war, each battle, individually and justify the actions based simply on the visible and reported results. In general the stated goal of war is often in making sure someone or some country gets into line and ultimately ensuring we maintain our “freedom”. But if we look at it from a much higher level viewpoint, you start to see the collective trauma that the human race suffers each time there is fighting to that degree. That trauma builds up in every person on earth, adding to our inner fears, and yes, eventually leading to another war at some future time. Ironically we also actually lose freedom due to this build up of internal fear.
Because of this view that most wars successfully achieved their goals and were necessary to maintain world balance, we continue to celebrate the heroes and glorify past wars. We remember those who fought courageously. Don’t get me wrong, those soldiers were courageous individually, putting themselves in danger for what they believed was the higher good. But the countries fighting the wars were not acting in the most courageous of manners. The act of fighting a war itself increases the probability of future conflicts. If the ultimate goal of humanity is indeed to create sustainable peace then the courageous approach would be to not engage in fighting. To cease activities that add to the collective fear within all humans.
Now you may be thinking, but if we don’t fight wars we’ll end up being dominated by evil world leaders who must be stopped somehow. Again we need to step back from looking at an individual time-frame in history and ask ourselves, how did a particular person end up becoming an “evil world leader”? What is it about that person that made or makes them act that way? And it comes back to what we’ve already discussed – fear. A deep seated fear inside the person, motivating them to react in a way that quells their fear. And where did that fear come from? From the collective experience of people who came before them who had fears from experiencing terrible things, such as war. Trauma is passed from generation to generation, in the actions of people and directly through their DNA.
To break the cycle of war and fear, we must remove that trauma and fear from the psyche of the people. Remove it from the collective consciousness of humanity. A start would be a re-framing of the outcomes of past war events, with particular focus on the trauma that they perpetuate within humanity, and their role in continuing the cycle of future violence.
Additionally the growth in numbers of people exploring meditation, energy healing and related modalities will help in this process of rooting out the fear within us and discovering higher level vibrations within ourselves. This is generally known as raising consciousness, and each person that travels this path helps raise the collective consciousness and replaces fear with much more positive and nurturing energy.
Ultimately if we reduce the collective fear of humans, we reduce many other things in each individual as well:
– fear of lack of resources (food and money scarcity leading to greed)
– fear of rejection (aggression, anxiety)
– fear of people who are different than us (racism, homophobia, intolerance)
With these changes we can reduce and eventually eliminate these military conflicts. Well balanced people and societies do not require acts of dominance over others. Its not something they would even think of or consider as an option.