On Violence

To everything there is a season — there is a time to shout, and a time to whisper. 

This culture’s meta-narratives are obsessed with violence.

Everywhere.  Real violence and fantasy violence.

It’s the stuff we live and breathe, while obsessing about security and safety.

There is no real security, for many less than others, most certainly.

But the fiction is that we fix violence and our need for security from the outside, when change begins inside.

That’s not a New Age platitude, it’s the oldest lesson we humans have taught throughout time.

To be “born again,” isn’t a ticket to postmortem pearly gates, it’s an inner awareness that takes time and practice leading to what the Buddha and Indian sages called “enlightenment.”

But in our impatience we want broad brushstrokes, quick fixes, and immediate visible results, which is the m.o. of terrorism.

Anyone who physically trains, writes, does art, or invents, knows that immediacy and quick answers kill creative problem solving.

Change is slow, conscious, deliberate, and its results are unexpected, and grander than we can imagine, when we surrender to process.

Not “the process,” but process.  Process is what we live in.  Process is the practice.

Deliberate focus is central, simplicity of action and deed, which means turning away from the diverting meta-narratives that feed the fear, and keep us worried about our “security.”

Those who hold to peace listen and whisper in wisdom while the noise continues, because listening requires the essential quiet that noise cannot drown.

Lasting change requires daily resurrecting the meta-narratives that tell us an eye-for-an-eye makes the whole world blind, we shall overcome, and Love always triumphs over darkness.  Humanity possesses an overwhelming wealth of shared stories in which our collective demons were quieted by our higher angels.

These stories happen daily, weekly, yearly, in every age, but we must train ourselves to listen, to listen more deeply than the noise that surrounds us, train ourselves to be a different kind of storyteller, to ourselves and to others.

This is not ignoring the obvious, it’s creating a different world, through a deep practice that affirms life, responsibility, and love.

Because compassion and goodness are who We are — and there’s plenty of evidence that from Silence emerges beautiful and extraordinary music, despite the monotone bad notes played over and over in our collective fear.

 

 

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