Although I was born and raised in the United States, thirteen years ago I moved to an international township in south India where people from over 50 countries live together with the aspiration to work towards Human Unity and Peace. From afar I have observed the increasing state of Division spreading not only in the U.S. but in the world. The pain we feel now is our Collective Soul’s innate cry for this Unity and Peace that we are missing. For many decades the world has been growing – ever slowly – closer together in all aspects of our lives – colonized countries being finally liberated, people sharing more of their diverse cultures and identities, a growing acceptance and love for the beauty of everyone, movements of empowerment for groups of people being oppressed, a new recognition of our connection to the Earth, to nature and to each other, a growing sense of our inherent Oneness in Body, Soul and Spirit, through science and spirituality. This hidden Unity has been revealing itself to us through all our ‘growing pains’ despite the continuation of old divisions, fears and violence lingering in our reality. It is these old divisions and fears which have now currently risen up intensely in so many forms seeking to stop this growing Unity, a Unity which is inevitable upon the Earth, and it is these divisions and fears that we must seek to understand more deeply in ourselves and to heal in each other. In my community in India, many of us have seen clearly that a real Unity can only be created with Diversity. As someone who has lived and worked with people from all around the world, with differing ideals, beliefs and perspectives about life, I have observed that there is one disease which is the source of many conflicts and much suffering throughout the history of the world – the desire of groups of people to force their way of life upon other people.
Whether it be a religious, scientific, economic, social, cultural, governmental or other principle, people seem to have a deep desire to force their ideals and ways of living, their beliefs, upon others. We have gone to war on all levels of society and civilization – even within our own families and relationships – in order to control other people and dictate how they should or should not live. This is the real source of our inability to live together in true Harmony, Peace and Unity.
When we force people to live by our own ideals or beliefs, we inherently create the inevitability of conflict. We create an environment where people feel threatened and will always seek out a way to defend themselves in whatever way they can. Anyone who denies the freedom of any other individual or group to choose how to live their life by restricting their rights or their inherent dignity as humans is essentially an oppressor, a dictator. This act of denial makes them unworthy of those very rights they deny to others, and inevitably forces people to seek justice by any means necessary. In this we create a cycle of division, conflict and fear, which remains as long as we continue to attack each other instead of trying to understand more deeply who we all are and the greater Truth that underlies all our apparent differences. As long as the Soul and Spirit of any individual or group of people is not allowed to live and express itself freely according to its own divinely inspired choices and ways of being, humanity will be in constant conflict with itself. But it doesn’t have to be this way. This is not humanity’s Truth. We are all much greater than this. For within every human lies the potential to grow and to change, to open to new Visions of understanding and caring for every person, and all life, upon this Earth.
All religious and spiritual paths have revealed that what we call God lives and breathes in Everything, in every person and place, in every atom and cell, in every situation and experience, and that this God itself is a vast Unity, a dynamic Oneness which lives through a dynamic Diversity of Life that animates all of us. If we could recognize this immense truth of our hidden nature, we would then be capable of relating to all people, to all nations and races, to all ways of living, to all new ideas and beliefs, not as ‘others’ that are separate or different than ourselves, but as parts of God appearing before us, as parts of our own greater Self that has the ability to reveal to us something new about who we really are as humans and as Souls. In this realization, we no longer could force others to live by what we may choose for ourselves, nor could we do any violence upon another – for we realize that what we do to others we truly do to ourselves, to our children, to all people, and to God, to All. When we see that we are all One then we are able to create Peace and Unity. For we hold within us the Soul of a Divine Consciousness which connects us to Everything and Everyone, where we can recognize that there is nothing to fear, that there is enough for everyone on this planet, and that we only spread hate and fear and division because of the wounds and pains of our past which we have not healed, because we have not discovered the true source of Power within us which does not depend upon controlling others or seeking to keep them from their own power, because we have not yet experienced or seen the vast Truth of Life which connects us all to each other and to God, and that we are all One Body, One Being, and One Soul that lives in a Diversity of forms through the Grace of a Divine God, a great Something Else, which is far vaster than what we or any religion or philosophy or scientific ‘discovery’ can define or imagine. We are, each of us, every Soul upon Earth, much much MORE than we have ever imagined, and we have the power deep within our own selves to create a world that reflects the Beauty, the Love, the Light, the Peace, the Wonder of all our most glorious Dreams.
However, in order to create a more beautiful world for all of us, we must ALL be willing to stop ourselves, to look at who we have become as individuals, as families, as nations, as groups of people, to see deeply into our flaws and weaknesses, our mistakes and failures, to be truly honest with ourselves and to let go of our fears of being truly seen by others, to start seeing clearly what no longer helps us create real Unity and Peace and to begin to heal and transform all that we know will never lead us to a more peaceful, just, and harmonious world. As long as we use anger and hatred against each other, we only create more of the division that we are plagued with in the world, and any Change that we hope for will never manifest. Yet every Soul has in the core of their being a Light that can awaken with all the Compassion, Peace, Forgiveness, Truth, and Love to change the nature of our circumstances. Each of us holds a Flame of Power within us to create our world anew. If we can choose to use that Flame to ignite our powers of Creation instead of destruction, of Healing instead of harming, of Uniting instead of dividing, of allowing Freedom instead of seeking to control, then we shall be on the path towards a more peaceful future of Unity in Diversity, and the pain and wounds and suffering of the past and the present shall diminish and dissolve into a new and unexpected world of Compassion, Love and Beauty for All.
TruthYoga 