It’s been around 15 years since I first began hearing the rumor of an approaching world made of love—a world which, by obvious definition, would also be a world without war.
Honestly, I couldn’t conceive of it.
A world without war? But we’ve always had war. Right? Somebody somewhere is always at war with somebody else. Why, even in the most recent 100 years, there have only been a few random periods here and there, where there’s been no war happening someplace on earth.
Face it, humans are warlike. It’s in our basic nature.
But is it? Are we absolutely sure about that? Let’s take a deeper look at our own makeup, and some of the factors at play here.
Layer One: The personality self
It’s true that the human being you think of as you, is an egoic construct: A personality self that is (most likely) not in direct touch with your own sublime divinity, most of the time. Or at least, that’s what’s true for most of us.
The personality self is not an evil enemy (even though it blocks our awareness of divine truth). Nor is it a whole self; it’s a jumble of memories, opinions, beliefs and other assorted detritus, stitched into a strange and generally unsatisfying tapestry of worldly existence.
Because this false self doesn’t know wholeness, and isn’t based in real truth, it needs constant shoring up and constant defense. Some of what this self knows and experiences is beautiful, but much of it is ugly. All of it finds its roots in fear.
Tragic, yes. But it’s the predicament in which humanity finds itself, at this moment in our history.
Layer Two: The roots of fear
We all have this. Mostly we all spend our lives running away from it.
Those of us on an awakening-or-bust style of spiritual journey, have chosen to excavate this deeper region firsthand, turning our focus toward (instead of away from) the unnameable scary stuff that hides in the darkness.
I won’t presume to summarize anyone else’s experience of this choice. For myself, I’ve arrived at this place once or twice in my life, usually because at some point I’ve gotten unbearably bored and impatient with all the terror and self-inflicted suffering: I want an end to it, and I don’t care what it takes.
Monsters in the dark? Come and get me, muthafucka. It would be a relief, frankly, compared to the endless dread of my own subconscious or unconscious what-ifs and imaginings.
What actually happens as the result of such a declaration, is the complete opposite of that, of course.
Without exception, the introduction of my awareness, my light, my lack of fear (because I’m too fed up to be afraid in that moment)…this potent combination drains all the power out of those particular shadow fears. And when they have no power, they’re no longer able to run me.
But as long as we don’t look around in that darkened layer, shining the sacred light of our own awareness into those shadow regions, our fears can, and do, easily run us. Again, this fear-based setup is not an evil enemy. It’s just where we human beings find ourselves, at this point in history.
Layer Three: The true you
The true you is not really a layer underneath the others, of course. The true you is everywhere, permeating everything including those dense layers of fear and illusion. But we tend not to touch into our true selves without first seeing through, and moving through, the illusory barriers posed by those two layers (or bandwidths) of dense, lower frequency.
The true you is heaven on earth. One with all that is. A divinely human transmitter/receiver of heavenly grace. Not just a vessel carrying divine love; you ARE divine love itself.
Just as you are peace itself. You’re not AT peace. You don’t merely emanate peace. You ARE peace. It’s your very identity.
My point here is that we each are constructed with a couple of layers of fear-based vulnerability, built over top of one infinite and unassailable identity of pristine peace and love.
So, are we a warlike species?
Well, obviously yes and no. No, we are so entirely the very opposite of warlike, in truth.
But also yes. We are so easily manipulated into choosing war. Poke hard enough at somebody’s dark layer of unnameable fears, and their unwhole, and inherently unholy, personality self will likely leap into the fray of its own volition.
As a collective, humanity never seems to catch on to this ploy. We get poked, and we fall for it, over and over again.
Who does the poking? Rarely, if ever, is it the ones who get reported on the news. Look deeper.
It’s useful to remember here, that war is extremely big business for only a very few. For the bankers who back both sides of a conflict; for the military industrial complex, and those ancillary industries (big oil, big pharma, big agriculture, big tech, etc.) that keep the war machine rolling.
Nobody else profits. Everybody else loses.
How big is this big business, that we’re talking about? Worldwide military spending has recently topped 2 trillion per year.
OK. 2 Trillion:
Million-billion-trillion. Just a letter or two changes with each of those figures, right? They sound so similar. Let’s do the math on what a trillion actually means:
If you have $1 million dollars and you spend $100 of it every day, it would take you around 28 years to spend it all.
If you have $1 billion dollars (a thousand million) and you spend $100 of it every day, it would take you close to 28,000 years to spend it.
If you have $1 trillion dollars (that’s a thousand billion, or a million million) and you spend $100 of it every day, it would take you just shy of 28,000,000 years—yes, that’s twenty eight million years—to spend it.
And we’re talking a trillion times two. Per year.
Got the picture?
A total disregard for human suffering, for the earth, and for all the beings who call this planet home—which, last time, I checked, is the textbook definition of a psychopath—is what’s required, if you intend to amass wealth to the tune of billions and trillions.
Hey, it’s just business.
(I’ve said it before: Even these billionaires and their governmental shadow puppets are not our enemies. Can you imagine the gnawingly hollowed-out inner life condition of one who knows no possibility of fullfilment; feels no connection at all to people or earth or nature? One whose inner compulsion is only to amass more and more and more, without ever feeling like they have enough? It’s hell, surely.)
Refusal to make these guys our enemies is incredibly important, from a frequency perspective. Because if you buy what they’re selling and fall into hatred—even hatred of them—you’ll only feed the machine, and be dragged down to the same low frequency they themselves operate on.
So in this regard, sidestepping that vengeful temptation and instead holding them in compassion helps. At least, it helps me.
Nevertheless, it’s important to recognize these puppetmasters clearly for what they are, and for the mind-boggling harm they do. Although mere recognition is obviously not going to be enough here.
Saying no to the war machine is beyond the scope of this article (although saying no is what we will ultimately have no choice but to do). That topic would fill half a dozen books at least, and other people say it better than I ever could.
But our purpose here, in this humble newsletter, is simply to entertain the dawning awareness that humanity, in fact, is not the hopelessly warlike tribe we’ve been led to assume we are.
That a world without war is such a shimmering, almost-present/always-present reality, that you can very nearly catch its possibility on your outstretched tongue like a snowflake.
Be in the innocence and wonder of it all.
Ok, so yeah, it’s definitely true that we still gots work to do.
Namely, that shadowy layer, which doesn’t disappear by itself. Individually and collectively, we need to pluck up the courage to turn the lights on and find out what, if anything, is lurking under our own bed. Because daddy can’t save us, now. Daddy (insert government official here) is likely one of the ones doing the poking.
We need to check for those monsters ourselves. That’s really the only way to find out whether or not these shadows actually have any power to make us do their fearful bidding.
When our fear monsters can’t be poked for somebody else’s profit, will we still allow war? When we touch into our true divine beingness, the essence of peace itself…will war still be an acceptable alternative, for any reason?
What do you think?
It is my firm conviction that a world without war is no pie in the sky.
But if we want to experience this as our tangible worldly reality, it’s 100% necessary that we, as a species, are able to conceive of No War as a possibility first. We need to claim the idea of it. Make space in our firmament for it.
Because if we’re all thoroughly convinced that an end to war is utterly impossible…then, well…it surely is.
We are living through the very times in which these questions of war are finally being answered, for each of us individually as well as collectively. For better and worse.
It’s not pretty, the distance between where we are now, and full resolution of these questions once and for all.
But resolve them we must. It’s gonna be interesting.
Thank you Carrie for this wonderful newsletter! This is the best poking we can do to each other.
I have been practicing saying NO, first I thought, how could this stop the war, but what I have realized, it’s stopping the war in me first, removing those fear factors and bringing peaceful facts in my mind.
The other day I was going about my day and I this thought “as human family we trust each other and we’re not here to kill each.”
It seemed kind of random thought, because I was not thinking anything about that.
And it explained a little more with the example:
“Like those fruits you get from far lands you trust those people and you eat them with a joy and appreciation”
We buy some delicious dried fruits from Greece and Turkey, (thanks to Etsy) now I feel more connected to them than just eating the fruits because I paid for them, but there’s a bond of affection between us.