War

and a different possibility

The News is full of horror—the endless war in Ukraine, and now the horrific attack on Israel followed by the brutal retaliation against Gaza—people on all sides suffering unimaginable pain, physically and emotionally.

Not only in the war zones, but in the minds of people all over the world who are watching, there are conflicting narratives, conflicting belief systems and versions of history, conflicting ideologies—so much conflict and misunderstanding, so much inability to really see people as they are, as vulnerable living beings, before we label and categorize them and fit them into an ideology. So many traumatized people on all sides unable to distinguish between living beings and ideas, between what is here now and what is remembered, imagined, believed or projected. So many humans driven by the smog of emotion-thought, the smog we all know so well.

We can see the immense suffering from the human perspective, which is certainly not to be denied, and as sensitive beings, we can feel the sorrow, but what if we were also able to see it as an impersonal movement of energy, like the ocean.

As you watch this very short video (less than a minute) from John Astin, imagine that this is the world situation :

John’s video offers a way of seeing all of our human drama as impersonal energy, like the continuous churning movement of the ocean—meaningless, thorough-going impermanence, seamless and indivisible, never holding still, without any enduring form—impersonal energy in motion. In watching the video, we seem to be looking at the sea, but in reality, we are the sea—there is no separation. This is life. Even the so-called ‘observing’ is a waving of the seamless ocean.

This nondual or holistic perspective is not about detachment—it’s not a way of tuning out, ignoring or denying the enormous pain and anguish—it’s a way of seeing it as a whole, recognizing that all our thoughts, emotions, beliefs, and actions are an inseparable movement of an unfathomable energy. Even what feels deeply personal—the grief, agony, rage and terror—are impersonal movements of indivisible, ever-changing energy (or unicity or no-thing-ness).

We suffer in part because we try to hold on, to grasp what is ungraspable, and because we try to solidify with our ideas what isn’t actually solid. We want permanence where there is none. But whenever there is a letting go or a relaxing of this contracted movement of grasping and imagining separation—whenever there is a felt-sense of dissolving into the flowing wholeness that we actually always already are and cannot not be, it may be discovered that we no longer need permanence. The only real ground is in groundlessness. The only real certainty is in the openness of not knowing.

There are many different ways of thinking about what is happening in Israel and Gaza and Ukraine (and in many other places). There are many different perspectives, and many of us are deeply identified with our particular perspective. We are deeply convinced it is right and true. We see it as we do because of our life experiences, and the information we have. Others with different life experiences and different information see it differently. Opposite views can feel life threatening, and we can all so easily misunderstand, misinterpret and distort the views that seem to threaten us. None of this is said to deny the real danger or the immense pain of being in a war zone (or watching it from a distance), but our human minds have a way of compounding the fear and the anger and everything else by how we think about it. We keep these endless wars alive by believing our thoughts while ignoring the living actuality.

This is another short video of John’s (just over 10 minutes) that speaks to this:

In the context of these wars, this message can be very challenging to hear. But notice the resistance to it, if there is resistance—notice how we tighten up against it, if we do, how we defend the solidity of what we think is happening, perhaps especially our pain and suffering and that of others with whom we identify. Again, this isn’t about denying human pain or in any way suggesting that we shouldn’t feel agonizing grief or rage or whatever else we might feel if our child is killed or our neighborhood destroyed—but imagine how it might change the whole situation if all of us really deeply got that what appears is never what we think it is.

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A personal note:

As I mentioned before, I’ll be offline at times during October because I’m replacing my computer and taking some time to be on a solitary retreat at home. So if I don’t always respond promptly to comments, questions or emails, or if my Substack is silent, that’s why.

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Love to all….