All Equal_how new can we Ever be? [part 2/3]

May 21, 2010

Cont’d from How New Can *new* Ever Be?

Back to ‘where we were’ – almost literally: nothing in our world is truly *new* and not one of us is unique because there have always been athletes and healers and artists and homeless people, just as there have always been grandparents, teachers and musicians, and inventors as well as imposters, and fathers, mothers and politicians and actors and dictators, sisters and brothers. Scientists, murderers, do-gooders and entrepreneurs have always been rubbing shoulders with displaced people, people on the poverty line as well as people who live in the lap of luxury.

People who create things and people who destroy things and people who sell things, as well as people who fix and heal and give and people who take and people who think for others and people who don’t think at all – all of them have become all of us which is why patterned behaviour has been patterned since the Dawn of Time.

True to our mold, we do repeat the behaviors we have inherited from our karmic ancestors just as much as we are protective of the conditioned behaviors we have adopted in this lifetime. We are happy to let these define us. This is who I am. I know what I want. Take it or leave it, is a common battle cry among friends, life-partners, families and colleagues.

Karma had to be created soon after the first beings of light became being of flesh, bones and fluids to force them to amend in their lifetime what of their actions needed to be amended.

We are all in it together and our sense of separateness is based on an entirely very wrong premise.

Ever since these bygone days, our karmic DNA has been meted out to us – in each lifetime – so as to give us the opportunity to amend our deeds, past and present – with the living – though we do not recognize each other in our new *body-suits*.

The bottom line is that all of us have been pre-loved and pre-hated; top-dog at times, under-dog at others; victim and aggressor many times over and in many ways.

All of us alive today, without exception, are but genuine recycled goods with a heck of a lot of unfinished business that we unknowingly keep adding to.

Back to the topic of non-separation, during such dramatic moments as bush fires or tsunamis or earthquakes or mere accidents on the highway or feeling unwell while shopping – we do see non-separation being activated and accepted spontaneously and like, who is going to tell the stranger rushing in to help, “No, no! Go away! I don’t want CPR from you. Your skin’s not the right color. Your faith is different from mine and you’re way too skinny.”

Anyway, one of the thoughts I really understand and, daily, enjoy seeing printed on a huge poster in my classroom is one from Thich Nhat Hanh, the influential exiled Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, poet and peace activist who has published some hundred books:

“We often think of peace as the absence of war,” he wrote , “that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds- our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come. ”

That’s as long as we don’t curb the false sense of separateness in ourselves and in our children.

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