Worldwide Discussion:
HERE WE GO AGAIN — NOW IT’S UKRAINE

Here we go again. Yesterday it was Iraq, Iran, Libya, Egypt, Syria…today it is Ukraine.

Russian troops have moved into the Crimean Peninsula and ordered the army of Ukraine to lay down its arms.

Once more, one country has invaded another. Once more, peace moves further away. Once more, power over trumps power with the people.

Will it never end? Can it ever end? Is it simply the nature of human beings to live in constant conflict? Are we as a species simply incapable of coexisting harmoniously?

What is the answer to all of this? Is there an answer?

Yes. But we cannot see it if we refuse to look at the source of all that is going wrong.

The biggest difficulty in the world today is that we continue trying to solve our problems at every level except the level at which the problems exist.

We first try to solve our problems as if they were political problems, because we are used to using political pressure on this planet to get people to do what they don’t want to do.

We hold discussions, we write laws, we pass legislation and adopt resolutions in every local, national, regional, and global language and assembly we can think of to try to solve the problem with words—but it does not work. Whatever short-term solutions we may create evaporate very quickly, and the problems reemerge. They will not go away.

So we say, “Okay, these are not political problems and they cannot be solved with political means. They are economic problems.” And because we are used to using economic power on this planet to get people to do what they don’t want to do, we then try to solve the problems as if they were economic problems.

We throw money at them, or withhold money from them (as in the form of sanctions), seeking to solve the problems with cash. But it does not work. Whatever short-term solutions we may create evaporate very quickly, the problems reemerge. They will not go away.

And so we say, “Okay, these are not economic problems, and they cannot be solved by economic means. They must be military problems.” And because we are used to using military might on this planet to get people to do what they don’t want to do, we then try to solve the problems as if they were military problems.

We throw bullets at them and drop bombs on them, seeking to solve the problems with weapons. But it does not work. Whatever short-term solutions we may create evaporate very quickly, and the problems reemerge. They will not go away. And so, having run out of solutions, we declare: “These are not easy problems. No one expected that they could be fixed overnight. This is going to be a long, hard slog. Many lives will be lost in trying to solve these problems. But we are not going to give up. We are going to solve these problems if it kills us.” And we don’t even see the irony in our own statements.

After a while, however, even primitive beings of very little consciousness become tired of the killing and the dying of their own sons and daughters in battle and their own women and children and elderly in the line of fire. And so, after enough killing has been done with no solution in sight, they say it is time to call a truce and hold peace talks. And the cycle begins again…

We are back to the bargaining table, and back to politicking as a solution. And peace talks often include discussion of reparations and economic recovery. And so, we are back to money as a solution. And when these solutions fail to work in the long run, we are back to bombs again.

And on and on and on it goes, and on and on and on it has gone throughout human history. Only the names of the players have changed, but the game has not.

Only primitive cultures and primitive beings do this. I know that you have all heard the definition of insanity. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting to get a different result.

We can’t seem to change our ways, however, because we are very used to trying to force solutions in our world.

Yet solutions that are forced are never solutions at all. They are simply postponements.

I know that you have heard, a hundred times by now, the definition of insanity. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting to get a different result.

The great tragedy and the great sadness of humanity is that we are forever willing to settle for postponements in place of solutions.

Only primitive cultures and primitive beings do that. Highly evolved beings would never, ever settle for a ten-thousand-year postponement in solving their biggest problems. Here on this planet we’ve never really faced the largest problem of humanity head on. We refuse to. We pretend we don’t even know what it is. And so we do our endless dance all around it. And we continue, century after century, to solve the world’s problem at every level except the level at which the problem exists.

The problem facing humanity today is not a political problem, it is not an economic problem, and it is not a military problem. The problem facing humanity today is a spiritual problem, and it can only be solved by spiritual means.

The problem is rooted in our most fundamental beliefs about life, about each other, and about  the thing we call God.

Put simply, the problem with our basic beliefs is that we believe in Separation. We believe that all things are separate from other things, that all people are separate from other people, and that all humans are separate from God.

This is, and has been for millennia, our Cultural Story. It is a Story of Separation.

Our opportunity on the Earth today is to jointly author a brand new story about who we are and how it is with us. And most important, how it’s going to be.

We get to declare, at long last, as a single voice, the truth of our being: We are all One. And with that declaration as the foundation of our New Cultural Story, we can bring an end at last to Separation Theology.

Separation Theology is a theology that insists that we are “over here” and God is “over there.” Its doctrine tells us that God separated us from God as punishment for our sins, and that our job now is to get back to God, which is possible only if God will allow it, which God will do only if we obey God’s commands, follow God’s laws, and submit to God’s will. In short, we must do what God wants.

This Separation Theology has produced a Separation Cosmology (that is, a way of looking at all of life on this planet that includes separation as its basic principle), which, in turn, has produced a Separation Psychology (that is, a psychological way of looking at things, of holding life, that rests on a foundation of separation), which, in turn, has produced a Separation Sociology (that is, a way of socializing with each other that encourages us to act as separate beings serving our own separate interests), which, in the end, has produced a Separation Pathology (that is, pathological behaviors of self-destruction, producing suffering, conflict, violence, and death by our own hands).

Only when our Separation Theology is replaced by a Unity Theology will our pathology be healed. We must come to understand that all of life is One. This is your first step and it is mine. It is the jumping off point. It is the beginning of the end of how things now are. It is the start of a new creation, of a new tomorrow. It is the New Cultural Story.

Oneness is not a characteristic of life, life is a characteristic of Oneness.

Life is the expression of Oneness Itself. God is the expression of Life Itself. God and Life are One. You are a part of Life. You do not and cannot stand outside of it. Therefore you are a part of God. It is a circle. It cannot be broken.

What does all of this have to do with you?

Well, if you believe that humanity can and must change its Cultural story, from one of Separation to one of Oneness, you will do what you can to place that new Cultural Story on the ground.

First, you can make a firm commitment this day to demonstrate Oneness in every moment, by the way you move through Life.

You can choose to show that you are One with everyone and everything, just by the way to think and speak and act . . . this very day.

If you are consciously aware of what you are thinking, saying, and doing, you will relate to other people . . . the other person in your life, the other people in your family, the others on this planet in a different way today, seeing them, experiencing them, as part of yourself.

Now you might say, “That’s all very nice, but what difference will it make? It’s not going to change anything in Ukraine today.” And you’d be right. It’s not. But imagine what would happen in the long run if everyone reading this decided today to act in every moment as if We Are All One.

Each of you is going to touch other people before this week is out. And they, in turn, will touch other people. And those people will touch others.

Do you think this means nothing? I tell you, this is how the world works.

This is how politics work. This is how societies work. This is how religions work.

You have more power than you know. If you begin moving through the world a certain way today, the world could begin to change tomorrow.

The readership of this online newspaper could start a snowball rolling downhill. Yes it could. Believe it or not.

And then there is prayer. This, too, as you know . . . is very powerful. And so you can pray every day that the world will at last come to its senses, stop all this nonsense, and see . . . and live . . . the truth of our being.

And you can bring other people to this awareness. You can write Letters to the Editor, send messages to our society’s leaders, and, on a more personal level, you can read the book The Storm Before the Calm, published in full right here on this website. It lays out an powerful course of action that you can take right now to assist us all in re-writing our Cultural Story.

Then you can join the Evolution Revolution and begin, in your own living room, a grass roots movement designed to change the world.

To learn more about this, return to this newspaper’s Front Page and click on the Blue Box in the right hand column.

So there is something you can do — about your life, and about our world. Things do not have to be the way they seem inevitably to be.