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Our world is currently an extremely violent place. There are ongoing conflicts in up to 40 regions. Russia has been pummeling Ukraine for almost 3 years. Israel and Hamas are at war with too many innocent civilians murdered in both wars. In the United States, mass shootings have been on the rise, particularly in schools where innocent children have been killed and injured.
Western commentators have logged only 268 years of peace in a span of 3400 years. It is estimated that as many as 1.5 billion people have been killed in war. This number does not include those who have died, been injured, suffered poverty, or made homeless due to genocide, slavery, sexual assault, incest, autocratic dictatorships, and all forms of oppression based on class, religion, race, culture, sexual identity, and gender. Nor does it include the number of bystanders, family members and loved ones of those slain, and community members affected.
Over time, the negative effects of such conditions multiply and show up in myriad ways in individuals and societies: mental illness, addictions, health problems, abuse, and other dysfunction within families, communities, and nations.
The picture is indeed grim. And it seems to be getting worse in recent years. This is why it is critically important that we harness hope by engaging in sacred activism for peacemaking and ending violence.
Activism is often thought of as being a socio-political activity. Governments, non-profits, activists, and others seek to use—depending on their philosophy and approach—either weapons, the rule of law and civil society, peaceful protest, and/or social programs for ending violence and peacebuilding. All of this can be beneficial, but it is a slow drip and much of it is lost in the tidal wave of this self-perpetuating bloody stream. Sacred activism embraces the importance of such work (without the weapons and other modes of coercion and force, however subtle) while also standing on the truth that the solution is spiritual as much as it is material.
To understand what this means, it is important to recognize the root causes and conditions that have created this radical imbalance in human thought, feeling, and action. Any appearance of harm to others or harm to self, no matter how subtle or overt, individual or group, arises out of a transgenerational legacy of unhealed trauma that started eons ago with a separation from Unity Consciousness.
There are stories of a time long past on the planet when beings came here from a place of oneness to create a world and to experiment with existence in myriad forms in this denser spectrum of light. Yet, they did so while remaining connected into the oneness from which they emerged.
Ultimately, some got very drawn into the pleasures, sensations, and activities in the physical (represented by the apple in the story of Adam and Eve). Eventually, they fell into a consciousness of absolute separation—an illusion that they were here on the Earth alone and somehow special. Out of the disconnection with the greater and higher matrix of the light-filled Creation, fear then overtook them. Out of fear, arose attachment, greed, and even hatred.
Grasping for a sense of security in a physical world seemingly separate from the ultimate source of love-light and nourishment, they started to fight over resources to survive and to enslave others. Eventually, the original wound of separation from Unity Consciousness was forgotten, and a terrible reality unfolded filled with pain. Along with this came a belief that to grow and evolve, we must suffer.
Whether we believe this story as fact or as just an allegory, it points to a core truth—the solution to our problems with violence arises out of an aspect of consciousness first and foremost.
Violence in all its forms is a particular vibrational field within the holographic matrix of reality that is akin to a deer path in the forest—the way the ground gets grooved, and plants pushed away from repeated use. Humanity has for so long been plugged into this bloody stream that many of us have forgotten that there is an even more powerful vibrational field of peace.
For millennia, there have been and continue to be peoples and places without violence. Where there has been no war, no abuse, no neglect, poverty, and fear. Indeed, the recorded and remembered histories of some indigenous peoples and even western chroniclers who came to the Americas 500 years ago tell a very different story. They remind us that it is possible to evolve and grow through love and to live in Unity Consciousness. When we exist in that state, there is no lack or limitation. All that is needed arises in the field of experience. In truth, there is more than enough for everyone on this planet.
Sacred activism for peacemaking and ending violence embraces this message. But what does this mean in practice?
In the system of Awakened Heart Shamanism, we recognize that the first step is to develop radical self-reflection—a process in which we courageously enter the shadow dimension of our psyche to find the underlying roots of any imbalances leading us to be caught in cycles of pain and conflict within and outside of us. There, we will invariably find the causes and conditions of violence. Once identified, since this is a vibrational field, it is then necessary to use some form of energy healing to transmute the personal and ancestral wounds we carry. Sacred activism recognizes that as we heal ourselves, we contribute to healing the world.
But our work does not stop here.
A spiritual truth is that we are ultimately born to be of service. Being in service is an acknowledgement of the existence of interconnection. Even through breathing, we are in service: the carbon dioxide that we exhale supports the Plant and Tree People, even as the oxygen they expel feeds us. Everything is in sacred reciprocity. Thus, we must attend mindfully to this natural cycle of generosity through meditation, prayer, and ceremonies of earth, air, fire, and water. These tap into and expand the vibrational matrix of peace on the planet. They open the doorway to harnessing powerful energies of transformation and change for everyone.
There is yet more to do.
If we are called to the mission to peacemaking and ending violence, the next step is action in the world. Grounded in the deep and transformational energies of Awakened Heart Shamanism, we will begin to dream forth new solutions to our problems, along with hundreds of thousands of people with awakened hearts. We will find our communities of awakened heart activists whose mission is to change the destiny lines through engagement on every level—body, mind/emotions, soul, and spirit.
As we live in these times of great peril and promise, there is no time to lose.
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