Transcript

Welcome. This is Sananda. How do you resolve conflict? How do you create peace? Let me begin by saying that I will not be addressing any particular conflict, since I wish to speak of general principles that are applicable across a very wide range of conflict. The next thing to say is a reminder. At least I trust you find it a reminder, rather than as truly a new piece of information. It is very easy when you see suffering, turmoil, conflict in the world around you, and perhaps particularly when you yourself are not directly involved, to feel that you, standing as it were on the sidelines, are powerless to influence events.

1:11
And do understand, if this is not already clear to you, that you are never powerless. There are no circumstances whatsoever where you are powerless. This does not mean of course, that sometimes you may feel powerless. So when you experience those feelings or those thoughts, be kind to the part that is having those feelings, generating those thoughts or experiencing those thoughts coming in from elsewhere, and be reassuring. Help that part of you to let go of this false belief. All conflict played out in the outer world is a product of conflict within, suffering within.

2:15
You can have the impression when you’re human that you are a kind of discrete, that is to say separate, unit and of course having this individual human body reinforces that kind of idea or belief very strongly and directly. First of all, you are, as you almost certainly appreciate very far from immune from the experiences of others and this has a depth of truth about it that may not however be quite so apparent. In some respects you are human consciousness, one aspect of human consciousness, not separate from it, but to use that familiar analogy, a single drop of water within an ocean. You are, yes, that individual consciousness. You are a unique being. Your contribution to the Universe is unique, your presence is unique. But you’re also part of the ocean. And in this context, since we’re talking primarily about conflict of humans between humans, you are part of human consciousness.

3:44
So ultimately anyone anywhere on Planet Earth who is experiencing conflict, whether they’re finding that conflict within themselves or whether it is part of an outer acting out of conflict that they’re caught up in or in some way participants in, you’re going to feel that. The degree of feeling will vary very much from an individual to individual. For many, a degree of numbing, a kind of application of anaesthetic, is an important part of your sense of how you can survive in a world in which there’s a lot of suffering. Others may experience themselves as being more sensitive than is manageable for them and can lose a sense of an individual identity and so on. So a wide range of how this is experienced, but beneath the surface, whatever mode of response to that sensitivity to all human suffering is adopted, whether consciously or unconsciously, beneath the surface, deeper down is this sharing of experience.

5:11
So in that direction you are part of a larger consciousness. But then in the other direction, if we travel in that’d direction, there can be this sense that you are a complete being. Yep, you can agree you are connected with the rest of human consciousness, but there can still be this feeling of ‘I am this integrated unit, I have a kind of unified experience of being human’. But here too, that apparent truth is misleading. Again, if we come to you as a being, as a unit of consciousness, shall we say, you have that unique viewpoint, inevitably unique because no other being has the same experience, that is to say no other being is in the same point and time and space as you, not completely.

6:12
So there is a uniqueness there, but that uniqueness is, in terms of human experience, overlaid with a garment of energy, many layers of energy (as you might wear many layers of clothes), each of which gives you a sense of a history, a sense of purposes, a sense of attitudes, an idea of the kind of beliefs that you espouse, skill sets that you feel that you bring forward and do indeed bring forward, others in which you may recognise that you are less strong, areas that you wish to evolve. And all of these are, in a manner of speaking, a little bit like you before you enter this life, going around a supermarket with a shopping trolley and picking those things that you feel will be nutritious or interesting or challenging or unknown in some way to you and bringing those together to constitute the energy field that allows you to be this human being, living this life.

7:24
So in both directions, that is to say looking at your connections outwards and then looking inwards at the constitution of your experience of being human, what you find is that there are not necessarily conflicts, but there are differences. What this also means in actual experience and the truth of lived experience, and again this may not always be apparent, is that anytime you look within and find ways of making peace between different aspects of the being you find yourself to be, then that also, automatically actually, becomes available to all of human consciousness. So this is one example of why I can say you, you are never powerless – even if your sense is that you can have no direct influence on events unfolding in the world around you. Whatever you do within yourself to make greater peace within yourself is going to contribute to that situation in the world around you.

9:00
So far in the brief mention I’ve made of making peace between different aspects of yourself, the image that might come to mind is of something like a counsellor or a mediator. And indeed having that role in relationship to different strands of your own experience is one very useful way of making peace, but there’s a deeper way, deeper in the sense that it links all of the ways that you may discover to create inner peace and that really is to love unconditionally. If you’re going to bring healing to yourself, if you’re going to bring a greater experience of conflict being resolved, creating peace, finding harmony within, it’s going to start with (or sooner or later and preferably sooner you’re going to have to come to) as much unconditional love as you can muster. You can always grow in unconditional love. Never be hard on yourself if you’re not able to be in a state of 100% total unconditional love for every aspect of your being. You are, to use that familiar phrase, on a journey: be comfortable with that. But there is more also that I think is a value to point out to you about the making of peace.

10:32
First of all, peace itself can be seen as a somewhat strange commodity or state. It is the nature of your history as the group of societies to which you who are listening to these words belong that peace has often been experienced as, or thought of as, an ending of war or a leaving of war behind or an avoidance of war. In other words, it takes its definition from what it is not rather than from what it is. And part of my encouragement in speaking in this way with you is to encourage a continuing realisation that peace is powerful in its own right, in its own self. That peace is not a unitary state of energy. It’s not an absence of its opposite. It is a very wonderful state of being that, whilst unconditional love remains the primary doorway that will lead you to it, can be approached by many different paths. And so understand that there is something about peace or peacefulness that is more than, or other than even, the resolution of internal conflict. That is really valuable, but it’s not the end of the story or it’s not all that making peace is about.

12:19
Imagine a simple story here. Two friends going to a concert and on the way they have a little falling out, nothing much. She’s telling him about the difficult day she’s had. He’s coming back with suggestions about how she might make tomorrow easier. She’s thinking, ‘I just want someone to listen to me. I don’t want a load of good advice.’ He’s thinking, ‘I keep on giving my friend good advice. She never takes any notice.’ And so by the time they get to the concert, there’s a little bit of a falling out, a bit of an edge, a bit of a distance. The music starts, but neither of them is really hearing the music. There’s an internal churn. They’re going back over what he said, she said, going back over the feelings that got stirred up, going back over the history that never seems to move on. After a little while in this story I’m telling each of them settles a bit. The right hand of one reaches out to the left hand of the other. There’s a mutual little squeeze of the hands and recognition that peace is broken out, that maybe they’ve both had a bit of a tough day and they really don’t need to make it any worse by falling out with each other. Ah, relief, that’s great.

14:12
A conflict has been resolved and beautifully and not too difficult. But that’s not the end of it because now the conflict is resolved – they hear the music, the music that’s been playing all the while, but energy was taken them away from it, caught up in all of the turmoil. So take from this a broader truth. When you create peace within yourself, when you create peace between yourself and another, when you contribute to increasing peace in the world in which you live, which you share with all of humanity, that in itself is of huge value. The energy of peace is a very beautiful, very rich energy. It’s not a single thing, it’s very responsive. One of the characteristics of peace is a very high degree of responsiveness, because if you wish to develop peace in a world in which change is a precondition, being able to be nimble in your responsiveness, such a valuable skill and it enriches every time you find that nimbleness. You’re enriching the quality of peace. And you’re hearing the music.

15:40
Some of your ancestors had a belief in the music of the spheres. They said they thought that each planet has its own song; perhaps beyond that the stars have their own song. And they were right. It may not be a song that you hear with your physical ears, but the song is there. The Universe has a song and whilst you are caught up on Planet Earth in conflict, you miss the song of the Universe. That’s what you’re awakening to. The song of the Universe as you hear it more and more is beautiful beyond anything you can put into words, anything I can put into words for you.

16:36
Another way of talking about this is that when I talk about the song of the Universe, I’m also talking about alignment with your own source, your own truth, your own purpose. So it’s fulfilment as well. Returning to the image of the story of the concert, the two friends hearing the music: why is that music so beautiful? It takes them beyond themselves. It opens them to something larger, some truth that the composer and now the players are divining and sharing and bringing into the world. All of you do this every time you find peace within, you’re able to hear a bit more of the song of the Universe.

17:37
So making peace within yourself is always a value. And it’s a value because peace is valuable in its own right, but one, or perhaps ultimately the, reason why peace is valuable is that when there is peace, you can hear the Universe and that incomparably beautiful song. You’re moving more and more into this. For many of you before this lifetime is out, you’ll have direct experience that is meaningful to you of what I speak of, if indeed that is not already the case as it will be for some of you. And let me also add: be at peace with the speed of your journey. You don’t need to measure your progress, your rate of change, just be content that you are growing.

18:41
Now let’s turn a little bit to looking at conflict as it exists in the world around you. There are some key pointers that matter, that bear fruit, that are really useful. They’re in principle simple. In practice, of course, often very demanding to really embody. The first is non-judgment. When you look at a situation in the world where many are suffering, perhaps many people are dying, you may find within yourself because of your own history or own experiences, a degree of partisanship, that you feel if, even if, one side is not completely right, that one side is more right than the other. You can find it difficult not to take sides. Indeed, it can feel as if it is improper not to take sides, that you ought to take sides. (I’m going to say more about that in a moment.) But if you can, step back from judgement. Come to this foundation point, simply know every month is doing the best they can right now. The fact that you can see a better way is lovely for you. Good for you! But you also know that you can’t impose your better way on other people. Or if you try, it is highly likely to backfire, to cause more problems than it solves, but holding a version of a better way forward, that’s another contribution.

20:25
So it’s not again, as with peace, it’s not that it’s just peace in itself. It’s not just that it’s non-judgment in itself. It is that as you exercise non-judgment, it opens you up to your own higher vision. Your sense, ‘there is a better way; we can go this better way’, not insisting, simply offering, holding it in your consciousness, letting those energies spread out into the sea of which you are part, not pushing, trusting the flow. So if you do find that you are drawn more to one side in a conflict than the other, that you find within yourself highly critical thoughts perhaps of one side and fewer or none of the other, do your best to move to non-judgment. Don’t be hard if you can’t do it all at once. You know, be kind to yourself with this too.

21:25
But if there is that sense of partisanship, see if you can focus in on those you are most judgmental of, most critical of. Look into their hearts, find out what’s going on. It’s always the case that people who are acting in the world in ways that you and others see as cruel, it is always coming from a place of pain. You will always find pain inside. It has been very characteristic of human consciousness that if you feel pain inside (many of you have learned to rise above this to find other ways, many of you of course sometimes rise above this, sometimes you don’t – that’s okay, you’re human, you’re learning, you’re growing), but has it been characteristic of humans when they feel pain, that gets to a pitch where it really feels unbearable and within the being says, ‘What am I to do with this pain? You know, this is a poison. I have a poison in my system. What do I need to do? I need to get it out. I need to get it out so I can see what it is’. And they will act out the pain inside and inflict that pain on others as a way of coming to understand it ultimately. And so do what you can to show compassion to those who act in the ways that seem to you the cruellest or the most insane.

23:12
Don’t feel that you are obliged to create a cure, a healing here. Some are drawn to this, but never feel guilty or ashamed, if this is not the particular area you are drawn to; you have other things to do, there’s plenty to do. But if even momentarily you are drawn to look into the heart of someone who is causing pain, who is stirring up conflict in the world, begin by knowing that there is a pain within. Look at that pain, witness it with compassion. You don’t need to do more than that. Be compassionate. I should perhaps at this point, I think it is useful to do this, add that none of this precludes you from action. So, yes, I’m talking primarily about inner processes, but you are free to act in the world as you see fit. If you feel drawn to help a particular group, do so; do what you can to help in the outer world as well.

24:28
Often you will find (again this is a very common characteristic in the societies that you live in)dd that there’s considerable pressure actually to be far from a place of non-judgment and to step into a place of condemnation: I condemn this side, I condemn this person, this group of people. The idea is that by doing so, you show that you are on the right side, that you are one of the good guys rather than one of the bad guys. That your hat is a white one, not a black one. But I say, and I think for so many of you this is obvious, that condemnation, if you are on a journey towards greater oneness and you are from my perspective, condemnation is counterproductive, condemnation is creating divisions or reinforcing divisions. It’s the last thing you need. You’ve had plenty of those. It’s time to let them go. As I said, you are at the level of human consciousness, you are one and at the level of individual consciousness, your construct, the general sense of who you are as human beings that is shared within this group of societies is, if we may say so, a bit primitive. Recognise that you can see truly, actually you can see more truly, when you refrain from condemnation. Again, you may find that you feel that one side, one person is committing acts that are deeply distressing to you, but you don’t need to condemn the being.

26:46
If you consider that everyone who is creating mayhem or pain or suffering in the outer world is coming from a place of pain within themselves. And then if you look at what the pain is and come down the fundamental principles, it is that those different strands that exist within that individual are not very well knit together. There is conflict between them. There is separation and so you coming in, anyone coming in and saying ‘I condemn you’ is simply reinforcing the pain. It is saying to this person, ‘Not only are you separated within yourself, you are separated from me. I cast you out. You are nothing or less than nothing to me’. It’s not going to help.

27:44
If we look at a couple of mental habits that are rather strong again in the societies, there can be a sense that not only is it appropriate to condemn, but that if you don’t condemn, you are condoning. This is a fallacy. There’s no validity. Consider the range of responses that are available to you as a being and amplify that up to the size of a universe. If you refrain from condemning, is it really true that all the Universe can offer you, if you will not condemn, is the energy of condoning? Of course not. You’re not so narrow, not so two-dimensional a being. You are a rich being in experience and capability, in understanding and wisdom. There are so many other responses available to you than a black and white choice between condemn or condone.

29:09
Another pattern of thought that has been very strong for a long time and is on its way out (you are part of the change) is the belief that the end justifies the means. In other words, because your intention is good: I want to create peace; but in order to create peace, I have to kill my enemies. This is false. Learn to see each action of yours in two ways that compliment each other and help each other very much. First of all, that each action stands alone. If you’re saying to someone, ‘Well, I bombed this city out of existence because I needed to shorten the war. I needed to bring peace forward’, recognise that actually, really, when it comes down to it, you bombed the city because that was what you chose to do. The rest is just the justification, an invented mental activity without any necessary truth about it. If you wish to create peace, act peacefully, it’s that simple. It’s not easy necessarily, but the principle is very simple. So that’s one aspect when you look at this idea that the end justifies the means, but then as I say, there’s a second aspect that can be very helpful.

31:08
Where does this particular argument come from in the example I’m giving you here? An example that has happened many times: I destroyed the city in order to end the war. Again, have a look, not just into the heart now of the one who says this, put into the mind. You’re likely to find a whole forest of inherited ideas, some of them painful to the person who’s holding those ideas, some of them very painful indeed, some of them creating intense conflict. You may find that there is a history that goes back not just for this individual, but for his or her ancestors, his or her race and so on. There’s been a lot of suffering on Planet Earth and so have compassion for the one who uses this argument, who says, ‘Yes, I know it was a bad thing, but the purpose behind it was a good one’.

32:21
Look at the pain that they’re suffering, the mental conflict that is there, that is finding expression through this argument. And in your own life, do your best not to use that as a justification for anything that you do. Again, it doesn’t matter if you don’t always succeed. Simply do your best. Let each of your actions as far as you are able be generated solely by the experiences in that moment. You don’t need to bring your history into the present moment. Again, this is part of the way in which human consciousness is shifting. It’s been difficult for you to really be alive in the moment when you’ve imported so much baggage.

33:12
Sometimes it can leave you almost no room for manoeuvre, it can feel; that all you can do is react, not respond. The energy of peace, and now I’m broadening this term out, peace is big in itself, but let’s broaden it out to talk of unconditional love, of your inner light, of your compassion, of the richness of your understanding. Recognise that you express this into the world. It flows outwards from you. It’s quite often been the case, not for all of you listening to these words, but I would say for most and perhaps even for all to some degree within this lifetime, that you’ve held your light in, that your own history, the own baggage that you’ve brought into the present moment has taught you that you need to be careful, that bright lights draw attention and sometimes that attention may be not the kind of attention you want and so on.

34:34
Allow yourself and let your light be seen. Give yourself permission. You don’t need to know what to do or how to do it. Just give that permission and that light of peace, that light of unconditional love, your compassion, your wisdom, the richness of your experience, your willingness to be present, your willingness to respond rather than react, your release of ideas that lock people into repeating patterns of past pain: all of this is expressed outwards into the world. More and more of you are finding your connection with one another, not just on the inner planes, but also in the outer world. Quietly, by and large, you are opening into a stage where you create an informal, loving, responsive authority. It is not about rejecting the past, but about creating the world that exists in the vision that each one of you holds and in the visions that you contribute to. So that you are not pushing a past of conflict away, not trying to bury it. Instead, you are simply saying, ‘This that we’re creating is so much more interesting, much richer. Listen to the Universe. Listen to the song. How beautiful it is.’ And by degrees that lived experience of the inner vision becoming more and more manifest simply replaces, without struggle, the world of struggle.

Good. Thank you for listening. Go well.