What Is Greater Than Violence? You May Be Surprised

What Is Greater Than Violence? Being Nothingness, The Greatest of All

Every month the Year of Inquiry group starts in on a new topic.

Yesterday…we began to look at where we create stories, assumptions, warnings, or angry reaction to whole groups of people.

You know, THOSE kinds of people.

We had an awesome collection to kick off our investigation. Inquirers had stressful thoughts about social climbers, fundamentalists, drivers who text, luxury hotel owners, men in power, and violent gamers.

So many images, scenes and frightening groups. For some reason, I always think of Nazi’s or white supremacists as a very frightening group. The people who made Maria and the VonTrapp family walk over the alps on foot and leave everything behind.

Those violent people.

Horrible.

It’s true they should never be like that, it’s true they are frightening, it’s true they are dangerous and creepy.

How do you react when you believe they are so dangerous?

Running. Hiding. Angry. Careful. Anxious. Sleepless.

When they are close, I think about them all the time. When they are far away, I forget, then remember. I try to keep myself safe. I protect this body. I hide.

Even if something happened on TV or in the movies, even if something happened long ago in my own life….I feel anxious in the present moment as I remember the violence. I want to push it away, get it out of my head.

But who would you be without the belief that no one should ever be violent?

It doesn’t mean you suddenly are saying you love violence. No one usually does.

Only without the belief it shouldn’t happen?

I notice without that belief, I can turn a little more towards studying violence. Remembering a traumatic moment. Opening to the memory. Aware that it’s just a picture in my mind, it’s not happening right now.

Nothing is happening right now.

Without the belief that violence should never, ever happen, I can stop calling the energy “violence”. I notice a fountain of fire come forth, and then recede. I watch my own anger roar out, then dissolve away.

I feel compassion suddenly, for those who feel so violent, so trapped and blocked and stuck that they would feel violence is their only way.

Isn’t that how I have also operated in the past? Berating myself, cutting myself down, flogging myself mentally with insults and criticism? Saying mean things internally to the people I love the most, too? Cussing, spitting, pushing people away? Assuming the worst?

“Can I stop raping myself and others with abusive thinking? If not, I’m continuing in myself the very thing that I want to end in you. Sanity doesn’t suffer, ever. Can you eliminate war everywhere on earth? Through inquiry, you can begin to eliminate it for one human being: you.” ~ Byron Katie

Today, after inquiry with the sweet YOI group this morning, I felt a deep compassion to those fighter people with guns, weapons, hatred, anger.

My love went through the atmosphere saying “peace is here, peace is here.”

I could see a ball of light surrounding Hitler, other dictators, terrible war happening right now in the world, violence.

Notice how you feel when you believe in power and love all mixed together….not passivity….not ignorance….

….but real unconditional silent love and how it holds everything.

You feel somehow all is well, no matter what.

Something bigger than “you”.

“Among the great things which are to be found among us, the Being of Nothingness is the greatest.” ~ Leonardo da Vinci

Much love, Grace

 

What Got Me Was Nothing

This past weekend I reviewed a course I took thirty years ago. I actually took it two times, thirty years ago, six month apart.

The course was called est. Which is “to be” in French.

I loved that title. And that’s the punchline of the whole course. A focus on Being. Being who you really are, without stressful stories.

I was pretty sure I didn’t “get” it the first time, thirty years ago. I was pretty young, hardly an adult. Everyone else got it. But not me.

I wasn’t entirely sure I got it the second time either. But there were some really, really cool ideas presented.

The most important?

That life is meaningless and empty.

In a good way!

Kinda takes the whole heavy load of burden off a person around seeking the meaning of life.

Trouble is, I forgot, then remembered, then forgot, then remembered. I kept thinking my stories and what happened to me was real, important, alarming, or good.

Not long after est, I began to study the Course in Miracles and met with a group every week for a long time. I read everything I could on mystical experience, philosophers, visited ashrams and churches and places of worship, went to lectures.

It really was my only true interest. I was suffering, I wanted to stop. I was one big question mark, I wanted an answer.

Well…we all know where the search for answers goes. Ha! Nowhere! Surprise!

And yet, studying who you are, who you are right now, is an immense and incredible practice. One I love more than anything, and everything fits into this adventure, so nothing is left out.

It was fun, delicious and gentle to remember the beginning of my intense journey in understanding this life and this world, that began in my teens. (The class I took this weekend was called the Landmark Forum).

The great question….who would you be without that stressful story? Without that troubling idea? Without thinking, evaluation, managing, or analyzing it?

Glorious empty space. Without meaning.

“What got him was nothing and nothing’s exactly what anyone living (or somebody dead like even a poet) could hardly express. what i Mean is what knocked him over wasn’t (for instance) the knowing you’re whole…life is a Flop or even to Feel how everything (dreamed and hoped and prayed for months and weeks and days and years and nights and forever) is less than Nothing (which would have been something) what got him was nothing.” ~ ee cummings

Much love, Grace

P.S. Year of Inquiry starts soon.