In several occasions, I am caught in between being a person at peace, and one that turns internally violent – by this I mean non-physical violence but someone who creates violence through actions and speech driven by some sort of thought.
What exactly is this thought? While there are many interpretations that can get deep into spirituality or get into the weeds of human consciousness I will make it easier and define is as simply “those things you hear inside your mind.”
It’s not the fact that the thought has come to us that we should act violently or raise our voice or decide to pick up a gun I am concerned about – it’s the actual driver or instigator that is the root cause of this kind of violent thinking that I am more concerned about.
Why do we even receive the thought of acting violent in the first place?
One observation I have made that I am very guilty of is getting away with non-physical acts of violence against those that are the closest to me – my mom and dad. Like most children, verbally disagreeing with parents seems to be in all our genetic makeups.
The struggle has been one of frustration as I am simply caught between doing something that has shaped my own values which has been developed through the combination of values provided by my parents but also my rooted experiences in life, against those values of my parents and their rooted experiences in life.
The most interesting observation about the relationships with parents is that as you get older, the number of disagreements you have with your parents also increases – and in many cases you can get away with high-pitch verbal battles of disagreements.
Why do we get away with these battles? We can certainly play the “we are all different” card but there is something more to this that needs to be understood that we overlook that I mentioned earlier – and it centers around this area of our core values.
When we are born, we are given a genetic pool within ourselves that is a combination of the traits of our mother and father. Within these traits are buried a variety of things that will define some sprinkles of how we think, how we look, how we act, etc.
Again, these are sprinkles as in the womb we are experiencing the creation of ourselves to experience the outside world of life, but it is only when we are out of the womb that we start to really experience the existence of life as we see it with our own open eyes.
One thing that is clear is that we don’t have a choice of who we are born to. This is just the gift that is given to both parties as a win/win. We win as we are born to experience life and our parents win as they are given us to bring someone into life.
We are all born non-violent. By birth I don’t mean just your actual birth. I am talking about “the slate” that defined you prior to the actual creation of your being in the womb. This “creation of your being” is the root of your real self – it’s the most peaceful and non-violent part of yourself that you are yet to discover.
The biggest misconception is the idea that birth occurs when you come into this world as a baby. In my personal view its much earlier – it’s exists even before the sperm meets the egg in any couple – it’s the decision that you will be created that is the most important things to consider as the parents are simply the conduit for your existence and your existence just happens to be the environment given to you by your parents that you have to accept – you had no choice in this – it just happened.
Ok, so what does all this chatter have to do with the creation of violence? It’s this – the “slate” of non-violence as I mentioned earlier is foundational to all of us – we are all non-violent at the core and this is the reasons why we are alike.
It’s the combination of our genetic pool, the environment we are born into, and the circumstances placed in our life that shape our thoughts to drive us to act violently against each other – and this is a pointless, baseless, nonsensical way to experience life as violence leads to an increase in violence within yourself and not the world outside.
The true being that you are – the one at peace – is being covered up in multiple layers, such as the clothes you wear, that dissuade you from your true inner self. It’s these layers of clothes that start to take over how you think, how you act, how you behave.
These clothes are shaped by your genetic pool, the environment you are born into, and the circumstances placed in your life – and get this – you have no control over any of this.
So, what do you do when you don’t have control? You start to fight it as you want the control. You fight with your parents, your siblings, your friends, your colleagues, your neighbors, your countrymen – a battle that is really an illusion covered up by all the layer of clothes you are wearing.
What is it that we are really fighting? In my opinion – it’s the fight against our genes, our environment and the circumstances we have been gifted in our life, to realize our true self – our peaceful self – our peaceful inner voice.
Finding this peaceful inner voice is what many are trying to discover. We fight physically and violently against others thinking we can find it, we raise our voices to show our power, we run away from homes thinking this will solve relationships, we try to annihilate communities to show how our thinking is more superior to others.
Yet, we fail in all these endeavors. Why? It’s because our inner voice can’t be discovered with multiple layers of elements covering it up. These need to be removed to discover peace. As soon as you start to remove some of these layers that make up hatred you will discover that you don’t need to go far to even find this inner voice – it has been with you all along and it can be discovered.