Day 66: “We are doomed.”

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I have never really known war due to the place I was born in. It has always been some distant thing decades away and mostly also geographically away, as the major wars of humanity haven't been fought in this corner of the Earth. The last wars in this country were fought almost a hundred years ago, and the people who actually lived any of it are soon deceased.

Thus I have never really learned what it is to live war. Even though I haven't lived in outright prosperity, my life has been a sheltered haven of a somewhat peaceful childhood and endless escapism provided. I have never had to face war. It simply hasn't been within my experience of life.

This changed in September 2001 when the plane crashes on the World Trade Center were widely covered in the media. I was 12 years old then, and I remember coming home from school and finding my mother sitting in front of our TV in the living room, telling me to come see what they were showing – the footage of the towers collapsing. That was a moment that for me was a point of no return: even though the material wasn't the most tragic there is, but it was dramatic, concrete and real – real events – real consequences – no escaping any of it – for the first time I saw pictures of war I understood on some level. I'm wondering how my mother felt as she was watching the news. I could barely conceive any of it, but she had lived during times of war, she had heard of war, she had witnessed the signs of war in her parents' generation – what did she see as the towers collapsed in front of her? I've never asked her. I will now.

As a child I was really interested in history and curious about mankind and where we've come from, how we've become what we are, but the way history was taught at school quickly muffled all interest I had as all it focused on was the details which I could not comprehend without the big picture. Thus my overall knowledge of history has been rather poor. As I've been watching the documentary trilogy Power Principle my view on the history of war has broadened. I now have a better understanding of the situation we are currently living in and how we ended up here, and it is quite grave to realize that war is no longer (and has never been) decades or miles away – it is right here. We are living it. We are amidst the world conquest attempts of one superpower and the opposing threats from other such. I can no longer escape war – I am a part of it.

As I was watching the last minutes of the documentary I went into some state of despair, thinking: “We are doomed.” A state of hopelessness that would easily justify giving up – I'm kinda starting to see how the people who “give up on humanity” come to that conclusion. We do not know how things will end up, and it may just be that the ones working for a better future are doing it “in vain” - meaning that we will never manifest that heaven on Earth we so long for – and it is thus easy to believe it is meaningless to even try. So how do I know if what I'm trying to do here is any good? Should I, too, just lay back and “enjoy the show”?

I can't find any justifications for that kind of a refusal of one's responsibility. Even if it all appears to be “in vain”, how do I know if it really is or not? Even if my actions right now appear as futile, how do I know whether that perception is true or not? The thing is, I don't, and nobody does. None of us really know what's “worth it” and what's not.

It's not the end of the journey my focus should be on, but the journey itself – by allowing myself to think about the future and “how we all will end up” I project myself into the possible future and create scenarios and live as images instead of being HERE and realizing what is actually here at hand and what it is I can actually seize. It is not possible to know what is going to happen, because we are not there yet. Right now we are here. Someday we'll be there, and we'll face it as it comes.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to separate myself from war as a phenomenon that is happening here on Earth and affecting every single being and cell of this existence, as I had not learned what it is and didn't care/know to ask.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe war is something distant and apart from me, not realizing war affects everything that there is within this existence because every movement within the existence resonates within every part of this existence, and that thus I cannot be separate from it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize how I have participated in creating war by standing as the living heritage of all of mankind that has lived before me and thus living as the mind functions that create and sustain war - greed, self-interest, fear, abuse, hate – and all of their well-meaning positive counterparts – not realizing that as I live as them I accept and allow them to exist within this reality as I accept and allow them to exist within the only part of the reality I can control and only I am able to control, thus being the only one who can carry the responsibility of what happens within my internal universe.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize I have been surrounded by people who have lived through experiences of war either first-hand or second-hand and that I could have thus asked them about their experiences and expand my understanding of war.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe everything is OK with the world as I have believed my perception of it to describe the entire reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as I have learned more about war, to refuse the information by going into disbelief, because the thought of having to change my world view from a limited “positive” one into an expanded “negative” one felt overwhelming.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to assign war a value that is “bad”, therefore making it all the more difficult for myself to accept its existence and my responsibility of it, not realizing that war is neither good nor bad – it simply is.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that war is what the human kind at the moment expresses of itself – that war is humanity's self-expression – and that refusing to face war is to separate myself from humanity and to abdicate my responsibility of war as a part of the creator of war.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself, when and as the information about war has “sunken in” as I have stopped refusing it, to react to the world not being the place I believed/expected it to be with disappointment.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to think the world is “unfair” because war exists, not realizing the world simply manifests what we are living as, and that there is thus nothing fair or unfair: there's just who we are and the manifestation thereof.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to look for someone to blame for the “injustice” there is in the world, getting angry because there wasn't any single subject to blame and punish, or because they were getting away with it and not getting the punishment I saw to be “fair”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the suffering of another can be “paid off” with equal suffering of another, not realizing suffering only creates more and more suffering and that the cycle of revenge will go on for infinity unless we STOP.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel hopeless as I learned that war is complicated and cannot be solved easily, perceiving the task to end war to be “too much” and “impossible”, not realizing I was abdicating my responsibility to do what needs to be done to stop war, and that I was making interpretations based on the little amount of knowledge I had, not actually knowing what needs to be done to stop war.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive war to be something “more” than me, not realizing I am one and equal to war as it is a manifestation of the whole I am an equal part of.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive myself as “less” than war and thus justify not participating in stopping it, believing I am “unable” to do anything about war.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the first step towards stopping war is stopping my internal war.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel disbelief as I've learned I've got to change myself first in order to change the world, feeling like changing myself is a small and insignificant task – which I've now come to realize is not true at all – wanting to serve “the world” as something “more” than myself and separating myself from the whole by believing my process was “not important”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that changing myself is actually the only thing I can do, and that once I have changed myself the world around me will start to change.

I commit myself to study the history and methods of war in order to understand the process the human kind has gone through and to see what exactly we are now living as and why.

I commit myself to ask my parents about their experiences of war.

I commit myself to focus on my process as I now see, realize and understand it is what needs to be done right now so that I may carry my responsibility of the world as we have created it.

I commit myself to live as patience as I walk my process.