In view of the recent horrific tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, and the continuous murders in our inner cities, we have another opportunity to wake-up our minds to the suffering caused by violence.
Most of us ignore the warning signs of trouble in our lives. We anesthetize our minds with massive dosages of toxic beliefs to help us rationalize that our angry outbursts toward a loved one or stranger is just aberrant behavior. It's not something we need to work on, because no one was seriously injured.
For us to heal ourselves of violence, we must unlearn the beliefs and values that make us all potential perpetrators of violent acts. And this healing of our minds begins with our addressing the small, seemingly innocuous things we do in our everyday lives.
Some of things we do and say to others when we are driving on the freeways are warning signs that we need some help with healing our toxic beliefs and values. Although many of us believe we have mastered control of our violent tendencies, unfortunately we won't know the answer until we are confronted with certain situations.
In moments of great distress, when we feel powerless to handle our problems, violence is one of the options in our beliefs and values. Many of us are quick to point out what we would do if someone tried to attack our families. We wouldn't hesitate to kill them.
When it comes to killing people to protect ourselves and our families, we believe our actions are morally defensible. The same logic applies to lethal injections and similar forms of killing.
Meanwhile, those of us who have appointed ourselves as morally qualified to judge others' behavior have a tendency to forget our own addictions to violence. Our mindfulness toward our own actions disappear in the miasma of the little, innocuous trail of angry outbursts defining who we really are without our self-righteousness judgments.
Nearly everyday of our lives we seek some form of violence to satisfy our addiction. A good illustration of this seemingly innocuous violence is manifested in our behavior during a boxing match.
During a boxing match, we want our favorite boxer to knockout his opponent. The more he hits him, the more we jump up and cheer. Some of us even imagine ourselves doing this to someone who messes with us. The sight of bloody noses, lips, faces distorted by swelling and cuts make us feel good for days.
After years of inculcating toxic beliefs and values, our minds trick us into cherry-picking which violent acts we want to focus on. A good illustration of this is that there are thousands of people dying everyday from violent acts. We ignore most of them..
Nevertheless, when we see them on television, they become knowable. Unfortunately, most of us don't feel a deep angst over their deaths unless we know them or they died in our hometowns.
Meanwhile, there are steps we can take to overcome our inherent violent beliefs and values. First, we must go within our minds -- intuitive unconditioned consciousness -- for the answers. Second, we must trust ourselves enough to acknowledge that we were born into a violent, toxic world.
Third, we must accept and believe that we have the power to overcome what others taught us about ourselves and the use of violence And fourth, we must create a clear, nontoxic vision of ourselves with the power to overcome the illusions distorting our perceptions of the self and our relationship with others.
On our enlightenment journey, some of us gain the sagacity to know that we can evolve our minds to express a deeper potentiality for nonviolence than what we are currently doing. This awareness is the clarity we need to imagine a world without violence.
Now is the time for us to address our own violent beliefs and values.
"Therefore get wisdom; and with all thy getting get understanding."
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