Peace, dude

Synchronicity is sometimes inconvenient.
Yesterday I was out for a bike ride in a hailing thunderstorm. Doesn’t that sound like good times? No but really I was enjoying it, the rain was very refreshing and the thunder was very exciting and the hail didn’t really sting that much. Ali was with me, which was great, because we don’t get to ride together enough, but she was behind me and I was lost in my own thoughts.
I was pondering extreme pacifism. Weird, huh? This subject has been on my mind lately as a result of the relationship I am in. My xian believes in nonviolence to the point of refusing to defend oneself from attack, since harming another is wrong for any reason, even if they are going to kill you. At least from human attack. Apparently animals are a different story.
This kind of thinking gives me the shrieking willies. Refusal to preserve ones life and health from any attack, human, animal, bacterial etc. seems utterly wrong to me. However this is someone I respect a lot, and I have taken to pondering his opinions of things, which are different from my own in many ways, with a seriousness I generally would not give to such ideas.
So I am cruising along and asking myself questions about this. I have an easier time relating through emotional or spiritual violence, since I have experienced more of it. I have never been seriously physically injured. I was thinking about times when I have utilized nonviolent resistance instead of force in defending myself from these things. I have found that it is quite possible to deflect or neutralize harm altogether, or has been so far. In other words I can definitely see the validity of his position, but I still think I would rather KO a mugger than fall to his dirty blade, if push came to shove. That goes double for a rapist. Principles are all well and good, but no principle will ever make me hold still for that.
That being said, I do not advocate excessive force. I also do not advocate allowing anger to motivate action. Some of you reading this are aware that I am both a pretty aggressive person and have been trained in one of the more brutal martial arts, though I haven’t practiced in years. Some of you got to experience it firsthand and may even still bear the faint imprint of the mats apon your face. Hee hee. That, however, was all in good fun, and my natural response to any sense of physical threat is more defensive and meditative. My feeling is that that people have a responsibility to preserve their own well being, but also to maintain compassionate restraint, as well as a meditative consciousness of the effects of their actions. It is generally not necessary to permanently damage someone in order to disable their attack. Thus both members of the conflict are saved from excessive harm.
But he believes differently, as I said, in a way that is very challenging for me to deal with, emotionally as well as intellectually. Yet I know it is an important principle to him, and the question really is not whether I agree, (I don’t) but whether I can accept it.
These were the things I was considering as I zoomed through the hail and rain. During a thunderclap I glanced up at the sky and saw a sudden fluttering flash of white against the heavy grey clouds. It landed on the roof of a house up ahead and I stopped and stared at it in disbelief. There beneath a churning, angry sky rattled by thunder, soaking wet and pelted by hail serenely stood a pure white dove. A dove! I have never seen one before, it just looked like pictures I have seen of doves. A freaking dove though, you guys! I am all about the shamanic omens and crap so now what am I supposed to think? I mean come on, a dove? And I stood there watching it, and Ali stopped and we both just stared at this bird standing unperturbed by the storm, while lots of other birds flew by as fast as they could. I thought, "Why doesn’t it fly away? Why is it just standing there in the rain?"
The next thought was, "Why am I?"
The answer of course is Will.
Hah, you didn’t think I was going there did you?
Ok, so check it out. I have previously explained that I believe the inner spiritual will to be the clearest indication of Divine Will In a person’s life. It represents a person’s particular calling in the world and, unless they allow this to be suppressed, will form the larger part of their ethical system. It is not the same as id or ego desires, it is more like the totality of all desire, all willingness, ultimate realization and fulfillment of individual spiritual purpose.
The dove is the symbol of peace, right? Well what exactly is peace? It is more than simply the absence of violence; it is a thing in itself that exists independently of the concept of violence or negative emotional states. Peace is a state of harmony between ones inner and outer worlds. Fear, which leads to violence, comes from a sense of uncertainty of, and attachment to, outcome in the outer world and the effects of those changes on the inner. I think someone is trying to harm me, I fear deprivation, I fear I will suffer, lose myself, die. These fears rattle me up until I become as uncertain as the future. This is the place from which we make mistakes, from which it begins to look like a good idea to hurt someone. If I keep centered in my Will and act from that center I will remember that it never is a good idea to cause harm if it can be avoided. I can protect my own safety without compromising the respect I hold for life and personal autonomy, theirs or mine. I don’t feel that volunteering to accept pain and injury oneself is the correct response, as an extreme pacifist does, but I’m all about compromise and moderation.
The point is that there is a better way to do things. He has his way and I have mine and they both come from deeply held convictions at the center of our beings, which for us override petty emotional reactions. We act not by whim but by Will. This having been decided, uncertainty disappears, and we have peace. When we have certain knowledge that we are doing what is right, we have peace. We have inner stillness. Once the internal conflict is resolved, the external ones become much easier to handle. There is a state one can attain, and maintain, that makes it possible to go calmly amid the noise and haste, to stand defiant of hail and wind for the sake of something more important than that moments comfort, for the fulfillment of the Will, and that is peace.
Wisdom comes from strange sources sometimes. Did I also carry a message for the Dove? Perhaps. I hope so. Learning should move in both directions.
I told you guys before how my bike is my magic broomstick and we go on spirit journeys together all the time. This is what I mean. Like the walks I used to take with Nephilim late at night.
Later that day I saw a rainbow. A dove and then a rainbow, sheesh. I asked god, "Don’t you think you are laying it on a little thick?" and the rain kept sprinkling merrily like an amused twinkle in the eye of the sun.
Moments after this a stressful financial concern of mine miraculously resolved itself, along with some personal tension that had been building. Then I went out and was treated to the unexpected joy of a few hours with a person I had been missing all day, and then I went to a jam, sang songs I wrote, danced to wicked blues and made some excellent contacts, plus got free beer from the host who is an old friend of mine. He and I are going to jam next week, which I have wanted to do for ages.
My fast forward horoscope said it would be an awesome week. New moon in my sign today, we are only just getting started.
Ok fine, lay it on as thick as you want, that’s cool.
Peace, magic, miracles.
Synchronicity kicks ass, you guys.