These are a collection of my thoughts, and concerns about taking the vow of non violence. I had posted in Deepak’s blog about "the vow" some qestions about taking this vow. Just what does that mean, and what will the cost be to those like myself who want to take it, but are concerned with the consqences, the dark side, the shadow side of taking the vow. All light casts a shadow!
Here are my comments in refernce to the comments I have copied and pasted from the others that did or did not take the vow.
Ulrike Hintz: [I do not think that taking the vow is harming you. I understand your worries but it seems to be driven by the "defending" point of view. Making the world a better place cannot be done by fighting no matter what honorable intention is behind fighting. You are asking if our society can exist in peace without the police. May be you can open up imagination to a society where nothing needs to be protected by the police because everybody lives in peace.
For your job: Protect yourself with light when you feel like entering the darkness. But let it shine and share it with whomever is in need.
Violence is - from my point of view - always triggered by massive needs and feelings of restrictions or not having enough or loosing something essential. Restricting those people even more only creates more violence because you are emphasizing these deficits.
May be this is why you chose this career - make a change! I would appreciate this very much!
Much love, Ulrike ]
Perhaps you are clouding my reasons for choosing this profession by your personal feeling of what you see police officers do in society. Your views are your views, and you are entitled to have them. Sadly I’m sure they are based on some experience you had or what you have seen and how others in a society view law enforcement as a whole. I completely agree there are individuals who have no business in the LEO profession. We are all human and have flaws no matter what profession. There are bad apples every where. However please be aware that your opinions you have of my motives are your projection. I felt this calling for a very long time, and I have put this career choice aside for a long time. I wanted to try a pursue other things a first. Ever since I can remember I was gifted above and beyond the average person as an artist. So much so that I went to very prestigious expensive school to get a degree and spent roughly ten years trying to make some form of a living for myself. With out getting into long drawn out history of failures at my art career pursuits, lets just say the universe has been telling something. "It ain’t gonna happen."
I do not intend to go about my LEO career with intent of exerting my power for dark purposes. Which is part of the reason why waited so long before making this choice. I will and do intend to restrict, stop those whom wish to express them selves in way that will cause pain and suffering to another. Especially the innocent. NO one has any right to freely express them selves by acting out violently on another person, or animal. When ones own shadow emerges to inflict harm another, checks and balances must be in place. Otherwise the shadow grows and this has been demonstrated over over again since man walked the earth. (i.e. Holocaust, Rwanda, Serbia & Darfur to a large scale) A victim of a brutal crime often leaves a residue of hurt that often is passed from the perpetrator to the victim, then the victim becomes the perpetrator. As with a child of sexual abuse. It also trends that way on the culture of society.
Yes there is truth that eye for eye, and violence begets violence have proven to continue the cycles war, hate, and suffering. But becoming extreme pacifist has never proven to rid the world of war, aggression, or hate. or VIOLENCE. Never. Look as recently as Tibet a few months ago.
Bill young: [I worked in law enforcement for over 30 years, and find that it would be impossible at this time for me to take such a vow, I have met people who are pure evil, I am sorry to say this so bluntly to such loving caring people, but there are people out there,who need to be dead! I wish it were possible, but someone has to be there to protect the innocents. Bill]
I hear you Bill I wish you could elaborate more or give examples why you feel the way you do. That way others understand why we choose this profession and witness some of the most darkest acts done by humans and there shadow. The very truth is we all have a shadow and we all have a choice on how we act. We must be aware of the shadow for it can influence our motives and actions even in the self proclaimed good peacekeepers. I have experienced the painful loss first hand of a good friend to a murder suicide. The bustard who took her life no doubt was a victim of his own pain and wished to express his pain with her and those of us who were close with her. She was gonna pay! and we all did.
I have bare witness to many physical violent acts from one person onto another. Most of them were altercations escalated by one persons ego verse another and could have been avoided if the either one made the right choice. For the most part your average bar fight or road rage incident as a civilian I keep away I do not get involved. However there have been certain situation where I had to act to stop the violence as happened in front of me. I’m very fortunate I did not need to resort to violence to end the violence, however I was fully prepared to stop the beating of women by engaging the attacker physically with force. I’m not your average size fellow, I have no doubt this person saw me coming and said "I better stop or else." I called the police and they did not arrive on scene for a good ten minutes, and anything could have happened during that time as chose to stand by her. He was arrested.
There are people who walk this earth whether they are all from the same source as the rest of us who’s mental health are so twisted either by chemical, drugs, upbringing, or culture who perceive the good and evil differently and we will never be able to change them for the better. We only have the power to change ourselves. We have people who actually believe stoning women is GODs will, and is the work of good. We have people who think the whole world revolves around them and have no ability to feel remorse or understand that robbing, raping, murdering is wrong. They don’t see themselves as evil, or what they are doing is wrong. How the hell are you going peacefully explain to a Sociopath about the vow of Non violence = One who is manipulative and conning to others. One who never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. One who appears to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. One who dominate and humiliate their victims. Are we all going to bury our heads in the sand, and pretend these individuals are not among us? Are they are just things we manifest through our thought so if we don’t think about them? They won’t exist or harm me? Are you kidding?
RGary. Cousineau: [ One extreme is every bit as bad as the other.Turning the other cheek to injustice is every bit as wrong as slapping faces because not doing what you can to stop it builds it's power. Turning the other cheek to evil is the moral equivalent of bending over and spreading your cheeks. You comfortable safe people to cowardly, lazy or stupid to fight injustice appropriately are going to someday get what you deserve when the unjust finish taking over the world. In a worst case scenario wouldn't any man in his right mind do what ever he could including violence, to stop his loved ones from being raped and murdered? Were all victims of genetic engineering through religion that's been responsible for breeding the evil greed and jealousy motivated predators that slap faces for thousands of years. The Sodom and Gomorra scam has been used for thousands of years to create the homophobia used to manipulate self betrayal which causes the self loathing necessary for breeding a man who will kill and maim people he don't know or hate for money. It's self betrayal, sexual preference has nothing to do with it although that's what the scam creator's want's you to think. Violence is caused by injustice! The answer to ending injustice is not turning the other cheek or trying to eliminate all the evil people because the very act of trying to, turns you into one of them. The answer is to stop breeding them. It's time to blow away the insanity of the Sodom and Gomorra scam!]
In short Gary I’m discovering I can not agree with you more about one extreme is just as evil as the other. Sitting back and passively watching evil do it’s worste is just as violent and evil. I do not follow or understand your issue with Sodum and Gomorra and how it relates, but I have no clue what Sodum and Gomorra is about. Anyway what you said is actually written about in a few paragraphs of Deepak Chopra’s book, The Book of Secrets. I hope my perception of what he writes does NOT skew his message. But it would appear he agrees with our view when he wrote in the chapter Evil is not our Enemy. Deepak Wrote this.
" There is the more subtle failure of passivity—standing by and letting evil have its way." he goes on to explain how Mahatma Gandhi told England to fight Nazism without arms and invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they wanted from their country. Give them all your possessions. Let them take your beautiful Island. You will give all these but not your soul or your minds." This is Gandhi using the spiritual principle of Ahimsa, the act of NON – Violence that happened to be successful for the British to grant freedom to india. Obviously Adolph Hitler was stopped through methods of force and arms. Would Gandhi method of worked? Well at the least I think we have allot fewer Jews around today if that approach had been implemented. Not to mention I feel the British belief philosophies where far different then that of Adolph Hitler who believed war was the father of all things. Deepak continues to write how one of the darkest times of Catholic Church was when it permitted the Jews to be killed under the name of Nazism within plain sight of the Vatican window.
Deepak acknowledges that spirituality has failed on countless occasions to deal with evil. Concluding from my own observations and life experiences I am understanding how this is very true. There is much to learn and understand on this chapter. For those of you who are thinking of, or took this Vow of Non Violence I strongly suggest you read it. Just what does such a Vow mean? I have read multiple postings by people that have VOWED to write off being angry? Cause anger is a natural human emotion that one should be ashamed of and that it is violent! I’m sorry this just complete nonsense. Let me tell you where anger goes when it is not expressed appropriately. Right into that shadow, where it festers and distorts and creeps into some disaese or some toxic symptom, both physically and mentally.
Krissy Saunders: [ R Gary, Ah, but you are wrong. Our minds and thoughts are what create our existence. If we have thoughts of peace, peace is created. If we have thoughts of violence, violence is created. It is that simple. It is defeated perspectives like yours and the 'eye for an eye' mentality that is creating our current reality. Violence begets violence. Whatever we put our focus and energy into...GROWS. Therefore, let's put our energy into peace. That is all Deepak is doing. There is a reason Deepak is THE DEEPAK CHOPRA and the President of the Alliance for Humanity...HE GETS IT. This is his life's dedication, and he has been writing about, and studying peace it seems for as long as he could formulate thought. Haven't you noticed that what we've done in the past i,e, war, violence, control, etc, has not helped? If we do what we've always done, we'll get what we've always gotten. Hence the state of our chaotic world. Just try this, and help us build the synergy of peace. Namaste, Krissy]
Ah Krissy but if you read anything that I’ve written above you will see that Gary is not wrong. I even quoted some of the very facts written by the one you call THE DEEPAK CHOPRA… from his Book of Secrets…and YES he gets it or he at least he had it. Our minds and our thoughts do create things, but when you start to over simplify the manifestations of life, to be that ,.. Think or acknowledge only peace and you will have only peace and you will be free of violence or evil. That my friend can have very disastrous consequences as acknowledged by others including THE DEEPAK. Extreme passivity has proven to be just as violent. Ignorance is not bliss my lady. The vow is a noble cause indeed but at what cost?
Krissy Saunders: [ Ah but Craig, death is a beautiful event so for you to wish that on all the "bad" people in the world, you are actually doing them a favor without realizing it. I understand what you are saying, however, you need to know everything is in Divine Order. We may not understand events, yet we still need to have faith everything is exactly as it should be as there are no mistakes. This is hard for people to grasp, yet it is true. Souls choose certain journeys for their own singular expansion, and also for the whole. This is what advances us as a collective. Without contrast, there isn't growth. Some souls choose to incarnate with Spina Bifida, and some to commit crimes or be victims as well. While this seems unrealistic to some, it is true. We shouldn't judge another's journey as they wrote the script and chose the experience via a sacred contract. Again, it is not up to us to judge, yet we still hold compassionate space with love in our hearts for those who have chosen the harder lessons, because they sacrificed for us and our advancement along with their own. Namaste, Krissy]
Death is a beautiful thing WOW! I mean WOW!!!! As it was quoted above I think it was Adolph Hitler that said "War is the father of all things." and it can be perceived to be very true. Like a phenix rising from the ash and flames. While it goes without saying we will all die or move on from this world. If a person is suffering and wants to be free from the pains of life it can be seen as a beautiful indeed. Yes to let go and be free. BUT! Could you imagine if the fellow the that shot my friend in the head as she pleaded on her knees for her life lived to say "Your Honor I killed her and I don’t understand what the big deal is, death is a beautiful thing. And well.. you know she chose this path anyway. I mean this is what she wanted." When we view it all from that angel. Your belief concept of a peaceful passive universe turns my stomach violently! Isn’t ironic I feel RAGE when you say your way is the true way. I think you are missing the mark. THE DEEPAK has explained The divine is within! It is NOT this entity that cast judgement on who shall live and who shall die or what plan it has for all our separate souls. I’ve understand this perception or belief about a one conscious choosing to seperate into seperate souls. But choosing their path to suffer? and at the will of some other’s ego? If we all should subscribe to this belief and death is so beautiful why decide to stay in such chaotic world? Why did you or we chose this? What is the purpose? The answer, for our souls to evolve is a cop out answer. If you believe ultimate passivity and total acceptance of life as is. Why strive for peace in the first place, why do anything in your life? why do you want live? If one doesn’t know the answers to these perplexing questions, I don’t think it’s right for anyone to tell the other they are wrong. Your hypothetical guess it’s just a theory, and not a very plausible one in my opinion.
Look up the blog question I sent to Deepak a month ago titled Who’s to Blame. Not even THE DEEPAK could give me the answers to the similar questions I’ve just described to you. Though I do respect and I’m grateful he answered.
I'm pretty new and ignorant about BLOGs.
I Just found these replies to what I wrote about before- just now and didn't know they were here.
Sorry for the delay in responding.
I believe we're all victims of genetic engineering through the three homophobic bassed religions Judaism, Christianity and Islam that use the same Sodom and Gomorra scam to create the self betrayal necessary to breed unnatural greed and jealousy motivated people who will kill and maim people they don't know or hate, who pose no threat to their survival for money.
These are the people who keep evil rulers in power and that invade other countries unjustly.
I just found this blog today, so I too, apologize for not responding sooner.
I disagree with you wholeheartedly on both points. But isn't that the beauty? How do we really know what the truth is? And knowing we create our lives, all of our truths are different anyway. And isn't it all semantics? I said someone is "wrong" and then you tell me my beliefs aren't plausible. Doesn't that mean the same thing? I am a direct person and don't play the semantics game.
Is 2+2 four? If someone came back and said no it is five. Would that not be the wrong answer? I didn't invent the law of attraction. It just is.
Deepak isn't all knowing. I've found more answers within myself and also from real gurus such as Paramhansa Yogananda in his book "Autobiography of a Yogi". In it he actually discusses what I discuss. I just read this last month. Also read his book about incarnation and karma. Great books. So many authors discuss these same topics and have come to the same conclusions as myself. One is "Conv with God" book 2. He describes what I talk about regarding death and how everything is exactly the way it should be. We choose what we are to learn before we incarnate. I'd already come to this "knowing" before I read both of these books and others, but they also reinforce that knowing. Another one is the great Sri Sri Ravi Shankar who started the Art of Living Foundation. He teaches to have compassion for murderers in prison because they have chosen one of the hardest incarnations for the benefit of the whole. Another book "Radical Forgiveness" touches upon this. I could go on and on but I won't
We must not judge anothers life as that is their chosen path for the benefit of themselves and also you and I.
By understanding that we choose our events and experiences doesn't by any means say "Well this is what he/she chose so I am not going to intervene" when someone is being attacked in front of you or to not react when there are starving children. What it does do is teach you not to judge as we don't know the whole picture. We can react with love and compassion as a human. I do. This "knowing" doesn't mean I look the other way. I never do that. My life is to serve. It just helps to understand somewhat, and that everything is in Divine Order and exactly the way it is meant to be. We need to walk in faith and have trust in God/universe/source/creator that everything makes sense on some level.
Also, when we put our energy into violence, violence is created. If we thought of beauty, beauty is what we'd create. The opposite of passivity is aggression. If we are not moving forward, then we are moving backward. Therefore, we are either progressing or regressing. Why would we choose force when that is what we have done and hasn't worked? That is the definition of insanity to continue to do the same thing over and over and expect a different result. If we do what we've always done, we will get what we've always gotten. There was a test in Washington DC when tens of thousands of people did a peace sit in over a weekend and the crime level dropped by more than 50%. This is proven to work on this small scale, just think what it would do with 100 million people. Amazing.
In peace,
Krissy
Many Many Many people like you or, I or even Deepak feel the path they take toward enlightenment……, is the correct way of understanding.
Many Many Many people like you or, I or even Deepak feel the path they take toward enlightenment……, lessons or awareness through teachers and books is the gospel, or the truth, or the answer to ultimate of questions about life. and it's purpose. I would have to say if we have a shred of enlightenment we would then be fully aware there is more then on path to feel this way.
Perhaps the real answer a ZaZen monk once told me is "I know nothing" meaning no one knows or ever will.
Many profess to have a moving experience that touches the soul. It feels so powerful how could any other way be plausible, or correct. Do Muslim fundamentalist feel this soul moving experience, a full conscience awareness? I dare you tell one they don't! Like wise to the extreme right wing evangelical conservative. Though they operate at total oposite ends of the spectrum they mirror each other and are in fact alike in many many ways.
So you can stick to the belief regarding death and how everything is exactly the way it should be. I believe that isn't plausible because if everyone felt this was all perfect and the way it was meant to be, then nothing would get done! Nothing would be created or corrected, and perhaps life it self would not exist. How does one create with out a motive? or discontent? life appears to only exist in this divine chaos.
You say "We choose what we are to learn before we incarnate." This has no logic if we supposedly come from a divine source of one that already knows everything. Once again if everything is happening the way it should be, then what is it there to learn other then just that?
You mention 2+2 = 5. Sure! if the word Five is now understood by everyone to represent 1 object,1 object,1 object,1 object, now = the word Five instead of the word Four. This universe we exist in does appear to have some fixed rules. You mention laws of attraction, however you only appear to favor the term like and like attract like. Example = violence gets you violence.
The law of resonance = If an object vibrates at a certain rate of vibration, everything in its vicinity that has the same vibration as a dormant possibility will start vibrating at that frequency. This law applies to everything, from subatomic particles to cosmic proportion
However, ancient Greeks knew from magnetic interactions that "opposites attract" and "likes repel". This factor is modeled essentially via Coulomb's law. Everything in our physical universe his held together by a balance of it's opposite. Don't believe me then take a closer look at the atom. I believe there is both resonance and polarities in our universe.
Like it or not we live in reality of duality. Any serious changes for the better in our physical state of existence must have awareness of this. Perhaps our lesson is to accept this. Nothing can exists without it's opposite. So I can only wonder about the light you speak about regarding the Washington DC experiment. I wonder where the shadow emerged in some other part of world? Since this Vow of peace has been initiated a months ago. I've watched our financial infrastructure collapse, terror in Mumbi, and now another war in Gaza. Stronger the light the stronger the shadow. Deepak has mentioned we all have a shadow, and sometimes I notice the good we try to do in world, has it's opposite inherited within it. Even with in the self proclaimed peace keepers the truth is we are one and the same from the source. I'll note the fact we simply disagree, and that we mirror each other perspectives.