Peace & War, Empower Love, and Honoring Self & Other are three channeling addressing the issue of war and the hoped for realization of peace on earth, and good will to all Life. Empowering love, and honoring self and other are the means to get there.

We all want peace, and everything in our power should be done to promote peace, and to use peaceful means to resolve conflicts. This channeling takes a look at some of the issues involved in creating peace on a personal and a global level.

PEACE & WAR

I am once again here with you on your sunshine planet, enjoying the beauty and radiance of enlivening energies.

You are thinking about, what view do I take, and what view does the hierarchy take on the current Iraq situation. War is never the desired solution. Nor is war the inevitable outcome of conflict and disharmony. Of course, we in the hierarchy, desire that which is alignment for the highest good of all. The questions becomes, What processes and steps are acceptable and could be taken or will be taken to accomplish said goals of peace, harmony, joy, abundance, and freedom for all?

Is a war an acceptable means to achieve that end, to overthrow a dictator who imposes his will upon others, and has brought destruction or is capable of bringing further destruction to others? Is war more acceptable in the name of peace, than it is in the name of conquering? Basically in the context of defense versus aggression.

The crystallization of war is unfortunate, is the last step in processes which have been going on for a great length of time. All the attempts to find other solutions: diplomatic, economic, incentives of one sort of or another, are steps of great value, and should continue to be used as first, second, and third steps (and many more steps) before the saber rattling and actual conflict. We all envision when war will not be used as a means of deterrent, or for rectifying and solving problems.

There are those who wield power in the name of their truth. As an example: President Bush is wielding his power in the name of making America safe and making the world safe from terrorism. It is a noble goal, is it not? The Palestinians and Israelis are using force for that which they believe is equally true. War is a means...suicide bombings are a means of protesting the poverty and suppression of the Palestine people. Israel is defending itself against the destruction aimed at the civilian population in its country.

In this light, we can say the course of war and such violence perpetrated one against the another is not solving the issues, or is it likely to. Both sides are locked into the very important dynamic relationship of desiring to be safe, and many deep feelings and emotions are involved. There is great sadness at the loss of loved ones - fear, revenge,and retaliation. An eye for eye. A sense of helplessness, of not knowing how to stop an aggressor. What prevents an aggressor from continuing these courses of destruction? How can one not be vulnerable to the aggressor when you seemingly have used every means available, negotiations, building walls, and isolation? And yet, the aggression and the killing and the warring continues.

It will take a quantum leap, to borrow from your physics. A leap that says, our aggression only begets more hostility, more death, and more suffering, and it is not a solution. The trick of course, is to get both sides to more or less simultaneously come to an agreement, and the realization that their warring is not solving their problems. For if the one lays downs their arms before the other, are they not exposing themselves to the onslaught of the other? A vulnerability which they are not willing or likely to risk, the giving up of their own lives for those who have caused them so much harm.

This is part of the dynamics that makes these situations so volatile and so difficult to come to terms with, and is enacted on many levels. On these national levels it is frightening when nation goes against nation, and can be devastating for many if war actually comes to pass. It is unfortunate that so many innocent people suffer because of the leadership of a country.

I am sorry to say that I do not have clear cut answers, in the sense of having a single answer or resolution for all this conflict. That is not to say, there is not a great deal of effort toward peaceful resolutions, both from your own world community and from those of us in the hierarchy. I think it would be fair to say that we are doing all that we can, in the ways that we can. Yet ultimately, the choices remain with humanity.

Let us do all that we can to promote peace, and to use non violent means to resolve conflicts. Indeed the day will come when man wars not. When? When enough have chosen so. That is not something I can predict. All prayers, thoughts, and actions which support peace are the steps each must take, and those steps do indeed create the path for peace and the eventual manifestation of peace upon earth.

Each must do what they can. There is no judgment intended here about what each does toward creating peace. On the personal level, as you work toward peace, there is what you would call owning your shadow. Realizing your own inner battle ground, your own inner conflicts. For indeed those conflicts are manifested outwardly, and those who you are in conflict with are mirroring that inner battle. They have accepted to show you that part of yourself by embodying it in themselves for the moment. As you own that projection and heal the source of it within yourself, individually and collectively, you will create peace. Now that gives us all plenty to do, does it not?

Each step that you take toward healing yourselves is a grand step. Obviously, there are many degrees involved here, from the little conflicts and bumps in your lives, to world catastrophes. Where individuals have great power, such as your world leaders, and are able to inflict harm, or lead a nation where it may not or does not wish to go, they are living out concepts on the collective and perhaps even archetypal levels for the world. In other words you are not just dealing with one level of conflict.

Such manifestations as this current situation in Iraq is a multiple layered phenomena. Yet, in many ways, the themes, whether they run through you own personality or they are embodied in the nations, can be remarkably similar. They can have the same root causes; one embodies the collective, and the other embodies your unique version. The collective, in this sense, is the amassment of many, or thousands, or millions of individuals, even though no two individuals would believe exactly the same thing.

The boundaries which bind humanity's thinking and perspectives need to be greatly expanded in order to understand the concepts and forces that are being acted out in such situations and on these multiple layers. That being said, the thought that you are sensing here is one of a collective nature. From America's perspective, how can such power come to one like Saddam who will dominate and cause suffering to others?

In the collective psyche of mankind, for those who have been victims and for those who have been oppressed, there is stored a sense of helplessness. Within that helplessness there is a plea for help, which they feel is not heard. Despair, suffering, and poverty are their lot. Within that unempowerment is a voice crying for empowerment. Crying for and desiring enough empowerment to end their tragic conditions. And there is a silent rage.

They see their oppressors as a monster, and indeed one who perpetrates violence against another has become a monster in many ways: cold hearted, rageful, and angry. (But the oppressor will see himself as righteous and powerful). However, the oppressor very well may have been the oppressed in a previous time. The oppressor's rage is the rage against being oppressed, and now in some ways he rages against his own victimness.

For once you have been a victim to that degree, there is probably a part of you that says I'll never live another life like that, and assures your psyche next time you will be in charge and in power. Then when you are in that place of power, you do not remember or see others in the same light...in the way you felt and experienced your own suffering.

Now this is a bit tricky here, because many in your world now have great compassion for those who are suffering. However, there may be a level at which you never wish to remember or experience suffering again. On a personal level your desire to never experience suffering again might express itself as a walling off toward your feelings and empathy as a way of protection. So there is a cold heartedness if you will toward those who are suffering.

If you are warrior, to some to degree or a great degree, you cannot see your opponent as a live human being. He must be objectified and seen no more than an object that you are blowing up...not real people with feelings, children, and wives. For then perhaps you become a murderer, and not a patriot. A fine line yes?

Returning to Saddam, perhaps you can understand how Saddam feels himself to be a benevolent leader, while simultaneously being perceived as a monster in eyes of others, if you can sense he feels he is liberating himself from being a victim...never to be a victim again to anyone.

Saddam is empowering himself. At the same time of course, he is suppressing others. He is both roles, as indeed we all have been both roles. There is the rage against being a victim, and there is the desire for empowerment. It is not wrong to desire empowerment in order to be freed from oppression.

Of course what has been lost in this polarity is the owning of the roles, and understanding the Oneness of all Life, and honoring others as life. In objectifying the hatred outward, each has become lost in a role, in their part.

I don't mean in any way to minimize the significance or suffering of anyone's life. That is ludicrous. One cannot loose perspective of the individual and their life when one is contemplating why these things happen, and what may be at the source of these world conflicts and your own inner-outer conflicts.

The balance is empowerment with respect for all life. Your own empowerment which does not violate another. If each were to hold that perspective, along with a deep healing within, it would end these conflicts.

Let us say three Oms together for peace, for healing, and for the manifestation of love.

Note: parenthesis are my added words

Edited channeling from January 2003

See Empowering Love for further throughts about the relationship between power and vulnerability, and the solution... empowering love.