Episode 017 – A New Perspective on The Israel-Hamas Conflict

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Note: This blog post serves as an accompaniment to the corresponding podcast episode of A Changed Mind, where we’ll distill down the core ideas of this week’s theme, along with additional distinctions and insights. If you haven’t listened to the episode yet, you can go here to do so.  Enjoy.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve heard about the tragic conflict that’s currently taking place between the people of Israel and the Hamas forces of Gaza.  Now, I’m not going to go into what happened, the history of this conflicted and contested region of the world, or what I think the powers that be “should” be doing in the wake of all of this violence, chaos, and terror.  

But I have been asked to give my thoughts on what we can do as individuals to support the resolution of this conflict, so I’m going to speak into how we can make use of the metaphysical and First Principle technologies we have access to in order to make sense of what’s going on – and hopefully bring about some change, starting by changing the way we can think about it.

New Consciousness Is REQUIRED To Solve The Problem

As Einstein famously said: no problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.  I believe that the conflicts we’re seeing in the Middle East right now give credence to that quote in the sense that we as humans cannot respond to our issues from a place of fear and anger and expect to accomplish anything except a perpetual cycle of more fear and more anger.  But that’s exactly the way civilizations have existed since the beginning of time.  We respond to violence with violence, war with war, destruction with destruction, and conflict with conflict.

But if we take a step back and look at our own lives as individuals, it’s much the same.  The way the human operating system works is that whatever we believe, we have thoughts only in alignment with those beliefs.  Those beliefs inform our emotions, which solidify into the actions we take, which create the outcomes in our lives.

When we believe money is hard to make, we have thoughts on a moment by moment basis that are in alignment with that belief.  Those thoughts activate electrical currents in the neural networks of our brains that send signals to our nervous system which we experience as emotions.  In this case, that would look something like stress, anxiety, and overwhelm about our finances and ability to pay our bills. 

Those emotions inform our actions, which prevent us from taking creative, inspired, and aligned actions to make more money, resulting in the experience of financial insecurity and scarcity in our current, lived reality.  That experience then reinforces the original belief, and the psycho-cybernetic loop continues.  In short = the belief is the cause, the outcome or experience is the effect.  This is true for our beliefs and experiences around money, health, relationships, and every important area of our lives.

With this understanding that our thoughts become things and our beliefs dictate our reality, if we want to change our experiences in life, we have to find a way to react differently to our experiences than the very chain of events that created it.  In other words, we must first determine what we don’t want in order to install a new cycle of beliefs, thoughts, and emotions, and actions that are aligned with our desires for our lives.

This is true for our own lives just as much as it is for our collective experience in our society and for humanity as a whole.  Everything that’s happening in the world right now – including in Israel and Palestine – is a materialization of what we’ve been holding in our own consciousness.  It’s physical making of that which has been held in our collective beliefs, thoughts, and emotions for generations upon generations.

As difficult as an undertaking as it is, it’s worth considering that the way to solve these complex global issues – like war – is the same way we’d create solutions to the problems in our own lives.  So in the case of the conflict between the people and government of Israel and the Hamas of Palestine, if Israel continues responding to the violence they’ve experienced from a place of anger, fear, and retaliation, they’re only going to perpetuate the cycle and history of violence and aggression that’s existed in that region for decades.

This is the fundamental nature of how reality works according to metaphysics and First Principles.  Yes, there is some irony to the fact that this is the region that gave birth to “original” metaphysicians like Christ and Muhammad, who paved the path for these new forms of consciousness to develop in humanity and preached the idea of turning the other cheek.  They understood that you cannot create something different from the same level of consciousness that created it long before Einstein said it.  Clearly religious interpretation and dogmas have skewed the principles they taught over time.

Our Role As Spiritual Warriors 

Is what’s happening in the Middle East right now horrific?  I don’t think anyone would argue otherwise, regardless of their religious beliefs, ethnicity, or national ties.  So yes, it requires an incredible amount of restraint in order to respond to the current wave of violence in the most conscious way possible.  The question becomes whether or not the “powers that be” and the populations in these regions at large are willing to express that level of restraint.

So what do we do? What can we do?  The first step is to pause.  Immediately reacting and acting out of emotion rarely serves the purpose we truly want.  We must allow ourselves to feel in times like these and allow our emotions to metabolize through our nervous systems – just like we would in difficult times in our individual lives.  It’s our role – our duty – as spiritual warriors and change-makers to metabolize the traumas of the past and transform our bound, primal energy into unbound, loving energy, like I’ve spoken about before.

This pause might be uncomfortable in the moment.  It’s easier to move into anger than it is to sit with grief, for sure.  It goes against our natural human tendencies to take a step back and give grace, space, and time to process our emotions.  But when we do, we create that space for new energy to form.  So we have to ask ourselves if there’s a way that we can respond in a more loving and compassionate way than how we would if we didn’t take the time and space to feel the discomfort.  With me so far?  I hope you’re seeing the correlation between our individual lives and these greater issues.

Becoming The Spokespeople For Intelligence

Now, I’m not saying I have the answers.  But if I were a person in a national leadership position, I wouldn’t treat this situation any differently than I would a friend or as a leader of my own organization.  I would apologize to the affected parties involved for the devastation they’ve experienced.  I would lend my support in the form of grace, space, and love – not necessarily power and military might – to make sure the issue was addressed in the most conscious, thought out way as possible.

The answer might very well be eradicating Hamas.  Do we do that one by one?  Going straight to the top?  I don’t know, and it’s okay not to know.  Either way, I believe that taking time to think things through makes sense.  I’d get together with a global coalition of other leaders and come up with a plan to prevent as much suffering and devastation of innocent lives as possible.  I’d press everyone involved to buy into Einstein’s – and Christ’s and Muhammad’s – teachings that we can’t solve these problems in the same level of consciousness that created them.  

What I know is that right now, we as individuals, our global leaders, and the communities and cultures who are both directly and indirectly affected by what’s going on right now all have the opportunity to elevate our responses above and beyond the emotions we’re experiencing in the moment.  Because if we react in the same ways as we’ve always done, we perpetuate the psycho-cybernetic loop of conflict and violence.

“Yes, And” Possibilities For Peace

I believe in “Yes, And” possibilities – yes to an appropriate level of retaliation and yes to making sure the innocent Palestinian population are supported and taken care of.  I see the opportunity to take time and really come up with an effective strategy to deal with Hamas, which could win over the hearts and minds of Palestinians who realize that Israel could have reacted with total annihilation of the entire region, but chose to operate with love and care of their neighbors.

Whatever the tactical response may be, I believe the approach is best served using spiritual technologies and viewing the issue through a metaphysical lens rather than with military technology alone and an eye for an eye approach.  As individuals, we have the opportunity to hold a vision for this conflict being resolved already and using the imaginative faculties of our minds to visualize a peaceful outcome.  

Personally, I hold a vision for street corners throughout Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria full of people enjoying themselves in peace and talking about anything other than what’s currently going on.  I hold a vision of collaboration and cooperation between these different peoples, cultures, and religions where everyone is working together and sharing their ideas.  These visions feel good to me, and these are the visions we need to hold.  

We can use these problems as a reflection to springboard into the vision we have for a desired solution – a peaceful, loving, compassionate solution.  We can maintain a level of awareness that there’s a massive trauma that’s wanting to be worked out right now.  Right now, arguably the only thing and the best thing we can do is to cast our attention towards a reality that exists right now of a full resolution and even more beautiful integration of these peoples, cultures, and religions living in peace and harmony.

Remember, anything that we hold in our minds – free from resistance – must find its way into material form and must become a reality.  It’s the law of the Universe.  There may be twists, turns, and challenges in the transition from the current state to the desired state, but the most important thing is to hold a vision for the changes we’d like to see – in our lives AND in the world.