As much as it looks as if we live in an increasingly divided and polarised world, division, polarisation and conflict can ONLY exist and be maintained within the mind.
The illusion of division between human beings is quite possibly the biggest trick in the book.
As much as it appears that humanity is increasingly divided, what we are witnessing today is not in fact division; what we are seeing and experiencing around the world is the human ebb and flow of thought, misunderstood and therefore acted upon – to the detriment of us all.
It takes an open, curious and willing person to see that suffering, violence and divisive policies are not the CAUSE of our global problems, but the SYMPTOMS of a single misunderstanding – the simple but chronic misunderstanding that the human experience is caused by external circumstances and other people, and not our own moment-to-moment thinking.
Only when we as individuals, and then collectively, see that division is an experience borne out of thought and not out of anything in the outside world, will we truly begin to make sense of the conflict and division that currently plagues our world. Only once we see that – but for thought – all humans are fundamentally equal and the same, can we even begin to make progress towards achieving peace and unity. If we want to make sense of conflict and restore peace, we need a fundamental shift in direction. It is simpler than we think.