awakening in a "developing" country

[kafaria]

well guys, its good to finally meet you. here is my dilemma. how does one handle mortal fear for loved ones? you see i live in an african country where the state of peace is never guaranteed. there is always a threat of war ( civil and other wise). more than that, there is always the threat from your own governmetn as well. i dont fear death for myself, i have been there and back, but for my family should a war errupt... how do i justify the death of anyone of my families, of my friends and country men... and if i die how do i justify my early demise without having fulfilled what i know to be my purpose in life? how does one handle the responsibility of subjective reality when the reality i percieve aint so thrilling? is it my responsibility that i witness such pain arround me constantly? and if i choose to live in that corner of myself that never dies and is never disturbed and took things as they come, does that make me a reckless person who ignored the signs and didnt not take proper measures to ensure the safety of myself and others? hummm heheeh its funny, as i write these qusetions to you, i know that the answer lies within me, i think i just better meditate. but it would be interesting to hear what you guys think about this
thanks

[Adam]

As I'm reading this, I want to cry out that no, it is not your responsibility. It is the result of the corruption and power hungry groups.

Unfortunately, I can't say that completely. Everybody is able to make a change in their community. Those changes, no matter how small, do add up. This means that, fortunately and unfortunately, everybody in the community has a responsibility to make these changes.

Based on my understanding, all destructive conflicts stem from fear. Fear may seem perfectly rational, but it causes people to behave irrationally. Fear comes from a lack of understanding, for example, if we do not understand fire, we have much to fear from it. Since we do understand it, we are able to harness its energy to cook our food, and we can distill that energy into electricity to power our technology. We don't need to fear what we understand.

One way to be responsible for your friends and family is to understand the corruption that brings the wars. I'm not saying that you should take part in it, but figure out what causes it, and work on figuring out how it really works. Once you understand it, you can work against it peacefully. If an army is busy gathering its own food and weapons, it is too busy to fight. Of course, it is very dangerous to deny armed men food when they demand it, but there has to be a way to weaken corruption, and it is usually as simple as not supporting it.

Jeff Lilly, the owner of DruidJournal.net, has recently posted two parts of a three part meditation that he does when he needs peace. The first part is to remove fear, the second, to fill his heart with love, and the third step is to seal it in. It may not bring peace to your entire country, but it may help you in finding your own personal peace. (
Jeff's Three Part Meditation for Peace )

[BlueCrane]

Get out, Kafaria. Get out. I know how you feel : 100 times worse than I do because I am a German in South Africa and not in one of our northern neighbour countries, but even here the African syndrome is creeping in and you cannot win at this stage. I am leaving for Europe after almost 23 years here in 2 weeks time, manifesting my destiny which I know is no longer here.

Maybe you know that yours is in your country - even then : get out. You can do something in exile, maybe come back. But your first responsibility is for yourself, then your family - and only then your fellow countrymen.

Unless you know your purpose in life to be a martyr, get out. You cannot make a difference in this world when you are dead, whether you fear death or not.

Get out - the meaning of life is joy, not fear. We are not here to sort out the world, we are here to sort out ourselves. Get out!

[kafaria]

thanks adam. its really helpfull what you wrote.
BLUECRANE:
were you born in S.A? but i know exacrly how you feel. and no, you are right, being a martyr is not my purpose. i know that. but what about balancing the "evil" arround me. you know positive to negative cancellation?(sp) what if i dont die but end up doing wonderful work? wouldnt i risk not having that experience? what do you think?
and if i get out? where to? i am an african with no other citezenship... go somewhere west and live a life of a refugee? a second citezenship is all i can have at best?
i dont know, what do you think?

[BlueCrane]

Any decision involves certain risks, Kafaria - your choices are determined by your preferences, and mine would almost certainly be different to yours.

All I know is that we have to take care of our own welfare before we help others take care of theirs. If doing wonderful work in your neighbourhood is more important to you than anything else, that's perfectly alright - it would only be so important to you if you really have what I call karmic reasons for doing it.

No, I was not born in SA so for me this is a going-home-of-sorts. We all have to follow our calling : I feel mine very strongly and I genuinely hope you won't have to agonize over yours too much.

Where to? I have lived here in SA for 23 years without citizenship and never missed it. I wouldn't wish the fate of a refugee to anyone, but may be you can explore opportunities that will come up as soon as you seriously consider going somewhere else.

Isn't there anything else you have ever wanted to do someplace else? Other than what you're doing now? What I am trying to say is that maybe, just maybe, you are driven from your country by circumstances for a good reason?

Just think about it - a lot of work can be done without an unbearable personal risk.

[kafaria]

you know its funny about this synchronisty thingie. as soon as you decide, much as you said about me having opportunities as soon as i seriously decide to leave the country, i started getting so much information on what i should do when i decided to seriously consider my options. so you know what, last night i sat down and wrote an mou with myself, and prepared an exit strategy. i laid out for myself under what circumstances i should consider exiting the country and how i would imagin performing such an activity. in that i also included thoughts and beliefs i should have that would maximise my chances of success. and u know what? i feel pretty oh so pretty and witty and niiiiiiicee... and i pity any gal who aint me tonigt... heheeh well i am saying i feel safe once more. and thanks to you, i now am reminded again to remind myself that when i decide the universe shall come to my aid.
so back to germany for you huh? how does it feel? are starting a "new" life or resuming an old one? what made you decide to leave S.A
p.s i really appreciate your reflections. it made me know that i am not the only one going thru these types of predicametns

[cedc]

Hello Kafaria, I am not even going to pretend to understand what you and Blue Crane are talking about. Even if I tried to imagine I am quite certain I would not come close to the reality you live in.
Stories like yours make me realise how easy it is for most of us in the West to talk about things like awakening and law of attraction etc when the worst thing that's likely to happen to us on any particular day is being stuck in peak hour traffic for a couple of hours and then patting ourselves on the back for managing to remain calm and centered throughout the whole thing.
How much more difficult must it be for you to believe that your reality is your responsibility, your creation then for some of us who will never experience the sort of worry and fear you face.
Sadly I cannot offer you any advice but I do wish you to know that your courage is inspiring, at least to me. I trust that you will find your own awakening and that all those who come in contact with you will be the richer for it.

[kafaria]

dear cedc,
thank you so much for your kind words. yet courage... that is something that i still have to work for. courage is to choose to be in the midst of choices... yet i feel compelled to do this. i dont feel like i have a choice. this is my purpose... what else would i be doing with my life?
i have lived in the west... thats scary to me! trust me cedc, you have a much harder time living a life of purpose because it is soooo easy to get lost in the west... to get caught up with traffic and bills and tv ofcourse. i have been there, and it takes much courage to fight when you are comfortable than when you are not. here everyday, everythings challenges you to pick it up as a purpose. but its funny, yes awakening and laws of attraction are applicable to me in this situation as much as it is for you there. its no easier for you than me and vise versa. thats the beauty of humanity. its a thin layer that separates me from you. when all is said and done, i believe we all fight for one thing... to make our lives count!- to believe that our presence here was worthwhile.

[cedc]

I like your response kafaria. Your experience has benefited you well. Some of the things you say though, seem misplaced. By that I mean that some of your thoughts seem at odds with each other. Why do you think we have to fight to make our lives count? How can a life, any life, not be worthwhile? For what it's worth, here are my thoughts.

There has always been much talk about finding one's purpose in life and people come up with all sorts of different purposes, all very righteous. This is all fine but looking for such purposes, regardless of the motivation, is objective not subjective. In a subjective reality there is only one purpose: to experience our own creation with full awareness. We can do this any way we wish, be it saving the world, finding a cure for cancer or getting drunk and frequenting brothels. In other words it's not what you do but how you do it. True success comes from how much awareness you bring to your life.

As for the law of attraction, that too stems from an objective point of view. From a subjective point of view it should be called the law of creation. The difference being this: the law of attraction has an undertone of attracting something from outside of yourself while the law of creation deals with creating something from within. The law of attraction allows it's followers to shed a little of the responsibility onto events occurring outside of themselves. The law of creation says that nothing can be without you so everything just is and everything is you. Not even so much as a thin layer separates me from you.

So what of awakening? What is it that we are seeking to wake from? Awakening, I dare say, has different interpretations. In my experience most people use the term to mean finding one's perceived life's purpose. In other words they want to wake from their perceived mundane lives. But there are others who see awakening as waking up from a dream. A realization comes to them that they are in fact the creator (and not the ego) of their life and that everything is exactly as it should be. At first it's just an academic understanding which helps build up their awareness and as their awareness grows their understanding deepens. Then they wake up and see reality for the game that it is. After awakening all things remain the same yet everything is different. At this point they choose to either stay in the game or leave it and at this point leaving is easy but to stay they need to retain some attachment to something (without attachments or desires, it is not possible to stay in the game).

Many people suffer because they feel their lives have been wasted or that they have not found their purpose. The reality is that no life is wasted and every life counts because all life and all things are created with intent (including the perceived suffering).

I feel I've babbled on for too long and I am not sure if any of this is useful to you. In any case I wish you well and as I said in my previous post I trust that you will reach your own awakening, there is no other alternative, we all get there sooner or later.

[kafaria]

hahaha... i was hoping you wouldnt catch me on those words. but you are right ofcourse. to fight and to measure worth are all objective understandings of my life. but i must thank you for the subjective undestanding of the law of attraction. i never have thought of it in terms of the law of creation. THAT MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE. and you know what, what you said about exiting the game... thats where i was a few years ago. i had to teach myself to be attached to something again, to desire something so i can live for it. why do i think its a fight? because every now and then i am hit with the realisation that "everything is as it should be" and so living life as always become soooo trivial. the fight for me is to not accept it as is and still want to change it. but that, even as i write is an oxymoron to me. it is thru being dissatisfied with your current situation that allows you to "desire" something different. but i havent tried it from the angle of " the law of creation". hummm... "to experience my creation with full awareness"... perhaps what i call trivial is me living life without creating what i want and not experiencing my creation in full awareness.
as for everyone being created with intent, i believe that... but if we are the creators then we intended ourselves here, so if we are conflicted about our intent then we are not achieving the intention we set for ourselves. i am still grappling to understand that. You see, thats where i see the fight- but if i am not wrong, you are saying that its not what you do but how you do it, and how you do it is with pure awareness. and thats all there is to it. your intention for creation could very well be to get drunk and die in a drunken brawl but so long as you do it in awareness that is it?
or is it to mean that living life fulfilling your subjective intention is real easy once you have really awakened- as in caled life for what it is? am i babbling? sorry. but i am really enjoying this.

[cedc]

Hi Kafaria,

The fact that everything is as it should be does not in any way trivialize life. On the contrary it makes it much more intense. When we accept that life is indeed as it should be, we no longer need to waste time worrying about it. Instead we can spend more time being fully aware of those things that are our creations. So what is full awareness? At a basic level it's about being focused on the task at hand. When you eat you are aware of the food, the texture, the taste etc, when you're washing dishes you are aware of the water and the detergent, the smell, the temperature, the light reflected in the bubbles. If you are listening to someone you give them your whole attention. You do not think about what you'll have for dinner tonight or wonder what this person would look like naked. With full attention you will not only hear the words but you will feel the intent, you will sense the emotion, you will know what the person is really trying to say almost as if you were inside the person's mind. I could go on but suffice to say that this sort of awareness will keep anyone fascinated for lifetimes because all sorts of new experiences that cannot be imagined unfold as awareness grows. And of course as awareness grows, understanding deepens and at some point creation will have been fully experienced and there may no longer be a need to stay in the game. I say "may" because you might choose to stay for another reason. Gotamo Shidharto (aka Bhudda) chose to stay a little longer to pass on what he had learned. Same thing for Jesus I dare say. And so called miracles are not so much miracles but direct application of the law of creation. If someone is blind you give them sight because you create sight in that person.

I must point out that leaving the game does not mean dying. Death is just another part of the game. Amongst other things it is a means of changing one's point of view in order to experience a new perspective. This is usually known as re-incarnation though this term implies too many things that are incorrect and so I prefer not to use it. When you leave the game, that's it, your whole creation is terminated. It simply stops existing. It's a bit like playing a game on a computer. When you finish the computer game you turn off the computer and the character you played as is instantly gone as is the world you played in. This brings me to another important point. As you grow it becomes important to understand the difference between the real you and the character you created to experience physical creation. The person posting on this forum is the character and the Being that experiences through that person is the creator. So the first step in leaving the game is for the character to get back in touch with the Being. So when you said "we are the creators" be sure you understand that it is not us as characters (egos) that are creators. Hopefully this will explain that we (the characters) are achieving the exact intention that we (the Beings) have set for us. So there is no conflict. Any conflict you (as the character) may be experiencing is just perspective and the experience of that conflict would be intended.

Lastly, what practical things can we do to "reconnect"? It is said that Trust, Love and Confidence is all we need with Love being the most powerful thing we can do. Trust refers to compassion. The modern day definition of compassion usually refers to suffering with or for another person. In fact compassion is best defined as trust in the healing abilities of the other person or of one's self. Confidence refers to confidence in the positive outcome of a situation. Lastly Love refers to unconditional love which means complete acceptance with no judgment.

I hope this all makes sense. I am most likely no further along the path than you are so this is as much of a learning opportunity to me as it may be to you. So allow me to extend my thanks to you for this chance to grow.

[kafaria]

hey cedc,
i just stopped by to let you know that i would be traveling in a couple of hrs for a week. i will read your post and reply as soon as i settle into my hotel.
talk to you soon

[BlueCrane]

Glad I could help, Kafaria - you're heading in the right direction now. Do you want to tell me in which country you live?

I am largely starting a new life, but keep a good client here in SA (I am a management consultant) - in my COMPASS blog post this morning you can read more details. I want to do more Life Coaching in future : I found that many of my Management Consulting jobs for small companies actually turned into Life Coaching sessions anyway, that's where most things seem to go wrong here in SA.

cedc, I am impressed with your comments and insights - especially the Law of Creation. I thought I was big on 'perspectives' but there are always innovative ones to consider, thanks.