“Another boat with Refugees found capsized, 55 dead, many of them small children”. (News Headlines)
As I walked on one of the treadmills at my local gym today, focusing on my own body – how it felt, how I was breathing, making sure I was connected to myself – I had quite a realisation.
I have observed that there is a lot of fuss about refugees at the moment – in the media, on political agendas, basically everywhere you look. No big realisation perhaps, but this realisation came when I pondered upon the reception they are given; how we actually meet them?
There is this huge ‘problem’ (as some people are putting it) called refugees. We call them a problem before we even meet them. They flee from war, famine and many other forms of abuse. Many are already broken, sick, injured, or all of these. Many have been abused before, during and even after their plight: some raped and beaten, some have seen loved ones murdered, or drowned, and they have risked their lives (some many times over) to escape their tortured existence. They arrive most often in the West and are invariably subjected to hate, discrimination and further ‘mental’ torture when they are already in a state of total desperation.
It’s as though they are not humans, they are something else – a burden on us, a nuisance, a plague of unwanted debris – and not our responsibility. And we are told by politicians and other authorities that they come here and cause problems, they have no money so we have to support them, they are lazy, they are criminals, all tarred with the same brush; we are even told that many of them are supposedly ‘undercover terrorists’ that will try to kill us in the years to come.
And this is not a question of politics, e.g. of political parties saying “Yes” to 5000 more refugees when they know there is an election on the horizon, or saying “No” to the same question to catch the other end of the vote.
On considering this further I wondered – have we forgotten that we are all the same? And that despite our circumstance, no one person is better than another.
And I also wondered why we feel this way about refugees … particularly as not too many generations ago many of our families were refugees in one form or another.
We do not own this planet, though many think they do. We are all one global community so anything that happens on this planet is for us all to consider. We are all custodians of this planet – and this crisis of refugees is on our watch.
What if rather than the question “What should we do with them?” or “How can we send them back?” we might consider –
“What is truly going on here that in our so called modern age (with all the technology and infrastructure that we have) we have ‘refugees’?”
Surely with all the technological advances etc., human atrocities like refugees should be long since extinct?
How then can we work together as a global community to reframe this issue – more so as to offer the true support that is needed? And why is it that this problem is worsening by the day and yet many of us are watching as bystanders? Or seeing the harrowing pictures on the news yet are not feeling to speak up or act in some way?
I’m not raising this here so that we necessarily each drive down to our nearest port and collect and house every refugee (though that is an option), but so that we take a step back and look more deeply at what is going on. And if we do take a step back and ponder, we may just realise there are many ways to help; individually, as groups, organisations and governments, and that even the smallest things can move mountains as our collective creativity knows no bounds when we open up our hearts to these societal atrocities.
If we treated this as a community issue and worked on this together we might consider many options – it could be just by making one meal for one refugee or it could be taking a family into your home and treating them as your own family (as here on earth in truth we are just one big family). Or people of great wealth, companies, institutions, governments, with many homes or properties or resources, could provide “homes” (not just shelter) for several or many families. Every drop, from the tiniest kind word uttered from a place of love to the grandest action, will help the world become a better place for us all to live in, together.
If we stop to realise that together as a worldwide brotherhood we could act to make changes together, to meet these fellow equal human beings with compassion, with love, honesty and respect instead of the way we treat them now, perhaps they would no longer be the ‘problem’ we all fear.
What if the ‘refugees’ became an equal part of our society, as they all truly deserve to be, no longer mirroring the hate and mistrust we project onto them? And in this they could start to feel ‘safe’ again?
There have been refugees in society for many lifetimes. It is obvious here that the issue is not going away, but worsening, and that we haven’t as yet got to the root of the issue nor to the truth of a response.
Isn’t it time for us to consider this more deeply?
By Christopher Murphy, Kindergarten Assistant and Universal Medicine student, Drøbak, Norway
Further Reading:
Corporate Social Responsibility – The State of Our Working World
What’s right with this World?
A True Role Model: Universal Medicine = Universal Responsibility
966 Comments
The wealth and stability of our society is based on our ability to live with each other for the benefit of all.
If we treat refugees like they are a problem we are morally destitute, if we treat everyone like they are equal we are prosperous.
“The wealth and stability of our society is based on our ability to live with each other for the benefit of all.” Wow Bernard that is absolute gold!
The world and people on it is a fluid place. Universal Medicine is an example of this. Are there any continents that do not have, be one in some cases a student of UM? In this small sample of the 7 billion of us, who is not an immigrant from somewhere in our past. After all we started from the first continent Pangeea!
I love what you have shared here Christopher. I have lived all around the world and have been invited and welcomed in no matter where I am from or what colour my skin is and I would hope that everyone else is treated in that same way. My feeling is we need to treat the refugees as we would our brothers or sisters.
We are all the same, all sharing the same planet it seems crazy that we are divided by borders and nationalities.
Rosie, it does seem bizarre that we all share the same planet and yet we have boarders and nationalities that separate us and keep us entrenched in this separation.
I completely agree Rosie. We are all sharing this planet, and are all equal. Since when do borders matter more than brotherhood?
Christopher, this so needs to be brought up and discussed in our lives. The down right racism and fear that exists in most people around refugees is horrible to feel. It is also very raw. Sometimes I feel that this is because as you say, many of us were refugees a generation or two ago and the feeling of loss and the unknown is still held deeply in our bodies. This engenders the fear that if too many more come into our countries that our lives may again be in threat. There is much that we have to crack through in our society, with bringing to the fore that refugees are people just like you and me and today they are in need of our support and care. And this can only begin, by discussing the reality openly and with care for all concerned.
Thank you Christopher for starting this conversation. “We are all one global community so anything that happens on this planet is for us all to consider.” Love is the missing link and until love is not missing then humanity will have crises. We are all accountable, all equal and all deserving of respect and dignity.
It’s true Christopher that “there have been refugees in society for many lifetimes.” The situation has escalated with the world having many, many war torn countries – and far larger populations. Atrocities have become sophisticated and we have made it easier to affect more people with one horrific act. Fear and suspicion increase as our coffers dwindle, turning the world in on itself in self-protect mode. Yet “What if the ‘refugees’ became an equal part of our society, as they all truly deserve to be, no longer mirroring the hate and mistrust we project onto them?” Knowing that we are all equals in essence, and accepting each other as this, will rebuild trust and understanding – to the point that makes war impossible.
This really exposes the madness of the human psyche. Really, after all we have been through in the history of mankind, there are still wars, countries putting the highest priorities in defense (= investing in weaponry), people killing each other, and treating each other with mistrust and disrespect, or ignoring as if it’s someone else’s problem – surely we can do so much better than this?
Christopher this is an important article and sharing with such love and understanding for us all to share. Thank you for bringing the clarity and highlighting the true facts that we don’t want to see and avoid doing anything about hence condoning it all. The world refugee situation deserves a true brotherhood approach and understanding to make the changes needed and honour the oneness of us all.
I agree with you here Tricia when we don’t want to see something we are in effect condoning it. What Christopher has written is amazingly clear and common sense.
We are all the same on this one planet.
This blog calls everyone up and out, to work together in full responsibility for the parts we all play in this global atrocity.
I agree Shami, it asks us all to step up, let go of all judgment and live true brotherhood.
Christopher, yes this is a much needed conversation to have. But I guess most of us feel ‘what can I do?’ Having asked myself this question it seems to me that the first thing I have to do is to ask myself – ‘do I feel rejection?’ Could this be the ‘ice-breaker’ to refugees? Could it be that we don’t want to face our own rejection – that we rejected our Divine self and created a self in separation? It seems to me that refugees are rejected by their country, their governments and ultimately by us. What a huge karmic opportunity this could be to change this separation and rejection of ourselves and thereby of everyone else.
For me it feels like the simple act of understanding and brotherhood what this is all about, and so more an exercise in trust for us all.
The topic of Refugees is kicked around like a political football, and they themselves are treated in a similar way with no regard or humanity. Its like the label makes it easier for us to forget that what we are talking about is people. But you put it beautifully here Christopher, that deeper under the news headlines, this asks us to truly look at what is happening in our world when there are human beings with souls willing to hurl themselves and their families on a boat rather than remain in a country they grew up. Doesn’t this speak volumes for the current way we are building harmony and equality across the world?
Solely focusing on the ‘problem’ of refugees misses the crucial point that we all have a responsibility in making sure that there are no pockets left in this world that desperate people have to flee from and that there are likewise no individuals who are so lost and desperate that they blow themselves and others up in the forsaken pursuit of some kind of twisted justice.
We have made it about the refugees, but why do we have refugees and why is that not a screaming problem in the world? When we talk of the problem of refugees, it becomes about them and not the why.
Absolutely agree Gabriele- this is what we need to start to look at, I have never seen this discussed in regards to this issue.
Some great ‘what ifs’ posed here, each themselves a key piece in the food chain that gets us to the nub of the problem – which is that we do not yet live worldwide as brotherhood, accepting that we’re all equal as our starting point. If we did, there would be no unrest, no civil war, religious war or any other disharmony that would cause such exodus in the first place.
Agreed Cathy. Whilst we clearly cannot ignore the pressing issues that need attending in regards to treating refugees from Syria (and other countries) with the respect and dignity they deserve, the ‘nub’ of the problem most surely comes back to us.
We should never feel any of this is too big to take responsibility for, for we can make true change in our own lives – taking responsibility for any conflict we experience whatsoever. In short, all of us are called to deal with our own hurts, that we do not create interpersonal unnecessary conflict, let alone societal, community and national-scale conflicts.
The buck stops with every one of us when it comes to restoring true equalness between all and brotherhood as you rightly say.
Yes Kathy and you have expressed it with the simplicity that it is and as Victoria has mentioned below that we can start this very practically with ourselves and from there with others.
One of the big wake up calls for humanity is to see that despite all the technological and infrastructure advancements we as human beings have not evolved, we may have even regressed. We have hidden behind technology and advancements of modern society believing we are moving forward, but we have a lack of understanding, compassion and mercy for our fellow human beings. This is not just with refugees. Perhaps all the so called advancements we have made in the world have only served to hide more deeply the fact we are not truly evolving. It’s an important question to ask – “Have we as human beings advanced or has just the world around us shifted and changed?”
The way some people treat refugees, look at refugees is indeed really painful. I thoroughly realize that my ancestors were refugees from France, some two centuries ago, fleeing repression by the church. We were welcomed, not kicked out, and started living here, as Holland has a strong reputation in welcoming people that are not welcome in any other country. Being open to people from different backgrounds – cultural, religion, intellectual etc – did not harm Holland, on the contrary: though it started out as humane thing to do, Holland actually blossomed by letting all these people in. Some of the brightest minds in the world actually came as refugee to Holland, being prosecuted for their beliefs. Beliefs that were repressed elsewhere but actually enlightened Dutch society.
Could it be that by welcoming these new generations of refugees with open arms and hearts, this could happen again?
I truly appreciate and applaud your comment Willem – it would make a great blog/article in itself (that I would love to read).
Australia has accepted many waves of refugees and indeed immigrants from other countries over time – we have often baulked (big time) at dealing with ‘difference’, and it is true that tensions and bigotry exists in many quarters. YET there has also been the most amazing richness and sharing of diversity that has blessed this country.
When Paris was attacked by terrorists on Nov 13 this year, it was immediately after Beirut and Lebanon suffered similar tragedy and assault to their people and country. The thing in Australia, is that we have MANY of Lebanese heritage here, many of whom have contributed much to this country as your forebears have done in Holland… yet our national attention all went towards France. For all the diversity we’ve been shown here, we still favour that which is ‘familiar’ (i.e. other western nations) and identify with them. Says a lot…
There is just so much to be broken down in regards to all the things that divide us – nationality, cultural heritage, skin colour, religious belief… In coming together we are offered the opportunity to break down all of that which divides us – it’s up to us whether we protect ‘our own patch’ and say no to this, or truly embrace the learning, growth and opportunity our coming together brings.
That is incredible Willem. I had no idea that was the case for Holland and it is a very inspiring read.
My ancestors are a mixture of English criminals, and Irish and English freemen (so called) seeking a fresh start from grinding and inescapable poverty. They came to Australia to have all that we are denying so many people now with our closed door policy.
So many early Australians were what we wold now call terrorists – men and women from Ireland who fought the oppressive English regime of the day. Now we look back and celebrate their heroism – at the time they were regarded criminals.
This blog is a reminder that we need to learn our history lessons, not as cold dry facts, but as the human stories that fill the passage of time. Then, over that grand sweep, we see that nothing has really changed and nothing will change until we start to develop understanding of people’s situations, and respect and love for each other.
I like how you have described that theres actually may be a rather simple approach to welcoming ‘refugees’ that are coming from war torn countries, they are after all our brothers. I know I have though that it doesn’t concern me, and I just want to get on with my life, but considering the fact of what these people are actually going through is very big! Not to say I have to save the world, but there needs to be more openness when dealing with these global circumstances. It is a reflection of the micro we live everyday, we don’t let people into hearts, we don’t make life about love, so on a macro scale this plays out as “the refugee situation” and all the other problems that are dividing mankind.
That is an article the world needs, an article my heart embraces. Great writing Chris. We indeed have to deeply consider what we are doing here. Many countries are built on refugees, as is Holland, as is Australia. And instead of seeing them is a burden, we might also look at the refuges as people that might enrich our society. But first and foremost: see that they are human beings just like us, and see that we all the the same in that sense.
great point Willem, it seems that many are not even considering how these people could enrich our society.
Hear, hear Willem. I’ve just written a comment to this effect under a slightly later comment of yours.
We need beings and hearts such as yours that welcome rather than go into instant ‘self-protect’ in the case of diversity.
I agree with you in full – rather than look at how our ‘own patch’ may be upset (& fuelling any sliver of fear-based thinking that encourages a divisive stance), we can look to how we may be enriched and all that we may learn – by truly coming together.
At this present time, this piece of writing is very well needed. Thank you Christopher. Your care is felt and actually encourages me to open my heart and live with much more care and understanding of others. True compassion is needed in this world and maybe then we would truly unite.
I agree Shevon – this article is very needed indeed, and for me also it has opened something for me to consider and reflect on deeply.
Beautiful beautiful conversation. I am so glad we are talking about this from a more responsible way. I can feel my responsibility in taking care of everyone (not literally) but I have to make sure that I welcome every human being with my open heart.
The tiniest separation is calling us for more trouble, hurts and pains. We cant not let our human brothers down, even not by ill thoughts, fears or emotions. We have to stay strong and trust our hearts. We have to look at the source and root of why we are so reject full to people? (as deeply inate no one wants that, yet we choose).
Why are we not letting all people in our hearts and countries? Why are we stagnated and focused on our own little lives? (and forgetting the whole).
What makes us feel that we are different then any other person that comes in a country (called refugee). I think it is time to ponder too. Thank you Christopher, lets open more and more discussion.
Thanks Christoph for this amazing article which is so true. If we are in our heart there is just one truth and it is all very simple and if we all take actions from the heart, by bringing back the brotherhood, it will all settle in a way that is the best for every fellow brother on earth. I will post this blog on Facebook, I hope many will read it. Thanks again for speaking for so many here.
‘If its not in my back yard, then it doesn’t affect or concern me, right’, wrong this is the belief that I and many people live with around issues such as ‘the boat people’ or refugees, its over seas, my family’s alright, ‘they” (meaning the government or someone else) should sort it out the problem, and as long as it doesn’t directly impact on my life, I shall ignore the problem or issue. Why do we live in this way, separate to one another, I even witness this sometimes in the student body, dare I say, that there is separateness, a kind of them and us mentality. This feels like it comes from fear, separation and protection, and that deep down we all hold a belief that we don’t want anyone or anything to take away or shake up the comfort we live in.
When we make people into problems, issues to be solved, therein lays the root of the problem, we have separated from them as fellow brothers on this planet who are the same as we are, that have the same basic rights and needs as we do. We as one humanity need to approach the situation with refugees not from politics and fears and ideas about these people, but from warmth, understanding and equality, and a knowing that there is a strong possibility that we to may have experienced being a refugee in another life and all the atrocities that entails, maybe then we would not be so heartless and disinterested in our fellow brothers and sisters?
“What if the ‘refugees’ became an equal part of our society, as they all truly deserves to be, no longer mirroring the hate and mistrust we project onto them? And in this they could start to feel ‘safe’ again.” This alone would make a huge difference, we have a lot of fears about people from other countries and when they arrive in the country we live in, we have mistrust, suspicion and we go into protection and separation, this creates a tension for them on the other side and they then react in the same way. Its no different to any other relationship whether its one own wife or husband or a refugee, we can choose love, understanding and brotherhood and that will come back to us.
Beautifully said Thomas. We all know what it feels like when we are met with separation and mistrust. And what does this say about ourselves when we are meeting people who have been through a huge amount of suffering in this way? Perhaps we are being asked to love. Applying the old saying, treat others as you would want to be treated is a little exposing.
When we are posed question of a shipload of refugees coming to the country we live in (which in truth is not our country, although most refer to it as such, with ownership and arrogance, for we are one brotherhood so how can our be our country, with the exclusivity of all others?) what really is at stake is our level of comfort and life style going to be changed, are we going to be safe Etc.? Rather than meeting these individuals openly as brothers embracing them with love and understanding and the recognition that they are the same as us, and that they to want to receive love and love others.
Christopher – I love how you state here ‘we do not own the planet and we are all one global community’ – but as you say we seem to forget this in times of conflict.
Just the other day I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about how we are all immigrants, we are all mongrels with a mixture of pasts.
For us to lay claim that we are from one particular country is arrogance at best.
The fact is – it is only culture and war that has imposed the system of countries, of cultures and of languages that ultimately divide us as a human race;
If we trace back our ancestry we discover this to be true – and it feels like something many of us should try to understand.
I agree that in the situation of the refugees – many of us in 1st world countries have no idea what they have been through. Should the situation be reversed I am sure we would be asking for help.
Yes religion gets in the way, but this is merely another way we have bastardised the meaning of words to allow them to divide us rather than to get back to the understanding that we are all the same.
For me this is an opportunity to redefine the way we have on so many levels separated ourselves in the world.
Hannah, I love your beautiful comment and felt to write further on the countries, nationality, refugees, we are all refugees. From my personal point of view, I am a refugee, here I am living in Norway, I was born in England and carry a British passport. My father was from the Republic of Ireland(refugee, looking for work after the second world war) and my mother, never knowing her biological parents was an orphan born in Torquay(who knows where her parents were from?) on the south west coast of England but adopted by Irish immigrants(refugees, also escaping from the extreme poverty in Ireland in the 1930’s). I am made up from refugees and moved to Norway(legally, but nonetheless a refugee), to have what I thought would be a better life for my family and myself.. I hear and see people with similar backgrounds to myself, in many different nations, claiming their nationality and expressing everything from mild distaste to abject hate for refugees, how can we be so blind? A little exercise in tracing our ancestry should be obligatory before anyone utters words of disharmony directed towards the tragedy of refugees..
Australians have been notorious in their treatment of refugees Christopher. We have set up offshore “detention centres” on Manus Island and Nauru. People are held here as prisoners, living under appalling conditions. Many are held for prolonged periods with no sense of when this might end – a torment in and of itself. Many suffer from mental illness, and it goes untreated placing everyone held in those centres at risk of violence. Rates of sexual assault are appalling, and this includes the sexual assault of children.
There is so much to be said that you could write forever and not touch the sides of this problem.
Have we Australians forgotten that we are refugees? The first white settlers were convicts, the overspill of criminals that the English, desperately overwhelmed by their numbers, and no longer holding control of the US, shipped away. Even the free settlers were men and women leaving such hardship that they were willing to risk the uncertain future offered by this far away land.
History is the story of the human being on this planet throughout time. When we open our hearts to learn its deeper truths (not just dates and the names of Kings), we learn that our stories are interwoven and that a common thread binds us. There are no strangers. There are no experiences that we can find ourselves in – indeed we can all say ‘there but for the grace of God go I’.
Thank you for writing a blog on refugees, I struggle with the way we talk in the media about helping them as if they are helpless. They are extraordinary when we consider that these people seeking asylum have survived the most appalling conditions to reach a country where they are asking for shelter and support. We have an opportunity to meet them, ask them what support they need and walk beside them as they rebuild their lives. I hope at some stage people in influence will stop using them as political pawns and speaking about them as a threat to national security. We have much to learn.
Thank you for commenting Lucy. I agree entirely with all you write and would like to add, that it is not only politicians using them as political pawns but the national press inciting fear and hatred with untruths and scandalous reporting, just to sell more newspapers, not caring about the damage they are causing..
I agree with your sentiments here Christopher – there is much to be held truly accountable in regards to our media.
And yet are we not all responsible for what many of our politicians and much of our media promulgate? This couldn’t be so if we all expressed our true outrage over such appalling misrepresentation of people, who have commonly experienced hardship and travesty many of us cannot imagine…
What I have been discovering and connecting with also, is those working in our media who do call such false representation and fear-mongering to account. There are some good people out there, and our connection with them and support is a part of addressing this enormous issue and the falsities which are being promoted as the zeitgeist of our times in regards to refugees (so much of which is plain wrong, as you’ve well expressed here). This, and blogs/articles such as this is where we also become our ‘own media’ – all needed, and very much so. Thank-you for your expression here Christopher – it is deeply appreciated.
Christopher, this blog post brought tears to my eyes…what an epic display of consideration, wouldn’t it be amazing to strip away prejudice from hand-me-down beliefs or media sensationalised sympathy and look practically as a community at what we can do together to take responsibility for this…deep in me I feel that if we took charge rather than let the governments manage this through a PR driven agenda even the “terrorists” might want to drop their AK’s and consider a warm welcome. The possibilities are endless as to what this kind of global mindset shift could offer. But it does start with us, individually, I feel it starts by taking responsibility for the true interpretations of community, brotherhood, and family, I feel it starts with taking responsibility for exposing judgement for what it is and offering everyone we meet a welcome that gives worth to their being as we would no doubt wish for from others. Everyone is the same and comes from our global community and because we don’t yet believe that we leave fixing it up to someone else. Great contribution to that shifting mindset.
Love your comment, Phil, especially “I feel it starts by taking responsibility for the true interpretations of community, brotherhood, and family, I feel it starts with taking responsibility for exposing judgement for what it is and offering everyone we meet a welcome that gives worth to their being as we would no doubt wish for from others.” There are incredible judgments being made by people who are being driven by fear in our country now. There is such a fear of muslims , people are equating a few radicals as representing the whole of the muslim community. I totally agree, “it starts by taking responsibility for the true interpretations of community, brotherhood and family.” I feel such a sense of brotherhood with these so-called ‘refugees’, they need our help and understanding and we need to come together in this world, to help them in the best way possible.
This blog is an important foundational document for all of us to read and very deeply consider. You ask us to explore the refugee problem from an entirely fresh perspective, one that has love as its starting point. For all too long we have tried to fix things. But it is to no avail. In fact we make more problems that we resolve. A large element of the direness in the Middle east was created by Western nations pushing and shoving boundaries to suit their own ends. They then walked away and washed their hands of the ensuing catastrophe.
You are asking us to go deeper than that though, to explore the boundaries that we draw upon the earth and between each other in the first place. You are asking us why we have shut our doors so firmly against our Brothers whose hearts beat as ours do, who are as vulnerable to the same hurts and fears
I love too the way you have stated we are all refugees. History is a nothing more than a collected story of our atrocious way of treating each other from he very beginning of time. Forever we have had to flee each other for whatever perceived superiority is running the show at the time.
Oh yes. We have our technology. We are so advanced with our massive telescopes that peer deep into the majesty of the space we cannot even begin to fathom. Yet our home is besieged by torment and hatred.
Let us be honest about this dire lack of progress before we exclaim over another image of the galaxy and congratulate ourselves on another new version of smart phone.
Let honesty be our starting point.
Great points Rachel- I love the comment you make of ‘why have we shut our doors so firmly against our brothers’ and that we have forever been running from each other- nothing has changed on this front. We really do have a lot to look at.
I love your comment here, Rachel, and endorse all that you have said, especially what you said about the way that the Western nations altered so many of the boundaries between these countries, creating artificial boundaries between people. I too see so called ‘refugees’ as our fellow brothers, we are all Sons of God equally within and it really hurts me to see how they are so often referred to now in such derogatory terms. So-called good people are demanding that they be kept out of our country. Fear reigns now about these refugees, partly of course due to the fact that many of them re Muslims. All Muslims are now being lumped into the same basket by many, believing that they are all radical, dangerous people. I saw a little cartoon recently, with a picture of a group of Ku Klux Klan people, with the comment, do we feel all Christians are like this? It was beside another of a group of Muslim radical fighters, with the words, do we think all Muslims are like this? It really made the point. So many equate the radicals within these groups as representing the whole of them. Fear controls so many in our country now. Brotherhood is extremely important to me, these people are brothers to me, and we need as a world to work to welcome these people in, whether temporarily, or permanently. And of course in the past, many earlier ‘refugees’ returned to their old countries when things had settled down sufficiently for them to safely return.
Well said Rachel and Beverley.
The fear-mongering is off the scale… Just watch some of CNN’s (U.S. News) recent behaviour and news coverage towards people of the Moslem faith post the Paris attacks of Nov 13. e.g. One anchor interviewed a mayor of a city in the U.S. which had a large Moslem population – the first question asked (in relevance to the large Moslem population) was: “Are you afraid?”
We have allowed this fear-mongering. We have allowed large quarters of our media and those who would seek to divide and ‘protect their own patch’ to falsely label all people of one faith as terrorists…. As the cartoon you mentioned featuring the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) demonstrates, what if all those of us with predominantly Christian heritage (whether practising this faith or not) were put in the same basket as the KKK or indeed the horrendous genocidal acts of the catholic church in past centuries? How would the shoe feel if on the other foot, and those of us with Christian heritage were spat upon and abused on our streets for simply appearing, possibly of a particular faith?
We have a loooong way to go.
Beverley and Victoria, we are fooled by our eyes that focus on the surface traits, and their points of difference. Whilst our eyes lead our thinking we will always be pulled into the trap of ‘otherness’.
The topic of refugees really one deep consideration of how we look, how we see, how and why we measure each other, and how much we are willing to let go of millennia old techniques for making hatred the predominating way on this planet.
It sounds an easy call to ‘let honesty be our starting point’ but honesty, as in ‘absolute honesty’ isn’t easy or even possible for most of us. I, like most people believed that I was a very honest person, I believed that I was particularly honest about myself and my own shortcomings but I wasn’t, in fact I was embroiled in a life of deceit and lies. That’s not to say that I was involved in anything illegal but to say that I was aligned to a consciousness that is dedicated to keeping people from the truth and so whilst aligned to this consciousness it was almost impossible for me to be honest. Slowly over time I have migrated to the other form of consciousness, one that is borne from truth and therefore one that supports us back to truth and so being absolutely honest is much easier with this form of consciousness impulsing me.
I was once talking to a mother who had recently arrived in a refugee camp. She had got a letter that said she was being relocated to another place. She couldn’t read English so asked me to read her the letter. She stood there with her young son as I read her the letter. When she realised she was being moved she was terrified as she thought she was being put on another boat. She started crying and shaking. It took me a moment to realise what was going on then I realised she was terrified of going back to sea. I shared with her that her and her children would be going on a plane. I found a picture and showed her a plane.
I had known a bit about her journey, her husband had died on the boat and was rolled into the ocean, also on their journey sharks were circling the rickety boat and ramming into it causing some wooden beams to bend.
This made me have a better understanding of what she must have been going through and running away from. Imagine as a mother choosing to put your whole family onto a boat not knowing if in this action, they will survive. It is horrific that the world is in such a state that people need to do this, that life has become so brutal that you have to make a life or death decision to escape it, such as this. Then when you escape it, its not over, the trauma and tragedy doesn’t leave you. To experience this and then in addition to this to be ostracised or to face further isolation or racism for many years, having to justify your right to be in a country along with still dealing with the trauma of your experiences and the guilt that some people have of leaving friends and family behind- I don’t wish this on anyone.
What a delicate and tender sharing , thank you so much Jet. I cannot imaging their fear or what it must have been like to put themselves and their family in that much danger and to then believe that the trauma was going to happen again. How wonderful she was met by you and you were able to support her to understand.
Your sharing Jet really made me stop and feel the vastness of this worldwide situation. How advanced are we as a nation when our fellow brothers are having to go through such traumas and isolation. After all in your words Christopher “We are all one global community so anything that happens on this planet is for us all to consider”.
Thank you Jet for sharing this – you have brought a real life example to the table that allows me to see that there is so much more going on than we can even imagine. Leaving one’s homeland would bring up so much to deal with , let alone not knowing what you are met with in the transition to hopefully a better life. A great reminder that we are all people with feelings and doing the best that we can…and in these situations a little love goes a long way in supporting another.
This story is deeply appreciated. When a person is labelled by a word like ‘refugee’ they and their situation are reduced to a problem, to be dealt with by any means.
When you hear the stories of sustained risk and ongoing horror you know, beyond doubt, that these people are not a word, not a problem. Rather they are people experiencing a degree of suffering most cannot imagine.
What would it be like to live under a regime that is likely to try to kill you? May have already killed your family members?
What would it be like to walk or more likely flee from your home, leave every single thing you have worked for behind?
What would it feel like to step of a boat that may not be seaworthy to sail to a place that may turn you away?
What if you were ill? High blood pressure or diabetes for example with no access to medications or medical care?
And as you have pointed out, so beautifully Jet, to walk into a setting that has no compassion at all, whilst dealing with the guilt and pain of walking away.
Who would we wish this upon?
This is so, so true Christopher, ‘as here on earth in truth we are just one big family’. If everyone deeply felt this, claim and live in true brotherhood so many of our world issues would not exist.
Thank for this deeply thought provoking and much needed blog Christopher. I was a refugee myself when I was a baby. I was too young to remember the experience. For a long time I never felt I belong anywhere and I felt less for many years because I felt judged. I didn’t have a place I felt at home, but I truth my home is the entire planet. We seem to have divided and claimed parts of the world as ours and drawn boarders to keep people in and out. The way we treat refugees are like you say almost not human, like they don’t belong and we make excuses to reject our fellow brothers and sisters. It’s a deeply sad state of affairs how much we celebrate separation of people based on where they come from and their circumstance. If we open our hearts and see that everyone is equal and that we have no borders then we will not have issues like this but be able to lovingly open our arms and hearts to receive everyone as equals. It’s very clear from your news worthy blog that we have a long way to go. Like you shared every loving action counts and makes a difference. So, what are we going to do about this? About how we treat others as less?
Thank you Chris for bringing this topic up in such a loving way for us all to consider. Your piece should be on the front page of the news as far I am concerned.
I agree Monika. It would be great to see some compassion on the news for these people who are literaly running for their lives. I only ever hear negative things about them.
This is a topic rarely talked about in this light Christopher so I greatly appreciate your offers here. The issue that lays in many peoples minds is that if refugees start coming to a land or country and start living there then we may bear the burden or the cost as a nation if they are not going to contribute to society. This is simply not true at all because is it not about all of humanity and the cost for us as a race not just a country?
Thank you Christopher for your confronting blog filled with truth. I agree that when humanity unites, miracles could happen. ‘Even the smallest things can move mountains as our collective creativity knows no bounds when we open up our hearts to these societal atrocities.’
I agree iljakleintjes – the world would look very different, and much more harmonious if humanity were to unite and stop fighting one another.
A great and very needed sharing, Christopher. We tend to think refugees are a government problem but you are so right, that is a cop out. Every refugee is one of our brothers and so we all have a responsibility to care and look after them. I, too, find myself sitting in comfort and have felt disconnected from this issue. This is living brotherhood – not just words but the reality. What am I doing about it?
I love what you share here Anne. I too have sat in comfort and been dissconnected from this issue.
I have thought that there is nothing that I could do about it, but this is not the case.
“We do not own this planet, though many think they do. We are all one global community so anything that happens on this planet is for us all to consider. We are all custodians of this planet – and this crisis of refugees is on our watch.”
With all the blaming and keeping the people out of our houses, lives and countries and holding on to comfort we are not willing to consider the truth of this and work together in allowing ourselves to feel we are all the same and we are brothers..
Christopher, your blog should be the news of the day, front page news, on every newspaper in the world.
Beautifully expressed Christopher and well needed to be shared/highlighted. Too many negative walls have been built to suit several peoples own insecurities and needs with a quickness to blame others (refugees) this type of conduct does soon build and spread unrest. Time to bring this to a halt – brotherhood is the only way forward, we all have a responsibility and have a part in making those changes big or small. Love will eventually crumble those blockading walls. As Christoph shares Germany has made a start.
Thank you Christopher for starting this conversation. A conversation that is very much needed. It seems that with all the attacks going on we have ‘forgotten’ about the refugees as they are no more front page news. But what is not on the front page, does not mean it’t not there. It is very much there and we are all responsible.
Thank you Christopher, you raise the bar here in the quality you bring to the global refugee situation.
If we were to simplify the ‘problem’ even further.
Everyone knows a kind deed is deeply felt, however a kind deed done out of duty is cold and distancing when received.
The issue will not go away as we are an ever connected global community.
Do we open our hearts from the beginning and let our fellow human beings feel our resentment as we drag our feet?
“What is truly going on here that in our so called modern age (with all the technology and infrastructure that we have) we have ‘refugees’?” This I feel is the true question that we need to be asking and addressing. As you say there have been refugees for centuries and I feel it is symptomatic of the issue that we are not, and have not done so for lifetimes, is taking responsibility for the consequences of our actions and choices. The refugees are all part of the reflection that we can no longer carry on how we have been doing and that this is a huge wake-up call to change.
Well said Jonathan, in the make up of our world today Responsibility and owning the consequences of our actions is not something that many are up to living with. For those of us that are beginning to do so, it is up to us to accept the responsibility that we hold to show the world that this is the only way we can engender true change and to begin to address the many hidden beliefs and ideals that keep humanity separate.
Great point Jonathan. Responsibility for our actions is definitely needed here as this issue is in front of our face to see, clear as day. There is no hiding from this.
Thank you for posting this blog Christopher. I have not taken much interest into the refugee situation, although I know it is topical and has been for many years. What became more clear to me as I read through your words was that allowing refugees to stay or not is not the answer. The answer is love. Regardless of who these people are, where they come from and what they have experienced, regardless of wether they are criminal or not WE ALL DESERVE TO BE TREATED WITH RESPECT, DECENCY AND LOVE. There is a loving way of dealing with tensions and issues in relationships and our responsibility in this starts in our homes. The fact we are not united as a nation on this matter is showing us that the majority of us are not living this level of responsibility in our homes yet.
Too True Abby.
If we are unable to live together, accepting each other, in full in our families and able to support and encourage each of us to live to our full potential, than how can this be the lived way of a country, or a planet.
Exactly Leigh, how can we – if we don’t manage this with ourselves or family first?
Thank you Christopher for bringing this blog us all. The refugee ‘issue’ has been bothering me for a while now particularly here in Australia – I’ve felt appalled at how we are treating people who are fleeing war and violence in their own homelands. This issue will only continue to worsen for as long as we do the ‘them and us’ rather than seeing that we are all part of the same family – humanity.
As you say Sandra, this issue will only worsen until the time that we will rediscover the fact that we are all the same, one family and one humanity. Realising that nobody is any different to us is a key in that and will help us to restore a harmony an rhythm into our world that will have no place for wars and other atrocities that harm people in their existence.
The refugee ‘issue’ is painful in my heart. The way it is presented on t.v. and in newspapers, like we have a problem, because they are on the run, is without true care and equality. We are one humanity living on planet earth and should make this the base of looking at what is going on and how we can handle it together.
I come from a country that was built on and continues to be built on refugees. Indeed, in the country I come from, everybody has a refugee or immigrant in their family line at least one over the past 4 or 5 generations. I am talking about Australia. Yet even in this country, who you would think should know the true value of refugees and immigrants, we still take a staunch view against refugees in particular. It is a view that is not embedded in any fact or true common sense, but rather a view that is born out of a resistance to understanding that underneath nationality, culture, race, religion, we all bleed the same and have the same wants and fears in life. And that resistance comes from not wanting to have our little niche of paradise challenged – simple.
the points you raise are very valid, and questions we need to start asking – these people are just that, people, and they do not deserve the ire or mistrust of those in a position of safety.
Our indifference to our fellow man and woman is a disease that starts in our own homes. Is it any surprise we are hostile to those in need, who want a share of our cake, when we can’t even live in harmony with our nearest and dearest.
Great point Josephine, something really to consider and reflect upon. Have to start at the home front first to let in love and express it equally and then expand it out to all others doo
VERY well said Christopher. I wholeheartedly agree with what you’ve shared – ‘the refugee crisis’ has turned into a refugee crisis, in the sense that people have begun to blame the refugees themselves for the situation, and instead of looking at the fact that they are moving because of the war, famine and abuse occurring in their own countries, politicians, the media and a lot of other people have begun focusing on the ‘damage’ that is caused by the refugees seeking refuge in other countries… We are all the same humanity, and if the situation was switched, I wonder what people would be saying then.
Perhaps we have resorted to blaming the refugees themselves Susie because their situation is asking us to take our blinkers off and question our “comfortable” lives, start sharing what we have and realise we are all equal, no more and no less.
It is indeed Christopher, a much wider issue here than just the refugees – those who had the wherewithal to pay the traffickers (often their fellow countrymen) for a place on the over crowded boat or in the container. What about those who don’t have those resources and are left in the war zones?
If I was writing a travel brochure for energy discerning space travellers, doesn’t seem like there would be much to recommend earth.
It feels like an even bigger call for us to each be responsible for our own energetic output, given that the micro does indeed affect the macro.
We are all equal souls and every effort should be made to try and achieve unified humanity
Thank you for opening this important conversation Christopher. I feel Liane’s words “For in-truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts” sums the situation beautifully – we have to abandon our hearts and our shared humanity to be not moved by the pain and suffering that is being endured. Incarceration is an unloving way to treat people who need to be embraced by the community at the earliest opportunity after arrival.
Thank you Christopher for your alerting and truth filled words.
I love this line ‘and this crisis of refugees is on our watch.’
This speaks volumes. It is the issue that needs looked at and we as one must look together on it because as you put it – we do not own this planet and this is a global problem. We are all on this globe so we all have a responsibility to support or contribute with looking at it and rectifying it.
This is not only about the current refugee crisis, it is how we treat one another on a daily basis in every interaction we have.
Very good point Gyl. It is just a representation on a grand scale of how we treat people on a daily basis. Are we open to them or closed?
Exactly Gyl, big or small, ‘refugee’ or family, makes no difference at all.
Absolutely Gyl because our behaviour towards each other is then magnified for good or bad thus bringing the responsibility for the current situation squarely back to all of us and how we treat each other.
I agree with all the points you’ve raised here Christopher – it’s never about us and them – it’s about we, we as a human race, in this together. As we reincarnate lifetime after lifetime we’re going to be many different races and live in many different societies and our biggest lesson is to learn how to come back to the love we innately are so that there are no more divides, as in essence we are all equal.
Beautifully said Deborah. It seems crazy then that we should judge or hate another because of an apparent difference, when we ourselves have probably come from the same back ground at some stage in our many past lives. This really highlights that what we do to another we are also doing to ourselves. There is such a level of responsibility here…are we ready to see it?
Love how you have expressed this and reminded us that we do come back in different countries and nationalities and the like, so it is really important to connect to the love we are and emanate that out to all others too, no matter where they come from; it is just to remember like you said, that in essence we are all equal.
The separation from our inner essence and hearts is so clearly reflected in all the conflicts around religion, nations and minorities. When there is no us and them we can truly know we are living from our inner hearts.
The refugee crisis seems like a great stop moment, an opportunity for us to see the mess we have accepted, with the arms sold by the west to terrorists and unstable regimes, to the deep rooted racism and prejudice that keeps us separated and living in fear and dislike of other cultures. Everything in this situation seems spherical, the knock on effects of our behaviours creates the unrest and the need for people to flee desperate situations, and its a golden opportunity for us to bring us all together and breakthrough the illusion created by the supposed differences in nationality, culture and religion which are constructs that are meaningless when we are willing to look deeper and see the person that is really there. Thank you Christopher for your beautiful writing.
I love that you have brought this topic to the fore to be contemplated from the perspective of love and compassion. We are indeed custodians of this planet and are one global community… and yes this is happening on our watch. Yet when it comes to responsibility many want to stick their heads in the sand and hope someone else deals with it. But human atrocities do not disappear without being addressed lovingly let alone when met by further atrocities as they currently are…. For any true change our response has to be from a globally loving foundation that see us all as equals and treated as such or we are just adding to the ill.
PS – Today (the day this blog was published) I walked past the sign that features in the photo with this article. Someone had repaired the ‘welcome’ part of the sign at the bottom and filled in the gaps with a silver marker. Beautiful confirmation of the power of our expression Christopher (from opposite ends of the world). I would love to post a new photo!
Hi Leonne, I would love to see that photo!
Awesome…
This is powerful Christopher. We are all the same and yet we live in fear of one another, something is very, very wrong when people flee their homes is desperation. Thank you for sharing your views here – everything you share makes absolute sense to me, in fact, it is the best article on the refugee crises I have read.
Hear hear Leonne – I second that-best expression on this very important subject.
An Awesome, deeply inspired, thought -provoking (heart opening) blog Christopher. Your writing that needs to be brought to the front page of every newspaper, shown on every TV news channel, shared on every social media platform and placed face up on every government and politicians tables worldwide.
We are all equally responsible for this mess that has been allowed to continue for aeons of time through power, control and greed – worse still is how it is accepted as a normal way of living. Are we be so numb to this shocking oppression because it is not actually happening within our own family – “I am alright Jack, so it is not my problem” attitude. In essence, we are all the same, equally so, and it is time to stand up be counted and begin to re-store true brotherhood and compassion back to the human race.
We are often aware on a superficial level of the problems in others areas of the world, wars, famine, dictatorship, corruption, slavery etc causing mass suffering for other people through the news but on the whole we stay in the comfort of thinking everything is OK because ‘my life is OK’. After all we can always turn the news off or turn a blind eye. Is it possible that one reason we do not like refugees coming to the countries in which we live is that this puts the problems still facing humanity right back in our faces? It is because they appear to threaten that layer of comfort in which we live when we choose ignorance of the bigger picture. We don’t want to be brought into the bigger picture as this brings responsibility to us equally for what happens to all of humanity so we see them as a problem. Is it also possible that part of the reason that refugees are coming to countries where people are living with the ‘my life is ok’ attitude is to awaken those who are choosing to think that these issues are not theirs, that we are not one humanity jointly affected by everything that happens to each other and that brotherhood is not our true way of being? It feels to me that this is a reflection of how the truth will always be shown to us so we cannot deny or hide from it – the ‘refugee crisis’ is actually another opportunity to bring love and understanding to situations within humanity which are currently ignored and pushed away by so many seemingly ‘OK’ members of our race.
People often treat refugees or other people who are not from the same country as them from a place and an energy that is deeply abusive and separate to God and themselves – what we know collectively as racism and nationalism. I would say these are two of the greatest evil’s in the world, in the purest and truest sense of the word, as they keep us separate from our truth and our Soul. The fact that deep down we all absolutely know this is not how to be and live with one another, that we are all one, and come from the same all loving one Divine source. There’s more here on the true meaning of evil – http://www.unimedliving.com/unimedpedia/word-index/unimedpedia-evil.html
The word refugee is one we can hide behind. It dehumanises the individual, and we dont see them as another person. The refugee label allows us to detach and bury our head in the sand. We are all the same, and the truth is when we see others suffering it does not feel good, but we are good at ignoring that.
That is a great point how we use language to diminish a group of human beings just like us to ‘us and them’ groups. Whilst it is necessary to be able describe the situation of another we have become desentizied to the perils that others endure.
This is great Debra and it places labels on us and moves us into camps of ‘better than’ and ‘less than’ to avoid taking responsibility for the fact that we are not living the love we are.
Christopher I feel your deep love for humanity through your blog. I know for myself, being a bystander is all too easy and the fact you have written a blog and started a discussion is a great thing. The fact we have this problem in the modern age, which is worsening is a global problem and as such we need to find a way of working together to resolve it. My great grandparents were refugees who settled in the UK and it took only one generation for the family to assimilate into the British culture. We need to keep our hearts open to the current global refugee situation.
And to not demand assimilation in the way we currently do. What if we could allow people the space to be themselves, embrace them for that rather than demanding a particular compliance. For that is the breeding ground for resentment.
What we need to understand is that we are all refugees on this planet. The mythical “white” Australia was nothing more than a refugee settlement, made of escapees from the UK – prisoners, military and risk takers. So many nations are the same – built on people leaving one place to make a fresh start elsewhere. How sad and strong that once we become entrenched we do not allow others the freedom to do the same.
It’s interesting how nearly every act of terror that is occurring just now is blamed on the people arriving from Syria into other countries – everyone is tarnished with the same brush, that they are terrorists, which creates a mass hysteria of hate, and a way to avoid looking at the part we play in this. Often these individuals who do commit the hideous and evil crimes have actually grown up in the country they are attacking. We have to ask the question what’s really going on – How awful must your life be that you risk everything, the potential of dying, loosing your blood family, to travel in tiny often very unsafe boasts and risky journeys to look for a place where you feel safe.
In light of the comment above regards a place where ‘you feel safe’ – how many of us have this in our lives? – a home, a room, a partner, family, a friend, somewhere we feel we are warm and safe – yet there is a huge percentage of the worlds population, not just refugees who do not have this safe place or space, it may be children who are abused, a domestic violence case, a single parent, a child growing up with depression or other mental health issues, it may be someone who has lost their job using a food bank to eat, an alcoholic, it could be any one in your street. It may be easy to sit back and say yeah life is great, but in truth is this really the case when the world in such a mess even in our own homes, and not see this as part of our responsibility.
A strong and honest call to worldwide self-responsibility Gyl…there are many things in this world that are just not going away, and or worsening – such as people fleeing their countries which has been happening for centuries, and slave trading has moved on to be called human trafficking now – one and the same thing; domestic violence and alcoholism, and the list goes on….so when do we each take responsibility for this mess we have collectively created?
Collectively we’re responsible for everything and everyone. We are One Unified Consciousness and there is nothing outside this. And so it boils down to our moment by moment alignment. A commitment and dedication to be aligned to the consciousness of God no matter what because it is only by restoring the consciousness of God on Earth that we’re gonna truly sort anything out. Sure we can chip away at things here and there but to truly sort any-thing and everything out, we have to re-align ourselves to God so that He is re-instated on Earth. Then and only then sorting out all of the problems that we currently have won’t be hard, it won’t be hard at all, in fact it will be a living joy.
A powerful expose of modern society Christopher. It appears we have become more inhuman, less intelligent as a species. During and after the 2nd World War the world opened its doors and arms to welcome and house Jewish refugees fleeing persecution. Fast forward 60 years and we have to ask what has happened to humanity, compassion and concern to our fellow brothers. I wonder if race, nationality and religion has a place to play here? Would reaction to refugees be the same if they were European? Many still refuse to accept the truth that we are all one, equal and the same. I have always found national boundaries to be artificial creations. Perhaps what we are witnessing is the beginning of the end of national boundaries, in time they will become irrelevant as we move towards One World and no boundaries at all.
“We do not own this planet, though many think they do. We are all one global community so anything that happens on this planet is for us all to consider. We are all custodians of this planet – and this crisis of refugees is on our watch.” I agree Christopher. Seeing the various leaders in government and countries making awful comments about refuges is horrid. Closing our doors to others is like closing our doors t ourselves. We are all one people. What we do to others we do to ourselves. Let alone the fact that many countries have consisted of ‘refugees’ and immigrants from the get-go.
Germany is currently making a big effort to bring brotherhood into the refugee issue and so far they are managing well.
and they are really coping it from some other countries. I feel very inspired and deeply touched by the way that Germany has approached this.
Front page news please.
I agree. This blog cuts through everything that is out there around this issue.
Definitely Gyl, this is what I thought too.
Thank you, Christopher, for getting out on the table for us all to consider the common attitude that if it’s not happening in my back yard then it is not my problem. How did we get to this point of separation and indifference? By bringing it back to love, we cannot avoid our individual responsibility in the way we treat one other, be it with our families, our work colleagues, or groups of people from overseas needing support.
Words to my heart Janet.
And there it is again – responsibility in all we think say and do – it affects everyone all of the time, stranger or family, friend or colleagues, like you said Janet – everyone,
“… that even the smallest things can move mountains as our collective creativity knows no bounds when we open up our hearts to these societal atrocities.” And time it is to open our hearts, thank you Christopher for bringing this dire subject to our attention. The big question you pose is why one Earth, in the 21st Century with all our whiz bang technology and so called advances are we still facing this age old problem of refugees? And so the next question is how are we using our technology? Are we using it to carry out more atrocities or are we using it to truly advance mankind? So while we make every effort to take care of the people pouring out of war torn countries, deeply in need of safety and love, surely we should also be looking at why we are still supporting and feeding war by making the Arms Trade a major part of our global economy.
I agree Rowena. What are we using our technology for? Another fancy computer game, the next smartphone with even more fancy features, more weapons to kill and mame one another, while people are being denied the basics they need to survive. We can all do something, even if its just to start the conversation. Thank you Christopher for bringing this subject to the table.
It’s crazy that we have such issues today with as you say our ’21st century technology ‘. If people made life about people then perhaps all our advancements in technology would be used to support the health and care of all the people in the world. The one world that we are all part of.
As a humanity, we have to date got it very backwards.
That is so very true Rowena. After centuries, no thousands of years, with refugees, we still have refugees. Like many other problems in the world, as wars, rape, corruption, slavery, abuse , famine, etc this is another element where the only question remains: why are we not truly evolving as a society, as a planet? What is really going on?
Are we indeed focused on improving things such as technology and our material comfort rather than focusing on brotherhood and living in equallness where the suffering of another is also our concern.
This is a great point Rowena. What are we using our technology for. At this stage, it is definitely not to enhance and support mankind.
We do tend to be by standers when problems of such a huge scale exist. Where do we start? We also tend to be ruled by fear that tells us not to trust or be open. But ultimately we are one humanity on one planet. Where else can they go? If it was us who were in desperate need we would be begging countries to open their boarders. Why should it be any different the other way round?
Exactly Rebecca. Perhaps we in the more fortunate countries should do just that – turn the tables around and imagine what if it was me who was in that situation? How would I like to be responded to?
So true Rebecca, if we were in this situation we would be begging other countries to open their borders.
Question that pupped up was: are we actually by standers? Or are we actually full members of society, and so ; do we all have a responsiibility and equal part to play? Is fear a way to protect ourselves from deep old hurts? When I ask these question I can actually feel that I have not taken responsibility for the part I play, and my role (whatever that is) to me more truthful about what is going on and what I can do. It is beautiful to feel that we actually do not need any form of desperation , with having in mind that desperation feeds the evil and lack of love that is so present. We need to fill those spots with love, brotherhood and so our human society.
There is no difference in nationality, we are all human, we are all love and we all deserve 100% respect and trust.
Yes Rebecca,
In conversations that I have had recently on this subject, there is no connection to the fact that there are families, Mums, Dads, Children, Aunts and Uncles in dire need of support. The hardened response is that they are possible terrorists that we are letting into our countries. It is almost like we want there to be a reason to not open our arms and let them in, for if we do we might then begin to feel how we are truly living our lives, hardening ourselves to even those that we love. What would we do if this was exposed, maybe we would begin to change how we are being with each other and then with the wider communities in which we live.
Its like the ostrich burying its head in the sand…feeling overwhelmed with the ‘refugee problem’ so toughen up laws to keep people out so we don’t have to ‘deal with the issue’ – which is a total lack of responsibility when we all have a part to play in all that goes on in the world.
Christopher, this is an article that needed to be written, what you have written is very true ‘It’s as though they are not humans, they are something else – a burden on us, a nuisance, a plague of unwanted debris – and not our responsibility’, the media and governments treat refugees as if they are criminals, countries are closing their boarders so they cant enter, citizens are saying there is no room for you here, and yet these are fellow human beings, we are equal, all the same, they are simply looking for a safe place to live, somewhere where they will not be tortured and abused and yet we in our comfort do not want to know, this feels very sad that we get caught up in what the media says and close our doors and our hearts to people in this awful situation.
It drives home the level of comfort in this world. We do not want to know about the problems that exist ‘over there’, until they knock on our shores and then we usher them away, not wanting to be disturbed from our comfortable little lives.
For as long as abuse and refugees exist in this world, we are a part of it, no matter how separate we pretend to be with our eyes and ears closed to our responsibility within this world.
I feel the media hugely influences what people are exposed to, they portray the refugees as threats yet so many of them are children and families who are in need of shelter, support and a safe place to live. Through fear, so many of us seem to have accepted so much of what is not true or loving. But really, fear will only create more fear. How we treat others has a ripple effect on us all.
Wise words well said Chan…and how we treat ourselves has a ripple effect on everyone as well.
I agree Chan the media has a huge responsibility as do we for allowing them to behave in this disgraceful separative manner. Make someone a threat and you have a story. We are all threats because we belong to one minority group or another be it: teenager, refugee, cult, Jew, black, gay, dole bludger, car salesman, brain surgeon, drug addict, generation x y or z or whatever!
Why are there refugees? Because human beings are still abusing and committing atrocities on other fellow human beings. This fact is a tragedy in and by itself. It is happening again before our own very eyes. This is not, however, the only reason why this is tragic: the indifference of the many that could do, could have done, something to stop the tragedy from deepening is also really concerning. And, now, we have refugees and a general unwillingness of rich societies to share space and resources with them because they do not belong to the same political-cultural-ethnic community. It is all about difference. We kill the different, we reject the different, we mistrust the different. Yet, in truth there is no difference. We are all Sons of God equally so.
Very well said Eduardo. One of the reasons I believe Governments and countries are being so resistant to accepting refugees into their borders is because it would mean actually taking responsibility for the state of our world to a degree. As you said there are only refugees due to how we have been treating one another and operating as a whole humanity, and people will do anything not to see that.
So beautifully said Eduardo. There is no difference between us. The only difference is the difference we create through the degree in which we connect or separate to the love we are and can live together. As it is through our separation to love that evil runs rampant.
Thank you, Christopher. You raise here many points that make me realise how we so conveniently define our community, our kind, our problem in our attempt to avoid responsibility. It is a painful, sobering realisation. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
I agree Fumiyo – it is very sobering and for each of us to take a honest look at our own response to this call. Is it a wakeup call or is it just indifferent?
It’s five years since most of us have read this blog and I would say that outwardly it might look like most of us have done nothing in response to it. Most of us won’t have cooked a meal for a refugee and I’m pretty certain that none of us would have invited a refugee to come and live with us but……..but many people who have commented on this blog have been working on their own livingness, which is the same as saying that we have been working on our alignment. Two forms of consciousness, one true and one bastardised and we have been working on changing our alignment from one that is bastardised to one that is true. And what this means is that every single issue in the world gets addressed by our re-alignment to a consciousness that is true because it is the bastardised form of consciousness that has set up everything that is problematic in the world, pull the consciousness and you pull the plug on the world’s problems.
Convenience is a key word here. A main reason Governments are so cautious and unwilling to accept refugees into their countries is because it is a supposed ‘inconvenience’ that may affect their comfort.
For all the great humanitarianism work that goes now (not excluding that for it is indeed much needed in the world) to then have wealthy countries turn around and mistrust and promote hate towards people fleeing from dangerous situations sounds completely crazy. There are so many more sides to this ‘Refugee Crisis’ that is not spoken of in the very limited media of ‘welcome them’ or ‘mistrust/avoid dealing with them’ These are people no different to anyone else regardless of what country they are from and if the same happened to one of these western countries would the people not cry out and ask for help as well? Why should it matter where they are from when people are fleeing from such atrocious and dangerous situations is it not even more disturbing to then have them be met with distrust, hate and abuse from those able to support them?
“We do not own this planet, though many think they do. We are all one global community so anything that happens on this planet is for us all to consider. We are all custodians of this planet – and this crisis of refugees is on our watch.” This brings in a much bigger understanding to the word ‘Refugees’ that we have a responsibility here, we are a global community that needs no borders, we all live on the same planet and brotherhood is our responsibility, for each and every one of us. When we see refugees, when we label them, give them a name, then suddenly they are no longer part of society and should be treated differently. Thank you Christopher this needs to be said we are all human beings living communally on this planet and the way Refugees are being singled out and treated is not Brotherhood.
I appreciated this too Alison as Christopher very clearly calls us all to account at the plight in which the world is in and the fact that we are not acting like a global community nor taking responsibility.
The thing is we’re not a ‘global community’, we can’t even live harmoniously with our own family members and work colleagues. We bitch, criticise and moan our way through our days, we have to bring harmony into our own lives before we can even consider bringing it into our communities, let alone globally.
Thank you Christopher and this is a conversation that deserves to be opened up. It is interesting how we see certain people or situations in our world as “problems” and detach from us being responsible for them in any way thus then can easily avoid taking any responsibility to step forward to bring a change to how things are dealt with. Perhaps now our own and collective responsibility is the only answer left as you rightly say refugees have been part of life for years so it is time to look at and question ‘what is really going on?’ and consider our own actions. This is a beautiful place to begin “Every drop, from the tiniest kind word uttered from a place of love to the grandest action, will help the world become a better place for us all to live in, together.”
This is a great topic to bring awareness to Christopher and one that I have always found disturbing, with regards to how dismissive people are of others who are fleeing a crisis. Many times you hear of reports where people have been found dead in a cargo container or drowned during a sea crossing, and as I see it these are extreme measures to escape a life threatening situation at home. How desperate must they be to put themselves and their children’s lives at risk.
Great blog Christopher and some very valid points. How do we expect refugees to behave when we treat them with such distaste. The problem comes when one of them does something wrong and we tarnish them all. But if the same number of ‘western’ people were massed together there would equally be the same problems. The problem is each country wants to look after itself and in reality does not care about those outside of its borders. They have aid and humanitarian projects but these can cynically been seen as ways of trying to the keep the peace so they do not get attacked in any way. The more we start to see the world as a one world without borders the more harmony and unity we will have not as a nation but as a world working together not constantly jostling and fighting.
Extremely well said James. ‘The problem is each country wants to look after itself and in reality does not care about those outside of its borders’ – this is very true; I’ve noticed from reading the news and hearing about the ‘crisis’ that no countries seem to be coming together in the realisation that this is a GLOBAL, WORLD-WIDE problem – not just for Germany, or Hungary or Italy. As you say every country is so focused on keeping their ‘borders’ intact they have forgotten about brotherhood.
Hmmm…this has a similar feel to the saying ‘every man for himself’ except this is ‘every country for itself’ Both ways are all about self, with no brotherhood in sight!
There is little brotherhood in sight except perhaps Germany who are receiving so many and are overwhelmed.
Christopher you raise much needed questions for us to consider as a global community. “We do not own this planet, though many think they do. We are all one global community so anything that happens on this planet is for us all to consider. We are all custodians of this planet – and this crisis of refugees is on our watch.” There is a much bigger picture at play here and to stay in our narrow focus of ownership of land at the expense of others is separative in the extreme.
The thing about refugees is that they are just normal people looking to escape the turmoil and atrocities that they left behind. The last thing they need is to walk into water cannons and tear gas after such a perilous journey ,which is what they are facing on some of the European borders.
So true Kevin. They are just trying to leave complete abuse in their own country. They are not intending to exploit our country- they just want to feel safe. We all deserve that!
Indeed, Kevin, just like Chris wrote: “have we forgotten that we are all the same? And that despite our circumstance, no one person is better than another.”None of would want this for themselves or our children.
You’re absolutely right Kevin – they are NORMAL people! Refugees are not aliens, or criminals, or disease-ridden – they are all simply people, just like you or I. To judge them based on their home town, religion or ethnicity is wrong and should not be tolerated, however Governments seem to believe it is okay to do this.
We are all refugees as we all migrated away from our true home many eons ago. The difference is that we walked away from love and the current flow of refugees are fleeing from terror and conflict. Much of this conflict is caused by one group of people fighting to have control over others and impose their own particular ideals and beliefs. The suspicion of host countries to the refugees fleeing oppression is that they fear the newcomers will bring their ideals and beliefs with them and disturb the comfortable existence that they have carved out for themselves. How many of us, faced with war, torture and brutality would not seek to find a safe haven where they would be welcomed with open hearts?
Yes, the wider picture is presented here and something to ponder deeply – it is a chilling thing to realise we are ALL refugees having chosen to leave the absolute truth of Love we all are equally so. Aeons later, thanks to the Ancient Wisdom Teachings presented by Serge Benhayon since 1999 we are finally beginning to re-awaken to see and feel how far we have fallen from grace and true natural living.
There is no doubt there is the greater Plan to be re-stored on earth for Brotherhood to come back fully into being once more.
How beautifully said Mary: “We are all refugees as we all migrated away from our true home many eons ago” – yes indeed we have walked away from our essence of love and created a huge disharmony which is showing up as a war in our bodies. We are all one and what happens in the world and with our health is a reflection of a very deep sickness in our society and way or rather waywardness as human beings. How far will it need go before we start to question what is really going on and take some responsibility for both our individual and collective actions and inactions?
Christopher, thank you for expressing this, you bring clarity and order to a matter in the world where we choose fear and chaos instead. You are opening up our view by opening up our hearts. The beauty that you see and love in nature you have equally for your brothers your equal fellow human beings around the world. It is so easy to get stuck in our own little and safe world only wanting to participate in the world’s affairs to a certain degree. With your words you are opening a conversation where our hearts are asked to come alive and bring love into our communication and view on the world.
This is a beautiful piece Christopher, it is a very important topic and you give lots of food for thought, why do we see refugees as a threat, while they are just as much Human as we are?
Thank you for writing this blog Christopher, someone needed to. The government in England has just added 12 billion pounds to the defence budget over the next ten years taking it up to 174 billion for the decade ahead and this doesn’t take into account the money needed to replace the Trident nuclear submarine. How many refugees could this money house and feed and how many new doctors, nurses, schools teachers, housing for our homeless could this money provide. We live in a very sick world and it’s only getting sicker in more ways than one. Its up to every individual to make a stand or a statement in someway, saying it’s not Ok and we are indeed one brotherhood and becoming a refugee could happen to anyone of us.
Kevin, I felt the same when I heard that £12 billion is to be given to the defence budget. Stunned to say the least. Western nations have all the resources needed to heal every person on this planet, instead governments choose to feed the arms industry not people. It’s a disgrace.
Very true Kevin. We spend so much money world wide on things that are ridiculously unnecessary but do not manage to live a life where the most basic needs of everybody are met. There is a great imbalance in this world.
Kevin I have been staggered at the ‘war at no cost to great’ mentality that is being touted by the government. We have been having the same war cycle with the middle east for 50 years, this particular one with terrorists for 25 years, to carry on blindly doing the same old thing as always will see us another 20 years on with even more of a mess, with millions dead. The only place the £2billion pounds given this week should be going is to youth services supporting integration and connection so they feel they have a purpose and belong to all, going to war will alienate and destroy communities and give young people the ammunition to justify their barbaric acts of terrorism. No one blows themselves up unless they have been utterly bereft of love. We are at a point in history where we could make a different choice… unfortunately it seems the government can only see one way the old way and repeated way. More reason for those of us who know love to our bones and beyond actually live this to inspire and show there is another way to live.
And as long as there’s an enemy ‘out there’ to fight, true problems closer to home can be ignored.
Oh we’re masters at looking the other way, in fact our whole society is built on ‘looking the other way’. Distracting ourselves is our national and in fact international pastime, which is why we’re all in so much strife. Ain’t nothing gonna get sorted by looking the other way, we have to turn our gaze inwards and get honest, really, really honest with ourselves.
Vanessa when we uncover so ‘called war cycle’ with the Middle East for over 50 years, you find there is method and pattern to it. Wars are often created to keep things exactly as they are, the public from really knowing the true background story and the arms industry in business
Exactly so Kehinde.
So well said Kevin, my parents grew up being very familiar with talk of war, my great aunt and grandmother experienced war. Being a refugee is not exclusive to class or gender, nationality or religion it could happen to anyone of us.
If people are committing genocide, gang raping children, torturing others and doing all the things they are, the answer is not to say ‘oh let them do it, better to spend money on doctors’. Imagine if Churchill had just said ‘oh let the Nazis gas all the Jews, I am not a Jew, better spend the money on our roads’. If you consider that at essence we are all one and from the same Divine source then the question really is; how far have we fallen and what is going on that we have wars and refugees and need weapons?
I love the level of responsibility you address here. We can’t behave in such a way, that the topic refugees has nothing to do with us. The refugees are a great reflection of – something is still not right on this planet. If we would have only love, then we wouldn’t have refugees. So where do we still behave lovelessly, that something like this happens ? Your sharing is a great reminder, that we all have a global responsibility to be able to live true brotherhood.
I agree Alexander, I feel we certainly do have a responsibility to live in true brotherhood. It is something very natural in us all but we have managed to deny this part to the extent where we feel so separate from others and to a degree where we are turning people who are in great need of love and support away so easily.
Succinct and to the point – “we have a global responsibility to … live true brotherhood”. So the question then cannot be: what are we going to do with this problem called refugees? Rather, it has to be: what are we doing that creates pockets in the world that desperate people have to flee from? What is our shared responsibility here? What are we missing?
‘If we would have only love, then we wouldn’t have refugees’ – Very true Alexander. The ‘refugee crisis’ exposes so much for the whole world… Before, many Governments/Countries were able to ignore and avoid looking at the destruction in Syria and countries nearby that our lovelessness and separation has caused, but now a reflection of this is literally turning up on their doorsteps. They can choose to either address it and make an effort to change, or push truth away and go on with ‘normal’, ignorant life.
Thank you Christopher for opening up the conversation on a much debated topic. To open up our shores, our homes first requires us to open up our own hearts and perhaps that is the issue in the first place. What if the politicians deeply connected to their inner-most heart what would they come up with?
Right now, living far away from a refugee camp, I am left wondering what I can ‘do’. What dawns on me, is that I can open up my home to my community as a place to be where everybody is welcomed and everybody feels equal. We can garden together, cook together, wood work together, in the knowing that these activities stem from love, harmony and equality, qualities that when chosen, spread like wildfire.
I love how you point out the term ‘refugee problem’, when it is not a refugee problem we have, but one as large as our humanity. If there are places in the world that people cannot inhabit, this is everyone’s responsibility. It is time enabled people that need homes to have better access to them. Yes this may lead to some societal chaos for a period of time, but is this not better than the many unnecessary deaths we see?
Instead of ‘refugee problem’, we are witnessing ‘ gross inhumanity towards those who are seen as different from us’ and ‘abject failure by governments (apart from Germany) to respond with love not fear.
Well said Amelia Stevens.
” If there are places in the world that people cannot inhabit, this is everyone’s responsibility”.
It’s true, Amelia, there is definitely not a refugee problem but a problem with how humans are treating each other, that is the real issue.
Well said Amelia. ‘Yes this may lead to some societal chaos for a period of time, but is this not better than the many unnecessary deaths we see?’ – The fact that so many Governments and people are struggling and fighting AGAINST refugees coming into their country just exposes the comfort that so many of us live in. Is one more mouth to feed really a mouth too many, considering rates of obesity? Is one more home to be occupied in the town just too much when the population is growing so rapidly anyway?
This is a small but very relevant point Susie, given the fact that most of us eat way more then we need imagine if we all contributed the money that we spend on over eating to the refuges we would probably be able to feed them all. Same with money we spend on other commodities that we do not really need and holidays we do not really need to go on and all the other indulgences that we would be better off with out, all could go towards supporting the refugees. It would be a win, win situation.
So true Mary-Louise there is so much excess one one hand and then not enough to go around, but many on both sides are bereft in the heart.
I agree, I also loved how Christopher brought awareness to the term ‘refugee problem’ which wrongly puts the refugees into a separate box, less than the rest when the problem is a global and we each are responsible for our part.
So true Fiona, I was at a local meeting held by the mayor and the bishop of one of the churches. The meeting was to open the discussion on community. They were talking about what a great community we have as so many had helped the refugees settle and a so called ‘refugee’ stood up and said ‘how many years do we need to live here before the community stops calling us ‘the refugees’. This woman had been living in the area for quite some years and felt it was time to drop that label. I could see her point. When are we going to see people as people first.
What a fabulous experience Kathleen, and how empowering for this woman to stand up and claim she is part of the community. We do need to drop all the labels we have for and on people…we are all people, all equal!
We minimise the situation and cap the potential to actually put an end to it by referring to it as a ‘refugee problem’. It is an ‘humanitarian problem’. To rename this would mean though that every individual would need to see that the world is one, united, that people are equal no matter who they are, where they live, what they do, what they look like, how much they contribute, how much money they make etc. The current world view is not that we are a one united race of people, but that we are all diffferent, we come from different cultures and these cultures must be protected at all costs. People champion different cultures, and in doing so, prohibit and forbid people to live together in the same country. By protecting this idea of ‘culture needing saving’, we have a ‘refugee problem’.
Well said Amelia. Calling it a refugee problem allows people to shirk responsibility and claim it is not their problem. This is indeed a problem for all of humanity to take responsibility for and to accept that we all have a part we can play in changing the way we treat all human beings at home and afar.
Christopher I completely agree with you, there is truly no difference between a refugee and either of us or anyone else in our family or community. In fact as many people liken family to blood lines then the Syrian refugees at the moment are simply distant genetic cousins, all related. I do find it strange how two individuals in adjoining villages in Uganda can call themselves cousins when the rest of the world combined share more similarity in their DNA than the two individuals in Uganda. The fact is the world has always been full of refugees and as you say the real question should be why – perhaps we are being taught that we are living on one world – where until we let go of the illogical notion of borders and countries we will always have suffering.
Very sensible and lovely to know other people feel this way too.
So true Nicole, more people need to speak up and express the love that they have for others so that the minority and fear mongering of the media don’t have their way.
And you have started a change Christopher by speaking up and expressing what is going on. I put both my hands up for being one of the bystanders you speak of, looking at the atrocities and saying ‘what can I do to change it?’ and then going back to my comfortable life that has not been rocked. There is so so much we can do to support change, before you mentioned welcoming ‘refugees’ aka human beings just like us, into our homes, it came to me also and I wondered how until now I had not considered that before. It shows how it only takes one person to speak the truth to inspire others to connect and see the bigger picture as well.
Love this Aimee because you could be speaking about myself in your comfort. I ask myself how have I, how have we become so complacent with what is happening on our planet, our home?
I can relate to what you are sharing here Aimee. When I saw the title of this blog I was looking forward to reading a blog about love and true support for refugees and felt that someone has taken a stand for them, yet didnt ask myself why I hadnt done this myself.
I completely agree with you Christopher and thank you for writing this blog. I have the same perception that we tend to treat the refugees as being a burden and a danger for our ‘safe’ and comfortable societies we have created for ourselves. Sharing this wealth with our fellow humans is the way to go, and as you say if we for instance all would take care for one or two refugees and help them to build a new existence in in our societies, there would be no issue at all but instead a building of love that cannot else than to be equally shared with all of humanity.
Christopher a much needed blog bringing awareness to a very current issue. “If we stop to realise that together as a worldwide brotherhood we could act to make changes together, to meet these fellow equal human beings with compassion, with love, honesty and respect instead of the way we treat them now, perhaps they would no longer be the ‘problem’ we all fear.” This says it all. We get so caught up in our own little worlds that we do not see the bigger picture. The refugee crisis is but one example of this. There is much we can do but seldom little is done. It’s time to take off the blinkers!
I agree Jenny, and taking the blinkers off will allow us to lovingly and respectfully take action.
not so much blinkers but great big blinds with black out backing! We really are much more comfortable with blaming and focusing on the ‘problems’ rather than take responsibility for our part in what has been created and bringing all of our love to everything, like Liane said early ” It is not the size of the drop that matters but the quality of the pool from which it was sourced. If this pool is love, we all win by virtue of the fact that there is nothing left to fight.” that drop with all the other drops creates a wave. A ripple of love that the world sorely needs to feel.
“Every drop, from the tiniest kind word uttered from a place of love to the grandest action, will help the world become a better place for us all to live in, together.”
Truly gorgeous words Christopher. It is not the size of the drop that matters but the quality of the pool from which it was sourced. If this pool is love, we all win by virtue of the fact that there is nothing left to fight.
Liane you are on fire with your comments – thank you for bringing awareness to distinguishing the QUALITY of the pool sourced from, is what makes true change possible.
“It is not the size of the drop that matters but the quality of the pool from which it was sourced. If this pool is love, we all win by virtue of the fact that there is nothing left to fight”.
I totally agree Stephanie, Liane is on fire with her comments.
“It is not the size of the drop that matters but the quality of the pool from which it was sourced. If this pool is love, we all win by virtue of the fact that there is nothing left to fight”.
Even the hardest heart would simply melt whilst reading these words.
“…even the smallest things can move mountains as our collective creativity knows no bounds when we open up our hearts to these societal atrocities.”
Such profound and simple wisdom in these words Christopher, thankyou. It is the love within our hearts that creates the space needed to do what needs to be done so we can all stand together, as One, once more.
I agree Liane, as Christopher says the ‘smallest things’ can make such a huge difference especially when we all work together and do them. When we unite we can do anything yet when we stay isolated and separate in our own homes not taking equal responsibility for being a part of humanity we allow suffering to take place. No one should suffer any form of abuse. I am not saying we should bail everyone out or void them of responsibility rather we should offer them a choice to take full responsibility for their lives by empowering them. Not doing it with the handout mentality of you can’t do any better, whilst at the same time somehow seeking recognition because you are doing good and ‘helping’ others. We are all the same irrespective of our skin colour, nationality etc.. and so are all capable of being truly loving.
We all are capable for being the love we are and showing this love to another human being in equality.
I am learning that in my own life Liane, if love isn’t expressed then I’m only looking for a solution and another issues will present in another way. Without love, its not it.
Beautiful! Thankyou for writing this. You have given us much to ponder on. What is our actual relationship with people outside of our comfortable little bubble? And do we consider that yes the fact is, we are all family and our issues won’t go away until we dress them with that in mind. Something is clearly not working if we have refugees in the first place, and there could be a better way to deal with it.
I wonder how we would all cope if it was us? It is so easy to stay in our own bubble and think it is not on our doorstep so we can’t do anything. But we can and this blog really gives us an opportunity to see how small things can make big changes.
Yes great point Lucy…what if it was us or our family/friends in this situation? Do we need to wait for this to happen to take action? Seeing everyone as our brother and sister would be a good start here…
Great point Marika – this is fundamental to the changing of the attitudes we all hold so stubbornly in our own corner of the world.
I agree – we have created a mindset where we don’t want to look at it or deal with it if it doesn’t upset our little bubble of life. But if there are wars and distresses and horrors occurring in this world, if doesn’t matter if they are 2 miles away or 1000 miles away, we cannot ignore them, nor the people fleeing for their lives and seeking shelter and safety. What do we as a humanity teach them if once they have fled their home which is now in the grips of war or unrest, they come across fear, hate, mistrust and separation. We cannot let the horrific actions of a few make us walk away from and forget out strongest weapon, which is not fire arms or nuclear weapons, it is not fear and it is not hate, it is our ability to stand as a united front and say no to the abusive and destructive behaviour, and keep loving in the face of evil – not just our family and friends, but everyone.
This reveals a deeper aspect of what we need to look at as a human race. The answer is not to give from a place of ‘I’m trying to help because deep down I feel sorry for someone less fortunate than me.’ The moment we feel sorry for someone we’ve cut off from love. Love knows and sees everyone as equal regardless of circumstances or any other difference. It offers care and support always in the knowing and holding of empowering the other to come to a place where they can see if they want to, that they are always responsible for their own choices. The ‘have’s’ and the ‘have not’s’ come from the lack of love, and from expectations and a drumming in of the idea that there are victims, losers and winners in a dog-eat-dog world. There would be none of this if the world we lived in was based on love.
Great comment Katerina, feeling sorry for people who are ‘less fortunate than ourselves’ doesn’t help one bit. The ‘poorer people’ will feel the sympathy and pity and because there is a deep knowing in everybody that we are all equal with one another, they will demand equality through human life – material possessions which as Mary has seen first hand is another ugliness. It is the lack of self love, self worth, ideals and expectations that have created a world without much love in it, and has indeed led to the winners and losers situation that is everywhere.
Having refugees in our countries is showing to us that we cannot turn a blind eye to this situation any longer. Everything we hold against it is showing our lovelessness. We have much to learn here and we can heal this with love for another.
Thankyou for opening up this conversation Christopher. There is a great power, wisdom and simplicity that you bring to this ‘problem’ of refugees. It seems that no matter what country we may live in, we make it a ‘problem’ so that we can busy ourselves finding solutions, all the while ignoring the real issue here which is that we are love and as a human race we are yet to live it in such a way that we cannot and will not allow such atrocities to exist in the first place. This ‘problem’ exists because we have conditions on love, such as ‘I will love you if I don’t get put out in the process’, ‘I will love you so long as my comfort is not disturbed’ or ‘ I will love you so long as you don’t ask for anything in return’ etc. We have war because we have borders and because we seek to own what can never be owned, only shared – our love. Bereft of this love, there is only greed; the perpetual drive to satiate the hunger of the ‘little self’ no matter what is going on for anyone else.
I love how you have brought us home to the truth that we are not owners of this planet but custodians of it. Love is our greatest responsibility and in this our every brother must be held as an equal point of light here on Earth in order for us to arise out of the darkness that humanity has slumped in for so long. For in-truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts.
I love and relate to all you have expressed Liane. There is separation everywhere if we truly choose to look, borders between countries, nationalities, gender, sexuality, generations etc. Seeing ourselves as one, and equal to all others is a needed step in addressing any issue.
“Seeing ourselves as one, and equal to all others…” We are after all, all human beings underneath, regardless of where we live, the colour of our skin, our religion, gender etc. It is this definitely that we need to remember and give more focus to…
“For in-truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts” resonates strongly in me Liane as that to me is exactly how it feels to me too. Feeling as a refugee, bereft and disconnected of all that we love and need that much in our lives. Missing the connection with the love we walked away from gives the same feeling as ‘the refugee’ shows us today. The reflection that the increasing numbers of refugees give to us is one to truly consider as it touches very deeply into our beings. To me somewhere we have the tendency not to go there and to keep it something that is outside of us. But when we truly consider that we are all the same, lost and bereft of the love we all know deep inside we belong to, and that the only way to return to the Oneness we belong to is to live in brotherhood, we have to start considering that all what is happening is because we live in disconnection with each other, while our origins lay in living in brotherhood, living together as one big family.
We are all refugees, yes we are as we are not from earth, but on earth and our true home is very far away. We are diverted refugees as we individualized by seeking creation and forgot our oneness and universality. Now we try to own a planet that is not ours and think we have the right to deny our equal brothers access to the “safe” spaces we incarnated in in this life forgetting that tomorrow we might be the once looking for shelter. We can only get back home to our divine origins together and in unity and this has to be first expressed on earth.
Beautifully said Rachel, we are not form here, but are here on earth. There is nothing to own anyway, only the responsibility to act as one group, as one humanity, to be love and return to where we come from: the divine.
Rachel I love the expansion of the truth of this situation, not only do we not own this planet we are actually all refugees on this planet which so lovingly supports us on our way back to reclaiming who we are – Love. Ironic that we have been spending our time squabbling and trying to own bits of the planet which is the exact opposite to the love and oneness we are from. The points raised in this blog and the comments shed important light on this issue.
Very well said Rachel! We don’t come from Earth, we don’t own the land anyway, it’s impossible.
Rachel this is so beautifully expressed. We are all refugees here, as we are living far away from our divine origins. To go home we need to be in unity and express collectively together for the consideration of the all. We are a long way from this as we currently live; choosing instead to better ourselves as individuals and protect our bubbles of safe haven by shutting out others. Where is our warm welcome sign to all on our front doors?
The welcome signs need to be on our chests not our doors, rather than the current placards that we have hanging around our necks saying ‘keep out, trespassers will be prosecuted’. In the last few years I’ve ditched my placard and replaced it with a ‘welcome’ sign, it feels so much better than it did before.
Rachel, Huge beautiful and true are your words. You mind I put them on Facebook together with the blog?
I love what you shared here Rachel. It is really showing us that borders don’t really work. We are all one people, all the differences of nationalities, culture and such are all man made. None of this exists when we are born. We come the same way, and come from the same source, with the same hearts. Boundaries are very old era, and we will really have to look at how we can live as a part of this Global Village we actually live in; to see each other, everywhere as our neighbour, friend, even soulmate.
Rachel lovely perspective of the fact it’s not our true home, we are all refugees searching to find our true origins.
Beautiful Merrilee forever seeking running from our hurts, looking to hide from the world and ignoring our true origins.
So very well said Rachel. It is but by a twist of fate that our homes are safe. We think we make them safe by locking our borders and denying people access, but all we are doing is in fact generating our own breeding grounds of hatred.
We do this on a national basis, and we do this at a very personal level too. We shut our hearts to people imagining we are keeping ourselves protected. The result is that we make a barren wasteland inside ourselves where once loved thrived in glorious abundance.
Life is about openness and care. That is what evolves us and develops our true intelligence – the intelligence of the soul.
To be otherwise makes small, mean spirited beings of us all.
So true, Rachel, we cannot pretend to be safe in our world of hatred by shutting people out. All we do is create a deep empty place filled with hatred and anger. I think it is time to really stop this behaviour and allow bigger community living, we all will have to live here together, so why not deal with our hatred and anger by allowing love and caring for another.
it is confronting to do so Monika. It calls upon us to be ready and willing to drop the fiction that we are “nice, decent upstanding citizens”, when all too often we are not.
We have the potential to be that, but first we must empty our pockets of their hazardous contents: hatred, judgement, racism, superiority, defensiveness and presumptive thinking.
They gather like lint in the corners where we don’t want to look, much less clean out.
There is nothing more liberating than seeing these things, for the end we do discover how beautiful we are, free of the loaded, lint filled pockets.
Beautifully expressed Rachel, we make ourselves so much lesser by the barriers we put up between us, metaphorically and very real. To label people from another country as refugees takes away from the undeniable fact that we are all made of the same stuff, we all come from the same place. When we connect to that fact it makes a mockery of the values we hold so dear, the culture and nationality that we devote our identity to and the religions we use to separate ourselves with. There is a deep rooted fear that gets spread that refugees will turn our world upside down, there will be crime and overcrowding and our quality of life will diminish, but what quality of life do we really live if we are so shut down to helping another human being.
We fear they will bring ugliness to our shores. Well, it is already here in the strident voice that says “go away, you are not wanted”.
Beautifully said Liane ” For in-truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts”.
Yes, this is pure wisdom, I love this.
And one day we will all come to know it as fact. All of the misery and creations of this world lay outside our inner hearts, and all we need do is return.
Yes that line stood out for me too…send that line to government and see how they respond!
Yes Elizabeth – this is beautiful indeed and truth in expression.
“For in-truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts.” Beautifully expressed Liane Mandalis.
Yes gorgeous observation! It is ironic that when many of us try to keep others out in protection of what we feel we possess, whether it is land, jobs, culture, religion and so on we are indeed refugees from the love that we naturally possess and the naturalness we have of letting others in. I don’t know of any child born that closes his heart without having first been imposed on – this is something that is learned – this is not our natural state.
Exactly! No child hates another child, really – unless it was imposed onto it. It is a form of protection keeping people out of our hearts, thinking we can protect us from getting hurt again, but the real hurt is the isolation and empty place inside that gets filled with hate and fear, not a nice way to live.
I am in full agreement with what you have expressed so beautifully in your comment Liane Mandalis. The gap between our ‘little self’ and the true Divinity we actually are in essence is very wide and we have much to reclaim to re-store true brotherhood on earth.
“We have war because we have borders and because we seek to own what can never be owned, only shared – our love. Bereft of this love, there is only greed; the perpetual drive to satiate the hunger of the ‘little self’ no matter what is going on for anyone else”.
I very much appreciate that Christopher has opened up this topic for conversation too because surprisingly, I don’t hear many people talking about it out in the world, and that may well be because in Australia we’ve placed refugees in remote areas – out of sight. I love what you’ve brought to this Liane when you say “For in truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts”.
I had the experience of living in a place where refugee boats were sent. Within this community there were mixed views. Some were very supportive of those seeking refugee and others didn’t like the ‘interruptions’ they saw that it had on their lives. In many ways the latter was perpetuated by some departmental decisions that were made that did not support the coming together of people and further perpetuated the tensions such as rise in rent and food costs.
However, one day when the seas were extremely rough and a boat full of refugee people was being smashed against the razor sharp rocks of the coast line right in front of local people’s houses, the true humaness of people started to show.
When you physically see the suffering of others its difficult to watch and do nothing.
People in the community had to work together in an attempt to rescue those drowning and being thrown against the rocks and killed as their boat was smashed to pieces. All prejudices and hate was put aside as many worked together to help others. It is sad that it needs to get to this level of tragedy before it opens the heart of people enough to take action.
Yes Jet, it is very sad, but true, that it takes some form of tragedy or a catastrophe to open our hearts enough to take action to help each other as fellow human beings.
You speak from my heart, why does it take this level of disaster to make people responsible and care for another. This natural in built quality we all have – to care for another.
Refugee: “a person who has fled his or her own country and cannot return due to fear of persecution”. What if, as Liane has shared, our true home is our heart and the love therein? Do we fear to return there? Do we fear being persecuted for returning to our most natural state? Love?
All of the indications in this world are that yes, we do. We play the games of racial/social/political/spiritual/religious/financial divide, pouring our all into differences that are less than skin deep.
Yet inside we beat to another rhythm. It the the pulse of our true home, the one from which we fled to fit into a story that leaves us all aching and yearning for its tender hold.
Whilst we have not seen that we are all indeed refugees, escapees from our one true home, we will never be able to extend a loving hand to the people who are fleeing atrocities in this world. How can we do so when we are not even decent and respectful to our neighbours our families and ourselves?
The refugee crisis is calling on to bring more than the usual clever bandaids. It is asking us to look deep within ourselves and the social structure we have made that keeps itself propped up but offers nothing of true love or evolution to the people who constitute it.
All that we are being presented with here, in the form of the overflow of refugees coming into the countries, is bringing up all the hidden and numbed lovelessness we hold for ourselves. It is so obvious that the world has lost its place, and people are coming to reflect to us what we are living, the lovelessness and homelessness but really from the inside.
Time to make a change, time to make love the way!
I so agree Monika. The refugees are bringing a reflection to countries, many of whom wanted to believe everything was fine, that all is not fine. Countries’ disharmony is being exposed and this is driving a fear that there aren’t enough resources to go around so a kind of hoarding mentality is becoming more apparent/ extreme. We are being asked to completely change our ways – no more looking out for oneself and family and friends; but looking after us all as one in complete respect. There is no divide.
Rachel I love what you shared in your powerful comment. As I live in a country which has taken already nearly one Million refugees this year I cannot ignore the problems that came with it. I agree” this refugee crisis is calling on to bring more than the usual clever bandaids.” Those clever bandaids would not stop that there are still more Million refugees waiting to find a new home. We have really waited too long to allow ourselves to see and feel that we are all responsible for what is going on in this world. We as human beings seem only to learn it the hard way . . .
I cannot imagine how confronting this is Ester, although I live and work now in a town that has received a steady flow of refugees since the 1950’s, and continues today.
The sense of “mine” comes up when we see so many people not raised here – “my” land, “my” home, “my” resources, “my” economy. They are “my” birthright.
What shallow right that is to exert. Perhaps we need to look again at those photos, first taken of the Earth from the moon in the 1960’s. That is “our” home, “our” resource, “our”only home.
Let the borders and that style of ownership be exposed for what it is when we place ourself in the context of the one we truly are.
“For in-truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts.” now that is the truth Liane, beautiful described! When we really connect to what we have left behind for some house on a street on this planet it suddenly feels quite the opposite of something to want to protect but rather to pull down and let all boundaries and boarders go that exist between people.
Brilliant – “we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts”. And some of us live this out in relative or a lot of comfort and others in atrocious circumstances. But we are still the same, regardless.
Indeed Gabriele, it can look so very different in the circumstances but be exactly the same energetically, living in exile from our true home.
Beautifully put Liane, the world is becoming smaller so we had better learn how to live together.
Absolutely agree Liane, “the real issue here … is that we are love and as a human race we are yet to live it in such a way that we cannot and will not allow such atrocities to exist in the first place.”. Conditional love is not love at all – it just provides us with the illusion of safety and comfort and keeps us blind to the truth of what is going on. Bravo to Christopher for drawing back the curtains and starting the conversation.
Bravo indeed Hannah and so true when you say “Conditional love is not love at all – it just provides us with the illusion of safety and comfort and keeps us blind to the truth of what is going on.”
I do welcome all the refugees and support providing them the love and respect they deserve, holding them as equal brothers and sisters. They should see and feel that unconditional love is possible and that we can support each other in many ways. I would love to communicate and connect with families coming as refugees. I am very inspired to take action.
I agree Hannah, conditional love, is not love at all. We are born of love, pure, without conditions and totally innocent, then taught to not be, until as adults we are so far away from that innocence and honesty that we don’t know(remember) what those things truly are, and, we don’t know who we truly are because the truth of who we are can only be found in the innocence we once had, the innocence that is still there buried beneath all the hurts of lives lived. We are all taught to be individuals, that we are different from everyone else, which is a complete lie, we are all the same, the same value to society, we are all brothers and sisters of the one brotherhood called humanity. This focus needs to be turned around, we need to focus on becoming a true brotherhood, all equal, and equally valuable members of a global society. Learning, re-discovering, giving and receiving true loving communication, meeting everyone as you would be met yourself without any form of judgement or jealousy and with true appreciation. Absolutely everyone!
We in the West have become so individualised, so identified with our possessions, comfortable lives and political system that it is difficult to reconnect with our humanity. The idea that borders and nationalities have to be preserved against possible ‘invasions’ shows our far we have strayed from the brotherhood that we all come from.
So what a divine blessing it is that we have the opportunity now to take care and hold them in the unconditional love we know inside. It is our great chance to get it right this time. No more hiding and ignoring, but holding them in equal love and not judging them. There is enough space for all of us.
Brilliant Liane..
‘Love is our greatest responsibility and in this our every brother must be held as an equal point of light here on Earth in order for us to arise out of the darkness that humanity has slumped in for so long.’
Reading this I can help but to feel love is inclusive of all, always – letting each other in is our greatest power.
‘For in-truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts.’
Love it Liane, powerful statements that show the true responsibility we each hold to be and live the love we are.
Beautiful Liane. “We are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts’. These words have resonated through and through — because they are so deeply true. When we refuse to live our love, we live with the enormous pain of not doing so instead, and we try to numb it in whatever way we can — sugary foods, starchy foods, entertainment, alcohol, possessions, and creating a space for ‘me’ where no one can hurt me ever again. And perhaps the pain and desperation of another reminds us of our own pain that we’ve tried so hard to bury and numb out, so we’d rather shun it from our sight and reality and say that this kind of person does not ‘belong’.
A very powerful sharing Liane, this needs to be a blog in its own right and the foundation for the United Nations Agreement.
Beautiful Liane “For in-truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts.” Lack of love is the problem and love is abundant as this is who we are. The world situation reflects just how crazy the whole set up is.
True Liane, and the war in the world is a reflection of the war within ourselves, and the holding of the world to ransom because it has not loved us in the way that we have refused to love ourselves. Anything other than true love will only escalate and add to the misery of the world, and so the responsibility for all of us is to allow all the love that we are to be and hold every other in that equal love..
Liane, we are all deeply loving beings at heart, yet living a long way from this and in our political systems love is never allowed to prosper. It is disingenuous our readiness to go to war always as our first solution, yet this never considers that in order to not have future wars we need to bring more equality to our planet. If we truly wanted there not to be another war, another refugee crisis, suffering, misery, pain, children dying, we could make this happen, but to do that we would have to deconstruct the systems of governance, our ideals and beliefs surrounding our culture and religion, and remove the identities we so strongly hold with being so many different types of people on the one planet. We are not different really but we won’t enact change until the illusion that we are is broken.
Liane, it’s very exposing what you’re sharing, and therefore so very needed to be heard. We cannot deny that we do live in a lot of darkness here, with a lot of hurt and pain and disregard for ourselves and others. Refugees is another reflection of that, so we can not ignore the fact of this lovelessness any longer. And it will just get bigger, it’s not going to go away, so we do need to address this situation of so many people feeling they don’t belong, and that they are not safe, always remembering that we, all humans on this planet, are absolutely equal in every way.
Liane this is so powerful – the world is a refuge for the lovelessness we have chosen over the truth – the fact that we are all from love, divinity and God.
I love all that you have expressed Liane, and I feel to reprint these last two sentences for the love, truth and wisdom held within. “Love is our greatest responsibility and in this our every brother must be held as an equal point of light here on Earth in order for us to arise out of the darkness that humanity has slumped in for so long. For in-truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts.”
Yes so true Liane your every word and yes ‘ For in-truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts.’
Indeed we do have war because we have borders. Because people are so busy guarding their own patch of dirt. But I keep coming back to if people knew they were more than the human body they stand on that land with, would their be such a need to ‘own’ something? People are severely missing something and that is themselves and their connection to every other person, every refugee, every person of different religion. Finding that connection again is imperative to solving the refugee crisis.
‘ For in-truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts.’ Powerful, true and beautiful Liane.
Beautiful Lianne, “we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts”.
I love to repeat your words that resonate within my heart “Love is our greatest responsibility and in this our every brother must be held as an equal point of light here on Earth in order for us to arise out of the darkness that humanity has slumped in for so long.”
Absolutely Liane, I agree, “for in-truth, we are all refugees when we refuse to live the love within our hearts,” which is an energetic choice and when we choose to be love, everything that is not love, starts to be dealt with.
Could it be by showing love, true understanding and reading the situation so there is no judgement or imposition, we get an understanding of what each and every situation requires? Maybe this is the only way to help us all evolve.
You speak true words, Christopher. We all are asked to face our attitude with this matter. Even ignoring it is a way of dealing with it. In this case it is obviously saying “I’m fine with it as long as it is not concerning me”. An active support can be done in many ways. That is true. And one is for sure addressing the fact that we are all one big family. A family of 8 billion sharing one home: mother earth.
This is so true Christina, we are one big family sharing one big home.
Ignoring what is going on with these ‘refugees’, our family, is probably the worst thing we can do, to chat about them as if they are not are sister or brother. If we all see them as our relative, we would never be ok with this situation and never sit back and not act.
That’s it – back to separation again. When you put it like this ” If we all see them as our relative, we would never be ok with this situation and never sit back and not act.” .. it puts a real perspective on the whole thing, because we would move heaven and earth to make a difference.
well said Laura. You are correct when you say that if we all could see them as our relative we would never ok the way these people are treated or spoken about.
That is a great point made Christina that ‘ignoring it is a way of dealing with it’ the fact now is we cannot ignore it, we have been for 3years or so with this particular war, it is now in our face and we can’t ignore it! Which is a good thing as it is forcing us to look at our part in it all.
Ignoring these situations is just another solution which only ever works for a short time. Just like aggression through war acts or peace making agreements are only ever temporary resolves.
Big time – and we all have to look at this huge issue now, we cannot ignore it any longer.
Christopher what you have written here is so very beautiful and insightful. It is true, what if we did meet these refugees with love and care particularly after the experiences you mentioned. Reading in summary the attitudes in society around refugees that you captured so well … gosh, it doesn’t sit well. Nothing about that treatment feels true or loving or supportive. Thank you for sharing.
Many of us stand up, donate money, clothes or food, that is as good as it gets, but next to no-one meet refugees with openness and love. We can help as long as we don’t have to feel the situation, staying within our own comfort. We need to take this a step or two further, out of our comfort and see it from a global community perspective, that we are all the same.
Ouch Christopher! It is so painful and shameful to feel the truth within your words. We bandy the word LOVE about so freely but do we truly understand and actually live it? Me thinks not.
A great point made here Christopher- “…see it from a global community perspective, that we are all the same.” Just goes back to brotherhood, how can we love one and not the other…
We all can start practising equality in loving everyone the same as we love ourselves, our best friend or partner, mother, father, pet or our children. Every human being has the right to be loved from another without being judged. Once this is lived we can all enjoy brotherhood again. Back to the original way – brotherhood can be restored, as we all come from the one same source.
Hi Christopher we cannot give another what we can not give ourselves.
We have to stop the self abuse and learn to love our self openly and lovingly first. This is our responsibility, to love and care for ourselves so that we are abundant enough in that love that we can share it with others.
Too true Kathleen, when we cannot love ourselves, we don’t have it in us to open our hearts to others, and to see that we are all equal, coming from the same source.
When seen like this Esther it is understandable that the refuge situation is really only exposing the level of separation and blame that is taking place worldwide. The way we treat refugees, personally or on a national level, is a direct reflection of where a person is at or where a nation is at in their acceptance of brotherhood and harmony.
Indeed to not come from the foundation that we are all the same in essence we inevitably do not treat others equally and put ourselves above or below another.
I agree Kathleen, the change that is required in the world today can only come about through our taking responsibility to stop the self abuse and learn to love ourself openly, allowing us to see and feel the truth of who we are, all of us equally, and living this truth and love in our day to day lives with all whom we encounter.
Just adding to my last comment. Having said that we need to love ourselves so that we can truly love another does not excuse us to treat people as they have been treated as refugees. It is inhumane and totally loveless. We need open our hearts and our borders. It is a situation at that moment that should call for us as an international community to rally together and address whatever needs to be addressed.
I love you phrase open our hearts and our borders Kathleen. So many of us have had a border set up around our hearts for too long, filled with mistrust and holding on to hurts from a few select people.
Yes Kathleen, we must start with a strong foundation of care and love for ourselves first, ‘we cannot give another what we can not give ourselves.
We have to stop the self abuse and learn to love our self openly and lovingly first.’
It’s taken me many, many years to wake up to the fact that I was living in separation from myself. There was my true self like a constant metronome ticking away in the background and then there was the made up me running around here, there and everywhere being this, that and another. So if most of us are living in this separated way then how on earth are we are going to see others as part of the United Whole of Us All if we can’t even recognise ourselves as part of that same whole? Not possible is it?
A very good point you highlight here Christopher, money clothes and food is all good and needed on one level, but what good is that money, clothes or food when given out of guilt, judgement, resentment, pity, obligation, to recognition?
What does it then come laced with and how supporting is it to these people?
Labelling someone as ‘refugee’ as if that is what they are and what they will always be and all the negative images that come with that is not going to support them one ounce if we are giving money, clothes, food to the refugee. People can change when supported and when approached as who they truly are and not a label that keeps them down.
Yes I agree Christopher. It is shocking and cold and loveless. There can be no excuse for treating another fellow human being in this way.
What this reflects to me is how disconnected we are not only to ourselves but as an international community. Where are we that this is allowed to happen? This needs to be a world wide discussion.
Great point you have reiterated here Christopher. We are great at “doing” – giving money and signing petitions etc. But when it comes to just “being” with another – actually meeting with another with “openness and love” and feeling what it is like for them, it seems there are fewer of us willing to be involved.
I am blessed Christopher to work in a community with a high proportion of refugees from around the world. I have met and worked with many Syrians lately and what a privilege it is to do so. Because I work in an area that is rather intense and provokes fear for many people (dentistry) what I have come to know is something very simple. For all of our cultural differences, we are all the same in body; we fear pain and we yearn to be treated tenderly.
A great equaliser is my profession, and a great joy it is to are for people in all of their vulnerability, knowing that they are my brothers and sisters, whatever their religious and cultural differences may be.
Yes Maree that is what struck me too. It is shocking how little we see what our actions reflect. To meet a fellow human being with the same horrors that he is trying to get away from is not what we would consciously choose but yet it is exactly what the majority of us is doing. Thank you for making that so clear Christopher.
Do you remember Germany meeting refugees with welcome and open arms recently … inspirational, but because it was new to the general consciousness of humanity, the rest of the world just watched and is still watching to see how this ‘approach’ will work in the longer term. It is to be hoped that the willingness to adjust (on both sides) will continue and evolve everyone and, by default, the rest of the watching world.
If we don’t have a depth of true love for ourselves we cannot love another — we can only share and give what we already have for ourselves. The attitudes towards refugees reveal how little true care and self-love there is in our society. Instead how we feel about ourselves en masse, whether we wish to be honest about this or not, is insecure. Hence the feeling of being ‘threatened’. If we had a foundation within us that was solid and built on love, we would simply not feel threatened and we would see another fellow human being in the need of loving support and care and offer this easily because it is simply how we are with ourselves. Love is a natural extension from self-love.
Spot on Katerina we cannot give another what we haven’t given ourselves.
Absolutely Katerina, you have summed it up perfectly with the following sentence. ” If we had a foundation within us that was solid and built on love, we would simply not feel threatened and we would see another fellow human being in the need of loving support and care and offer this easily because it is simply how we are with ourselves.”
So true Katerina and Rosemary as an international community, as individual countries and as everyday people of the world we are getting totally exposed for lacking this very foundation.
If society is unable to meet these refugees with open arms and open hearts then it is simply reflecting what you are so wisely stated Katerina: “If we don’t have a depth of true love for ourselves we cannot love another ” and until we know ourselves as being worthy of this love then we will continue to struggle to treat others with the equality we all innately deserve.
I know many people who would send the current refugees back again, I always remind them then of the same situation when Europeans where looking to escape from their land because of world war 2. Something is coming back until we have moved on with love and in unity.
Beautifully said Katerina, all the current news coverage about refugees is very exposing of the lack of self-love and respect we hold for ourselves and each other. It must start with us first so we can share with others.
That’s a great point Katerina, feeling threatened and protecting our little patch of what we call our country will only change when we feel secure in ourselves. This is like a play out of the protection we hold ourselves in and then there’s no room to open up to others.
What an insightful blog and at the end of it all, everyone needs love as that is what we are! As you said Maree, it doesn’t sit well when we read about attitudes in society.
I see the world protecting it’s own ‘plot’ so to speak; it’s like a giant monopoly game, where it always turns into fight over properties, who has the expensive ones like Mayfair and who has the cheap ones like Pentonville station. People are so full of protecting their material possessions that care of fellow human beings goes out the window and we end up with disgraceful situations of millions of people living in camps and detention centres for years. The system as we know it is not working, thank you for drawing attention to it.
Great point Suzanne, and I agree it is great that Christopher is bringing attention to this area as it is a seen that been portrayed for years now, keeping the refugees in their circle. It is clear that there is much work that is needed here and so starting the discussion on this is a great starting point.
We do love to have our possessions and comfort, that is what brings up the aggressive stance and hostility when ‘others’ want to change the balance of the system you are in, when something gets a bit messy and not white picket fenced looking all lovely and proper. We become like pack animals. It is all signs we are not with ourselves or our divine origins! We are shockingly separate and operating loveless lives in a merry go round that seems to fit the bill and satisfy ourselves enough to want to protect it with all our might. We are a long way from brother hood it seems but that is an illusion we actually have a choice and that is what we don’t want to look at.
There seems to be a fear of that refugees will take something away from us. Our jobs, houses, our nice ‘safe’ way of life. But if we gave them refuge, and worked to give them an even playing field worldwide, there would not be these terrible imbalances that drive them from the places of poverty and war they endure. And if we gave them love, that can never be taken away from us, the more we give, the more we have. Christophers blog is deserving of a read by governments religious leaders, corporations, everybody in fact, worldwide.
I agree Catherine, if we only dropped our guard down and let go of the security of comfort we at least could meet other with a certain level of respect and love, that would definitely change the world
I agree Catherine, what i understood after reading your comment was that we also have a part to play in the worldwide picture and imbalance of wealth and poverty. And that the richer countries profit from the poverty of having to pay low wages and lesser human rights condition. There is so much going on also in terms who is selling weapons to which countries and how much profit their is to make. All the countries who sell weapons support war in other countries. Which than leads to people have to leave their countries and the “problem” of “refugees”.
Catherine – I feel that society has mixed feeling about the refugees- some are apathetic about the fact hat it is a world wide issue that needs addressing- they would rather have their head ‘buried in the sand’, and only be concerned about their own lives.
Others may feel concerned but are unsure what to do about it.
And there are other people who fear the refugees, and see them as a threat- for jobs, land or worst still to as possible terrorists because of the desperate or mentally affected state most would be in.
I feel that we are all human- one flesh and blood. Therefore they need to be treated with some respect, compassion and love, and given assistance.
I agree Christopher’s blog sould be read by leading government officials, religious leaders and social support groups.
Thank you Catherine I love the simplicity of what you share here and this part makes sense..”And if we gave them love, that can never be taken away from us, the more we give, the more we have.” So if we are all equal and love, what is it we are afraid of the refugees taking away?
Yes there is a mentality that seems to override many peoples ability to feel what they know is true- that we are all equal- and it’s that there isn’t enough to go around; so, if one’s not to be left without like the refugees themselves, then best fight to protect one’s belongings. A kind of hoarding mentality kicks in – a more minor example can be seen when people rush the super markets hearing there’s a shortage of some commodity, or fuel.
Every man for himself, not working together so no-one goes without. People fear taking the first step, believing that if one didn’t take what they needed everyone else still would so they’d be the ones not to survive, so no-one begins the process. Highlighting how this mentality only leads to haves and many have nots is a start.
Well said sister. Well said. It is from our own comfort that we fight back and at each other.
Great point raised here. The comfort of our own home, the lifestyle we lead and the judgement of this not being our problem.
We sure do Vanessa, we even like to hoard so much, even though we really do not need them! The more we come together and unite the more we see that we are all in fact the same equally loving, tender and exquisite beings. When we treat others like equals they generally behave like equals whereas when we treat people like animals similarly they behave like animals.
James I’m feeling its up to us to lay the foundations of brotherhood for all to see and feel the reflected equalness … laying the choice for another to align. Behaviours will change but it’s our clarity and mistrust that has to shift.
You hit the nail on the head there James – if we treat people like animals they will behave like animals. It’s a sobering thought to see how much of what is wrong in the world we have projected onto it with our disconnected thoughts and assumptions. We are all the same underneath and if we actually took that leap to treat each other as equals, no matter how scary the other person may seem, I think we would be surprised at the huge difference this would make in the world.
Spot on James. We are all equally deserving of love .
Indeed James when people are threatened they will fight, flee or endure by freezing, the same as animals.
Well said Vanessa, it is our comfort we want to protect when we look at refugees as a ‘problem’, instead of opening our hearts and seeing that they are exactly the same as us, deserving to be safe and have their basic needs met and to be loved.
Yes we are very invested in keeping our little patch the way we want it. Whilst cultural diversity seems to be about embracing diversity of cultures, religions and ways of living, we do not seem to be able to go deeper than culture or tolerating differences. Have our beliefs around culture and religion covered the real issue that we are all the same in essence and that there is one universal harmonious way of living?
You are so right Ariana to say that it is time “to step away from the picket fence”. It is certainly a symbol, a demarcation line of what is mine, and saying that you will have to wait until I ask you to cross it. It is definitely time to tear down these manmade fences that keep humanity separated into so many, and often warring, factions. We are all sons of God and equal in his eyes, therefore we all have the same rights here on earth; rights to shelter, food and to be treated equally so in brotherhood.
Vanessa, I love the descriptiveness of what you express here, so often it is those who have so much that act so aggressively to defend what they have. It is as you say a clear indication that we have lost our way when we consider the plight of other people not of our concern and not our responsibility to provide support. The illusion is in the man made difference we create with race, nationality, culture and religion, but this is all superficial to the divine beings from the one same source that we all undeniably are.
Vanessamchardy, what you say here shows me that this problem with the refugees is really an extension of the way we live – the comfort of the “I’m okay Jack” mentality makes us “shockingly separate and operating loveless lives”. It’s true we do have a choice but we don’t want the responsibility which would bust our picture of stability and security.
I agree with much of what you say here Vanessa. Just the fact that we can quickly change to that pack mentality where we see others who are different as a threat, illustrates we were already on shaky ground. Our so-called foundations are not that solid after all. In a world where it is every man for themselves we fear our little patch may get taken because we have settled for comfort rather than standing for truth.
Beautifully said Ingrid :”We are all sons of God and equal in his eyes, therefore we all have the same rights here on earth; rights to shelter, food and to be treated equally so in brotherhood.”
Yes and it can bring up the fear of loosing the comfortable place that we have build around us as a protection to not lose our safety nest. The refugee topic is indeed shaking a lot of us to leave our comfort zone. For myself I would love to take responsibility and look for my part with it. We all can easy talk about what would be good and what we feel with it, but sometimes I still miss the connection and action in responsibility, I am sure there is a near place to get in contact with people and organisations that are supporting refugees.
Yes Amina to start the conversation is a start.
True Suzanne – the world as we know it is definitely not working in the harmonious way it could! It’s time we all as part of humanity began to take responsibility for this, realising that what one does affects us all, and if we all considered this, we would certainly be treating ourselves and others much differently.
Its interesting what we see on a global scale is often also a reflection of what plays out in personal relationships. People often defending their views, their ‘turf’ and this creates issues within the home. What plays out on a grand scale is a reflection of how we all live individually and what we are prepared to accept and not accept.
When we don’t look after ourselves or can be cruel, cutting or dismissive to a partner or loved one then we have no issue holding this view towards those we don’t know. However when there is a foundation of love in ourselves and in our relationships we also then see things like this differently.
Brilliantly said Kristy – how each and everyone of us are in our personal day-to-day relationships is directly related to what happens on a global scale. There is no separation – we are all one and the same.
A great point you make Kristy, and I agree with you Tamara- that the way the refugees are treated and seen all comes down to how we are with ourselves and the beliefs we hold.
Great point that you have made Kristy and this goes to show that self-care and self-love are paramount and the first step in addressing global issues. If only the politicians knew that it could be that easy. Address how people treat themselves and the bigger issues will naturally take care of themselves.
How we are with ourselves in our relationships with self and other people is the reflection for this actual refugee situation. If more people would get out of their comfort zone and opening up their hearts the fear, anger and hate could go, making space for the love we equally hold for another. This is the kingdom of God inside of us. How it all started and the root issue of the separation from our connection within, where we have left ourselves to stay safe and comfortable on the expense of truth and true love.
I totally agree Kristy and Tamara, you have expressed perfectly how I feel but struggle to put into words, so what you are saying is that the whole world reflects back to us how we are living in our personal lives and how we are in our relationships. which all comes back to the lack of connection to the love we have for ourselves. We are indeed one and the same, but are choosing not to see it because we would rather stay in our comfort and continue to bury our heads in the sand so we don’t have to accept responsibility for our own lives, never mind the lives of the many, who are also part of the whole.
A gem delivered here Kristy and Tamara – It is the separation that we have lived that keeps us away from all being one and the same. Once we begin to return to being a Son of God and thus Love, it is impossible to live in any other way but in harmony and fully embracing all equally.
You have raised a really important point here Kristy. If we can be cruel or dismissive to someone close, then those we don’t know don’t stand a chance. In the end all of these behaviours only really reflect the relationship we have with ourselves. When we take it back to this, it also allows us to see why we may be acting this way or why others may also be caught up in this way of relating.
Beautifully said Vicky. One thing is for sure this situation isn’t going away. We will need to start having more open discussion forums and communities will need to rally together to find homes for these people who are just like us, except that they are, as Christopher says, “in a state of total desperation”. We can help by starting, in our own relationships to be more tollerant and accepting.
Irena, I hear what you are saying but i don’t feel it is a matter of tolerating something, but it is a matter of accepting. Accepting others into our hearts – but first, like you rightly say it is about accepting ourselves and the grand love that we are, then everything else falls into place, including the plight of the many disenfranchised people of the world who are all part of our family whether we would like to admit it or not.
Yes Vicky, it helps to understand the situation much clearer. Also I am asked to accept that people are having to face and to really feel the creation in separation and all of that what we really are underneath it – that we are all the one and the same. This acceptance can get us out of this refugee situation, the learning like with every challenge. This here seams to be so big that ignoring it does not help any longer. I really can see the big opportunity here – to learn and grow – our evolution, and it is all just our own creation we get presented.
Gosh so true, we don’t stand a chance do we. The more we separate ourselves from each other, the more dismissive we can be. Quite often people talk poorly about other people and then when they are caught out / or overheard they feel bad about what they said. I know I have done that in the past. It is like a sense of anonymity or separateness gives us a license to not connect to the fact that we are all in this together and deeply connected.
Yes Vicky, accepting ourselves is linked to our acceptance of others. We don’t like to be reminded of the how inhumane our fellow humans are being treated. The plight of refugees in our news makes it un-ignorable and some resent the refugee messengers bring the reality of the lovelessness in the world to our doorstep.
So beautifully said Vicky, where do we be dismissive and abusive to ourselves, our relationship and treatment of others can only be a reflection of our relationship with others.
I wonder if seeing the refugees and the whole situation around inequality within the global community is so uncomfortable because deep down we know we are all responsible. We all have a part in it; we are far from immune from conflict – internally or with others. Our struggle to come up with solutions, resolutions reflects our own inability to heal our hurts and struggles within ourselves and our close family. I can feel that that the more I open up to love the more love is available for others to choose.
Kristy, your comment reminds me of the insularity of many communities, who would look down on someone from a town only a few miles away. It always amazed me how our view of others who at first glance appear slightly different to us can bring up such deep levels of mistrust. Yet as you say if we build a foundation of love within ourselves then it can melt away the distrust we have of people we believe are different to us. What serves us greatest is to realise that no human is really that different to another, all of us coming as we do from the same place.
Great point Stephen – within the county where I live the young people grow up with separation from those in neighboring towns and villages, with derogatory nicknames and conflicts between groups purely based on the location in which they live. Crazy when in fact they are all brothers.
So true Michael! This takes place all over the world with the separation noted in the suburb you live in, the clothes you wear to the food you eat. The separation runs so deep that it’s purely based on having a hold over another. The harm extends from your family to your neighbour and escalates when we see the plight of the refugees in our current world climate.
Well said Kristy we end the war of abuse in ourselves first then we are more loving and understanding of everyone else. This must start with our self or it will never have a strong and real foundation.
We ignore how we are locked in an inner struggle within ourselves, to live from our divine essence or continue to live from ideals and beliefs.
I agree Kathleen, the war within ourselves has to end first before we can embrace others.
Yes Kristy, a great point made here; how we are able to see refugees as something separate, is because of how we see ourselves often separate from those around us, even our loved ones. This dis-connection is a reflection then of how disconnected to our inner hearts, our essence, we actually live on a daily basis.
Kristy that’s it ! Its up to us to embrace and trust ourselves and fully look at what’s stopping us from having harmony in our own lives and in our communities. Are we happy with our lot and feel threatened by inviting others in to share our lives and why are we holding back in connecting with another? This is a reflection of the mistrust that has the us in seperation.
Absolutely true Kristy, how we live individually, the care and respect that we show to ourselves and others in our day to day lives is reflected in the catastrophes we are witnessing almost daily on a global scale. The changes must begin with ourselves by building a foundation of love through honestly seeing and nominating those traits within ourselves, no matter how seemingly insignificant, that create hurt, greed, comparison, distortions of the truth, abuse and injustice, these emotions, ideals and beliefs exist within us for the very purpose of creating and sustaining separation.
Absolutely Kristy. I am not solidly consistent in being loving 100% of the time but I have experienced extensive amounts of time where I have been deeply loving and considerate with people in my life having not allowed my hurts or reactions to dominate the quality I bring to relationships. When I am in this space.. it is impossible to discount or be untoward to another in any way.
Amazing Kristy. Yes when we open ourselves up to the world, we become aware of everything going on around us in big, beautiful and sometimes ugly ways. It is how we all live our lives everyday that creates a reflection of what is going on in the world today.
Well said Kristy, we can’t be abusive to ourselves and those close to us and try to help others, it just doesn’t work as you have said only when the foundation of love is present in our lives that true change can occur.
Very true. Without offering at least the same level of care and honouring to ourselves what we offer to another will at best attend to physical needs but never offer true inspiration or a deeper level of support to understand and address the true issues.
It is as simple as that Kristy, as how we live our individual lives with our families, friends and colleagues- in the same way we live as a community, a town and country. All is reflected in that: our relationships, our health, our financial behaviours. How we act when problems arise, our self-worth and our ability to see all in a bigger picture. If self-care, honesty and the willingness to evolve together is shadowed by our hurts and the denial to deal with them, then either personal not global problems will be solved.
That is such a great perspective Kristy. With global problems it is so easy to say “there is an issue, but it’s over there, it’s not my problem”. We can put the blame on politicians and disempower ourselves by not taking any responsibility. But, if we accept that global problems reflect how we are with ourselves and with our relationships, suddenly it does become something we need to take responsibility for. We each hold the power to develop loving relationships by first building “a foundation of love in ourselves and in our relationships”.
Simone – responsibility here is key – to willingly and openly look at what our part is in relationships and how we have been in them.
The fact is there is a global communication problem, not just with our immediate friends and family but with the world over. But as you say it all starts with us as individuals and then expands out to the all.
So we have to consider the quality of our relationships and what we have allowed and accepted.
So true Kristy, it starts with us.
Very true Kristy,
The real point of change must be first within ourselves and the connection to our inner heart. To act without this inner love and connection would be empty and void of any real love and change, hence the level of responsibility we all carry in being one collective brotherhood and the commitment to love ourselves determines the capacity we can truly love and care for others.
Well said Kristy. When there is a foundation of love in ourselves then we cannot treat another with anything less that that love.
Great point Kristy. And it’s so easy to look out and say what awful things are going on, but how are things in our home? This is a great place to start because as you say ‘when there is a foundation of love in ourselves and in our relationships we also then see things like this differently.’
Very well said Suzanne, when the government and politicians decide whether or not to allow refugees in, what they are really saying is, how is my lifestyle and comfort going to be affected by this influx of people needing money and support. But are we the ones that have given our power away to our governments who represent us, choosing to not get involved, rather sit back and then complain about there in-humane treatment or our and their fellow brothers, refugees?
Great analogy Suzanne, the Monopoly game. The game of greed and getting as wealthy as possible while guarding your own properties and crushing others
It would be a great step forward if humanity would discover what true wealth is, which is finding the love inside ourselves and seeing all our fellow planet inhabitants as equal brothers and loving them all equally.
Then ‘normal’ wealth is just a very pure substitute for this true wealth.
Great point Suzanne the system isn’t working and why do we value property over the lives of our fellow human beings? What Chris raises in this article is that perhaps it is time we dig a little deeper and see that “refugees” are in fact fellow man, and that maybe through true responsibility we may each begin to see the equal role we all share in this world.
We get fixated with material items and cheat and lie to our fellow human beings to get ahead in the race to the top when none of this brings joy, purpose or contentment. It is our connection to other human beings that does that, all human beings, equally so.
So true Fiona the material items in the end mean nothing as we are all seeking that true connection with self and others.
Great analogy Suzanne about how life can be likened to a game of Monopoly. And how many people once they’ve got their home on the square that they want to live in would willingly want someone to come along and put a block of flats housing 100 refugees? Looking out of my window now can I say that I would like that block of flats to be built next to mine? Nope, not really and that is what it seems to often come down to is ‘yes’ we want something done about the problems of the world, unless that is, it actually affects our standard of living.
Suzanne, thank you for exposing how we go about protecting our one ‘plot’ – the Monopoly reference is exactly what goes on – we become competitive, protective and take ownership of something that could be shared with others and opened up to others.
well said Suzanne. I can feel that alot of people even in my community are only concerned with what is within their fence and stand back if not affecting them or their family.
I agree Heidi, most of us only really care about those we call family or members of our close community, but how can the care and love we offer our family and close community members be of any true worth if it is not inclusive of all humanity. Love does not pick and choose, love either is, or it isn’t.
So true, Suzanne, and like Monopoly life is lived at the moment in competition. Every disaster around us is showing us that we need to change the game from competition to co-operation. And Serge Benhayon is showing us this game by way of the Way of the Livingness.
Great point Suzanne, it does seem as though people get very protective over the little patch they have claimed as their own and hold on ever so tightly, and usually there is money involved somewhere within the process. Like you have said the system isn’t working and it seems to me is calling for a greater response from the whole world, not just the odd country who is feeling overwhelmed.
Yes we all must draw attention to this topic – and it is about time that we break this cycle of hate, mistrust and pulling down the protection wall in our hearts.