Something occurred to me the other day when I noticed the U.S. flag was at ‘half-mast’ at my workplace after yet another mass shooting that occurred here in the States. We use this tradition to honour the victims of various acts of violence or natural disasters/accidents who live in our own country, and yet we don’t bat an eye and maintain this tradition when the same type of tragedies happen in other countries.
To me, due to the levels of violence, corruption, domestic abuse, wars, famine, illness and disease that currently exist on Earth, every nation should be flying their flags at half-mast if they truly want to honour that tradition until all these issues are healed throughout the world.
What the current model shows me is that each country in the world tends to consider itself as an individual, rather than an aspect of a greater whole, which it is inextricably interwoven with and connected to, with every action that we make as a person, state, government and country having a direct effect on every other living being on the planet.
This is not to say that we should go around trying to fix everyone else’s problems when it is each person’s and country’s responsibility to work on and heal those issues that keep them from living with true wellbeing, joy and harmony. But when we become insular and look at life through the lens of ‘me and mine,’ whether it be within our own families or on the grander scale of a country, it creates a scenario where we lose touch with the innate connection, sensitivity and love we have with everyone else, which is the thing we all truly crave, and which is our natural way. This then becomes a fertile ground for calculating actions and abuse of all kinds where we justify our greedy or self-centred ways based on a belief or ideal that we just have to take care of ourselves or our immediate family, business, country, even if it means that others will be suffering as a consequence.
Another outplay of this protected way of living can be the harmful expression of supremacy, where through a judgement of one person or group (namely ‘me and mine’) being more important or better than another, there develops a mode of protection, favouritism and eventually persecution of other groups of people. It usually begins with some kind of undealt-with emotional hurt that has never been healed. This can show up within families first and then spread to work and eventually to even government policy as one aspect of life cannot be disconnected from another because everything affects everything else. This is something that tends to be overlooked, as if people’s family life has no impact on their work life, which is the same as saying, “If I remove someone’s left kidney, it won’t have any effect on the rest of their body’s physiology.”
So as long as we maintain an individualistic and nationalistic approach to the world, to me this will guarantee that there remains an ‘us and them’ attitude, which will spawn all sorts of division and eventually sustain the wars that are still so prevalent, and which really start out as the wars within ourselves when we are resisting and fighting our true nature within.
As an alternative, we could one day fly one flag for the whole planet, one that represents humanity as a unified whole. How about a flag with a picture of a beautiful multifaceted star? After all, that’s where we all come from!
There is a real irony in the way in which flags have been used for thousands of years to designate certain tribal groups and eventually whole countries. And that is because even though the intention may have been to symbolise a sense of unity and brotherhood among these groups of people, in the end it has often resulted in a classification that has actually separated people and further cemented the divisions that eventually lead to the wars previously mentioned. It’s just another way to say, “We are different to you” instead of approaching life in a way that realises that we are all the same and from the same source. Perhaps through the acceptance of this true knowingness of equality, we will someday let go of any need to mark separate lands or separate people in any way by adopting our true heritage as Universal beings.
By Michael Goodhart, Aircraft Technician, B.A. Psychology, Lover of Nature and being playful with life, North Carolina, USA
Further Reading:
Our Diamond Within
How I Used my Mind to Protect Myself from Others
The Four Pillars of Evolution
75 Comments
It is so brilliant and important to expose the devastation of ‘them and us’ wherever and however it manifests. Thank you Michael. And the great thing is that each of us can break this pattern of thinking down by the way we live.
I love the fact that we are all cells in a Universe of oneness. But yet we keep ourselves separate, thinking we are individuals. Humanity has a way to go to realise their divinity and then we can raise the flag of multifaceted stars… love that.
Much can be learnt and observed from the way a human body is biologically formed. From one cell, a zygote, millions of identical cells are formed which then differentiate and specialise into different types that form different tissues and organs. But for a body to be whole and functional, all of them have to work in perfect harmony and unity with each other. The dysfunction of missing of one affects the other and the overall function and even survival of the whole body. This is symbolic of how individualistic, nationalistic or separatist living adversely influences the entire collective of humanity as a whole. We’re all linked like cells in a body.
A touch of beautiful, brilliant, inspiring science. Thank you Long.
Thank you for another cracker of an article, Michael. There’s much that’s been raised to reflect upon.
The individualistic outplay of the self could be observed in the recent and current disharmony and lack of unity in how collectively as humanity, we are dealing with the pandemic. In any crisis, we all have the choice to align to a particular source of intelligence which will then propel us forward as a whole to truly deal with the situation at hand.
This pandemic has revealed the ease at which humanity can be induced to hysteria, the pervasive manipulation of the media, the lack of coordination and coherence and preparedness by many governments and health systems, the selfishness and radical endeavours each person can make in seemingly difficult time, and so on. A crisis is an opportunity to expose what is truly there and what is not. There are pockets of harmony and brotherhood and sanity and true love around the world but vastly speaking, they are the minority. There are understanding and acceptance and observation and surrender to the plan but on the whole, most succumb and revert to their reactive ways of living, draped in the illusion of self-honouring while drenching in the comfort of self-righteous judgement of others. It is therefore in such time when all is tested and reveal where each person is at. That’s not for condemnation, but as a chance for each person to truly reflect on their choices, alignment, evolution, movements and way of living if they surrender to it. There’s no ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, and thus no judgement or criticism can, in truth, exist. As part of our evolution and growth, we’ve been taught to ‘respond’, not ‘react’; understand from the soul-full level and not the heady mental politically-correct agreement. And if a choice doesn’t come from love, there is no truth to it.
Love this Long. The pandemic also shows us how delicate the economic system is and how we go into meltdown when our security is compromised. The reality is we are not in control and we never have been. Time to wake up now.
Who had any idea before Serge Benhayon came along as showed by his movements (a vibration) that everything we say and do is an energetic vibration and these vibrations can be felt by everyone all around the world. I certainly wasn’t taught this at school or at any other point in my life. And many people can discount this as is their choice but what if it were true what if the way we lived effected everyone else around us then surely we have a responsibility to act in a way that was non harming to ourselves and therefore non harming to everyone else.
When we are flagging we are not our full self, or we can be flagged in / highlighted when racing around a track, flag, or ensign. Our cornucopia should be our normal way of being humble ( Soul-full) in all we do, no half mast but full of the true glory we all equally are.
With more of a focus on the energetic outplay of life, I experience that we are all the same regardless of where we are on the map. With less of that energetic focus, all I see is separate humans different to me.
I have recently observed some interesting differences in country culture regarding driving. For example: The UK has a; I need to be the first attitude, London has its own rules. On any given day there are road works, breakdowns and a plethora of other reasons that require us to merge into one lane and we bully our way into the merging land, and these actions create long tailbacks. In contrast, it was refreshing recently to drive in a different country when drivers would see the ‘road works ahead’ sign, and they would fall in line like shuffled cards long before the merge and traffic flowed. Their motorways reminded me of school and playing Dodge Ball, except in steel enclosers at high speed dodging everything. When crossing the border to a different country, there are models out there of brotherhood in action. It may be small things like falling in line to help all with the flow; it is a start.
Once upon a time, we may have used the flag to express our unity of the group. Then we meet others that were different but the same and what did we do; fight, flight, enjoin, or succumb. How often did we blend and accept the others and realize we all have something to bring to the group? We have become, one for all and all for one, and all carry our own individual flag. We don’t need mountain ranges or seas to separate us as we stand packed into trains on the way to work. Do we enjoy standing in queues everywhere? Why are we comfortable standing on our small island, separating us from the 7+ billion brothers and sisters we have, in the brotherhood of man that has never required a flag.
There are so many horrendous atrocities happening every day and yet we don’t bat an eyelid. How is that even possible, and how have we arrived at this place?
We say to ourselves that we are only one person so we cannot instigate change anywhere else in the world but what if we in our own lives spoke our truth about the atrocities we witness within our own homes, workplaces and within the community. This initially feels like a big ask but the first step is calling out the ugliness to ourselves and clocking what we feel.