Overcoming Abuse In Our World
Humanity is caught in a never-ending cycle of abuse. One lifetime, we play the role of abuser and the next lifetime, we are the abused. The same thing manifests in this lifetime. We are either the abuser or the abused, and sometimes we are both.
We are lost in false power, which is the cause of all the abuse throughout history and all the abuse in the world today. As an inherent part of our awakening, we must discover the true nature of power.
At a deep and sometimes unconscious level, we feel powerless. This usually stems from childhood, when we were not allowed to truly be ourselves, and we had to comply with the will of our parents. In a sense, our innate sense of power was taken from us. It is not our parent's fault. The same thing happened to them and it is simply handed down, generation to generation.
We seek to escape this feeling of powerlessness by feeling powerful, but if the power we feel is in relationship to others, then it is false power.
If I need to feel better, stronger or more successful than another, then I am pursuing false power, and it will always be at someone else's expense. For every winner, there is a loser. Whenever the power we feel is in relationship to others, it is false power, and sooner or later it will lead to abuse. Humanity has been lost in false power, almost from the beginning of time, and our history is overflowing with examples of abuse. Our society is built upon a foundation of false power. False power plays into our relationships in so many ways. False power leads to war, famine, exploitation, and the abuse of our environment, children, women, animals and so much more.
For humanity to survive, we must awaken to true power. True power has no relationship with another. It arises from the center of your Being. It arises from an inner source, an inner font of infinite love, wisdom, strength and power. It is your very life force. When true power arises within you, the feeling of powerlessness from your past will simply dissolve. You will feel free. You will feel empowered to be yourself and express yourself freely and without limitations, and it has nothing to do with anyone else. There is no sense of being stronger or better than anyone else. There is no need to be stronger or better than anyone else, because you feel empowered from within.
With true power there is no possibility of abuse towards others.
True power can only arise when we are fully and fundamentally established in Presence. When we are present, we open into that inner source of true power. As long as we remain lost in the mind, functioning as egos, we will continue in false power and the abuse will remain.
There is another reason for the abuse.
We have been conditioned to avoid painful feelings. This conditioning began in early childhood. We learned to repress feelings like hurt, pain and anger. However, these feelings do not disappear when they are repressed, and sometimes they are quite near the surface.
One of the strategies we have developed to avoid feeling the pain repressed within us, is to inflict the pain onto others. It is a strategy of avoidance, which is widespread and appears in our lives in so many ways. It is another primary cause of abuse in our world. This can often occur in the relationship between parent and child, where the parent passes on the pain from their own childhood to their children, and it all occurs at an unconscious level as a part of this strategy of avoidance. In other words, parents do to their children what was done to them.
Most abusers were abused. It has been revealed that almost all serial killers have experienced terrible abuse in their childhood, and all of their pain, anger and rage has remained repressed within them.
If we are to overcome abuse, there will have to be a revolution in how we deal with our feelings and emotions. We can no longer afford to repress our feelings. We must feel and experience our feelings fully, but always responsibly, and this revolution must permeate every aspect of our lives and reach our children from the day of birth, if not from the day of conception.
We must come into right relationship with our feelings. We must awaken into true power. Only then will we end this never-ending cycle of abuse.