The key to changing the world is to change ourselves. Be the change you wish to see in the world.
So many people want to change the world, but so few are willing to change themselves.
And this is exactly why the world seems to never really change, and only changes ever so slowly, rather than quickly becoming the radically more heaven-like place to live that we all seek and dream of. The only way to truly change the world around you, is to first change yourself. This is the only way the world will ever change.
Only those who have first healed themselves are able to bring healing to others, and only those who have found true inner peace are able to help bring about lasting peace on earth.
Even the most dedicated efforts towards peace on earth are futile, until there is peace within the hearts of those who would act.
Everything that arises in the world around you, outside of yourself - whether perceived as good or bad - is but a reflection of that which is already within you.
See Gregg Braden’s in-depth discussion on the 7 Essene mirrors for examples of the various common ways the outside world around us acts as a mirror reflecting back to us our inner world:
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
The quote is by Dr. Wayne Dyer, and quantum physics has begun to reveal this is one way the universe works.
By changing our perspective, expectations, beliefs, thoughts, feelings and how we react to the world around us, the world around us literally transforms accordingly.
Modern experiments have demonstrated that matter is literally changed by the way we view it, and acts according to how we expect it to act. Thus, when we change how we expect the world around us to be, by changing our beliefs about the world, and change how we view the world, the world around us literally changes. An in-depth exploration of the science of this concept can be found in Gregg Braden’s book, The Divine Matrix.
This change can evidently even include the physical transformation of the form of matter itself, as all physical matter has been shown to be energy vibrating at different frequencies. Our thoughts, beliefs and words are also all waves of energy vibrating at various frequencies, and as numerous other studies have shown, these thought/emotional vibrations and voice patterns create various patterns within matter according to their vibrations.
One such example was seen in Dr. Masaru Emoto’s water experiment, demonstrating how different vibrations created different crystal shapes within water. Peaceful music created beautiful shapes, whereas angry music created distorted patterns.
In the ‘rice experiment’, carried out by hundreds of people across the world with similar results, cooked rice that was ‘loved’ by being exposed to nice, caring thoughts and words for 30 days retained its freshness, while rice which was ‘hated’ by being exposed to negative thoughts, words and emotions in the same period had become horribly moldy and rotten and the end of the same time period.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
This teaching, as quoted here by Martin Luther King, Jr., can be found in various forms throughout most religions and repeated by numerous enlightened teachers and sages throughout history. It seems almost self-evident and yet is so foreign to our world, and has so rarely been put into practice throughout history even to this day; which explains exactly why we are currently still living within the vicious cycles of violence, crime, war, oppression, famine and chronic disease.
History has supplied us with ample evidence proving this point. There has never been a war capable of ending all wars, though the orchestrators of wars have made the promise. Violence always only begets more violence. Revenge never dissolves the pain in those who were originally wronged, and instead only increases the number of victims who are hurting.
The Buddha said: “Never is hate diminished by hatred. It is only diminished by love. This is an eternal law.” Gandhi taught and lived the same message, remarking that, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
And as summarized so eloquently by the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, we are admonished to live this higher way:
“Love your enemies, do good to those that hate you, bless those that curse you, and pray for those that persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father which is in heaven. For he makes his sun to shine on both the evil and the good, and sends his rain on the just and unjust.”
Only love and light - the energy of God, the Power that created us, the Source of all life - can bring peace and healing to us, the earth and those around us. Light doesn’t discriminate what it shines upon, but is available to all who are willing to bask in its light; and neither does love have partiality towards those which it extends itself to, but rather flows freely to all who are willing to except it. Universal love, not fear and judgement, is the only energy capable of healing us, our planet and this broken world.
Humanity is one. What is done to one person, is to some degree being done to us all. This realization is the key to ending all human suffering.
All the great masters, teachers and philosophers of the world have realized this truth. As Jesus taught the concept: “Whatsoever you have done unto the least of these my brethren, so you have done unto me.”
Martin Luther King Jr. understood that an injustice against any of us, is in reality an injustice against the entire human family:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
The solution to all of the problems plaguing humanity can be found in the simple revolutionary message long handed down - “love your neighbor as yourself” - however it is often quite difficult to love our neighbor as ourself until we realize we are all the same inside, and begin to see others as just another part of ourself, or see ourselves as residing within all others. Then it becomes natural, for how can you not love others as yourself, when you actually view them as yourself?
We are all one big family, coming from the very same Source, to which we will eventually all return. We as individuals are like the members of our body, though each individual is unique, all are a part of the same body, and we would not inflict pain upon one member of our body if was responsible for bringing us pain, so neither should we do the same to our brothers and sisters in humanity which bring us pain.
Like an aspen grove, which produces hundreds of trees, and yet is connected at the roots and is in actuality all one large plant unlike all other trees, so is humanity. When we demean or hurt or fight or kill our fellow humans, we are in reality just hurting ourselves, for we are all a part of the same whole. Though they appear to be separate individuals on the surface just like aspen trees appear to be a collection of individual trees above the earth, they are in fact but little branches of the very same plant of humanity that we are - all of us being connected to one another at a deeper level through the same source within us all.
Rabbi Shmelke in the 18th century gave a wonderful short summary of this concept in his response to a disciple’s question about how we are to love our neighbor as ourself if they have wronged us.
“You must understand these words correctly,” he replied. “Love your neighbor like something which you yourself are. For all souls are one. Each is a spark from the original soul, and this soul is wholly inherent in all souls, just as your soul is present in all members of your body...If you punish [your neighbor who has wronged you], you only hurt yourself.”
As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love." - Pythagoras
If we are ever to raise our consciousness and expand our awareness to the point of manifesting lasting peace on earth and healing among ourselves, we must change the way we treat the innocent animals sharing this planet with us. Like the Greek Sage Pythagoras, the famous Russian author Leo Tolstoy who happens also to be the major inspiration behind Gandhi’s message, wrote that: “As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.” Like Gandhi who followed in his footsteps, this lesser known pacifist of the 19th Century believed the spiritual path of nonviolence taught by Jesus must include not only humans but all living beings.
We cannot go on treating animals with such cruelty which we do not wish for ourselves - raising millions of innocents in cruel factory farms for the sole purpose of being slaughtered for our pleasure - if we truly seek to bring peace and healing to our world, our bodies, this earth and the people around us.
As Albert Einstein wisely remarked:
“A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.”