2014/04/26: During the last days the subject violence was very present with me. This came up when I went to a peace demonstration on Easter Monday. I did not feel safe there and left again. This had many reasons. Primarily it disturbed me to be surrounded by an armed police detachment. I found peace again after I had left and cycled over a bridge crossing the river Spree in Berlin. There I was able to take in the calmness and beauty of the river and the trees.
Days later I checked out the videos on Youtube to listen to the demonstration's speakers. One of these speakers was enthusiastic about having experienced such a harmony especially with the policemen. Why was it that his perception differed so clearly from my own?
I realized that I had to solve something within myself. I had created an enemy's picture towards policemen, a picture of fear because I imagined what would happen if they were using their weapons or their truncheons. The pure presence of armed people generates a picture of violence within me, almost provokes violence. Why should policemen be present if everything was peaceful? If policemen are there then criminals must also be there or violent people because otherwise policemen would not require to carry truncheons.
I remember another time when I was spending some time in a park. I had found a wonderful lonesome place to rest. Suddenly a police car appeared patrolling there. After that I did not feel safe at this lonesome place any longer. Before my mental eye I saw criminals creeping by the area because why would there be police if it was not so? I then left that place feeling quite uneasy.
Another time I was out with my bicycle and got lost. I then had to drive for about 50 meters on a pedestrian's way which was absolutely deserted. I ended up in front of two policemen who were busy putting up a radar camera although there was a traffic jam.
I did not comment on the reasonability of having a radar camera in a traffic jam and I did not want to get involved with the police. But the male one of the two had nothing to do while his colleague was busy with the camera. This policeman stopped me and inquired what I was doing there. I explained that I tried to cross the street but had to return to this spot because over there it was not possible.
The policeman had no interest in assisting me. For him it was far more important to point out that it is forbidden to cycle on a sidewalk. It was not obvious that it was a sidewalk though and absolutely no one was on it. Anyway, it did not matter that it was only 50 meters on a deserted way. It did not matter that I had got lost. All that mattered were his rules and to exercise authority.
I then quit talking to the policeman and wanted to cross the street but I had to wait for a little while because there was still stagnant traffic leaving no opportunity for crossing the street. So the policeman started to look ostentatiously at my bicycle from top to bottom in order to see whether anything irregular was to be found there. However I did not do him the favor of letting him find anything. I pushed my bicycle demonstratively between the slowly going cars and crossed the street.
Well, so this was my picture of the police: control, exercise of authority
and paternalism.
Of course there had been a time when I called the police in a dangerous situation
and I was glad they arrived. But over all I had developed a certain picture
of an enemy. I realized it when I heard one of the speakers of Monday's demonstration
talking about an allegedly harmonious situation with the police. Thus, peace
is also about discovering our enemy pictures, become aware of them and therefore
dissolving them and to avoid being provoked by them any longer.
When I left the demonstration it was not only due to the presence of the police. I also feel insecure in large crowds of people in general. In particular if it is about rebelling against something and one can feel subliminal outrage, fury, activism, and the like in the crowd. It felt like a powder keg to be ready for just someone to light a fuse to spark things off.
However I don't like being in soccer stadiums although I love watching soccer. I simply don't like being in emotionally charged conurbations in which people use the event as an outlet for their emotions. If the own team plays badly then the people are airing their frustration and if they score then suddenly everybody jumps around in pseudo joy which is sometimes completely over exaggerated. We far too easily let others determine.
Our emotions are a reaction to an external event. There is a saying: "Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow another person or event to control your emotions". But the opposite is exactly what happens particularly at mass events. If additionally the mood is heated up and people are animated for swearing then this can easily become an outlet for accumulated fury and aggression.
At this Monday's peace demonstration there were these subliminal personal fears present and thus I decided to leave the event and watch the speeches later on the internet. Additionally one could not hear the speakers very well over the loudspeakers and some people shouted 'louder'. Usually this is a comprehensible action to let the organizer know on how to improve the situation but in that case it frightened me and I had had enough. Particularly as I already knew the speakers and their message. It was not a matter of listening to them but to get an impression of the atmosphere on site.
From this experience I realized that I need to make peace with certain things,
e.g. with policemen, or with the aggressiveness of human masses. But it is
also important that more and more people realize how they are dominated by
others if they use mass events as outlets for violence respectively are used
to create violence.
When I watched the speeches later on the internet I was very excited again
and had a huge interest in the content and in the movement itself. At least
this was the case shortly after the demonstrations had started and where accomplished
each Monday.
Note: However, some weeks later I lost more and more interest because the quality decreased with the number of speakers, the content recurred. I did not agree with some of it and there was no result to be seen. Besides I did not like to be infuriated all the time, I rather wanted peace. My focus went back on being informed without permanently being outraged.
In April / May 2014 it still was in such a way that this event was strongly attacked and defamed by the mainstream media. According to them the speakers were extremists, anti-Semites, anti-Americans, brown esoterics, or just some bad people rebelling against a system which wonderfully functions in favor of all people.
However the fact is withhold that those people want peace and criticize a system which supports and promotes war. But as long as the media is paid by those which are criticized one cannot expect them to report objectively or to support the criticism.
Thus they defame and publish articles in such a rhetorical way that the masses get back on track again. Get back on whose track? The masses get back on the track of the system.
The possible violence that might come up at such mass events sooner or later
suits the system because then the media is proved right in calling those people
extremists who are prepared to use violence to destroy our prosperity.
But where does violence come from in the first place? Is it not inherent in
the system? Is it not even preprogrammed in some degree at mass events? Is
not an armed police detachment a provocation? Is it not even intentional so
that people cannot unite peacefully and gather together in large numbers?
Should a nonviolent atmosphere nevertheless originate, then it might be the case that troublemakers from outside are deliberately used to light the fuse and bring the powder keg to explosion.
One of the organizers mentioned behavioral instructions for such cases, e.g.
to sit down and protect the head to indicate one's peacefulness. A single
troublemaker can then be detected and arrested more easily. Difficult however,
if there are entire groups which generate violence to destroy an event, or
to even instigate wars.
Anyway, how to assess it all? I was told these frictions are necessary to some degree. The shift in consciousness takes place at many levels. More and more people find out about truth and accumulated emotions must free themselves, if necessary by volcano eruptions.
For me personally peace lies within observing and creating the emotion of peace. But it probably needs different forms. It needs such people who indignantly go out into the streets and it needs such people who keep the energy calm e.g. by mediation or other energetic means and a lot more.
Some time ago, in 2012, a gigantic stone carpet appeared in the ocean. Scientists could not explain why so many stones with the size of a golf ball swam in this form coherently on the water. They supposed it was caused by an outbreak of an underwater volcano. It was a formation of pumice in front of New Zealand roughly as large as Belgium. The media only reported briefly about it.
At that time we were having a seminar with a medium and we asked her to inquire the meaning of the stone carpet or maybe whether there was a message for us humans. She got the answer that it is a message from nature. Mother earth advises us people to unite like this gigantic carpet of these many swimming stones. Through this unity we become strong again and can return to our originality. Mother earth emits this energy and also influences us people with it.
Apparently more and more people link up over the internet, exchange ideas
and moreover agree on wanting peace. Thus the message from mother earth fits
quite well. Even if we have human groups with different opinions, different
approaches, or different characters, it does not keep us from agreeing on
a common denominator in order to unite and act in terms of peace and truth.