Love is Communication-1

Scandinavian crime dramas have become popular in the United Kingdom, and as I was watching "Arne Dahl" on BBC Four, a Swedish crime thriller series about an elite team of detectives, I was struck by how courageous it was in its storytelling. Not simply for the way it challenged the audience's stereotypes, with Jewish characters that look like Arabs sacrificing their lives for Iraqis that look like "terrorists" but are really the tortured victims of America's Central Intelligence Agency, but also for the message that we can come together as a team to bring about positive change.

We all want to see positive change facilitated around the world, but it seems that some individuals - what we have come to label as political "far-right" elements - have begun to rear their intolerant, nationalistic heads reminding us of what humanity has had to face in past decades. While Hungary's far-right Jobbik party staged a rally in central Budapest in protest at the capital's hosting of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) on Sunday, here in England, in council elections a political party called the UK Independence Party has made gains across the country.

Although UKIP is deemed not to be as racist or as far-right as some smaller political parties in England, it has based its policies on the back of minority-bashing (including migrant workers and the LGBT community), and it seems that a large part of the British public living in England wanting to find someone to blame, has latched on to their racist ideals. This is nothing new; it has happened time again in our history. It happened in Nazi Germany in the last century. Unless we shift our thinking, it will likely happen again.

It is often said we understand our life looking backwards, but have to live it moving forwards. Yet, if we made life about living in the here and now with the lessons of the past ever present in our minds, some would say we would be in less danger of repeating the mistakes of bygone eras in the future. But we are easy animals, we like the easy way out, and coupled with our faulty generational long-term memory, it seems we are condemned to live such scenarios out repeatedly.

For example, although we think we live in conflicted times today, the 14th Century is the most conflicted time in British history. The country went from boom to bust, ran into climate change, pestilence and famine, was involved in foreign war, and then the Black Death, the greatest catastrophe in history. It's a defining epoch where to the medieval mind the two great constants were death and taxes.

Then, as now, money meant social mobility, it brought peasants property, and even education and literacy, and it shaped the class system that the English have loved and hated ever since. Between prosperity and poverty, social justice and the fight for liberties were becoming the agenda of the day, and the road to women's equality especially, has been long and difficult, and not yet in some areas achieved, even in Britain.

But surely it is more than just a lack of education that makes us want to lash out at people different than us? Is if that we fear we can't communicate with those different than us, or that it would just be too hard to attempt to do so? Demonising those different than us is much easier, while communicative reaching out in itself is indeed an education. If we did take the less travelled path we would learn that although England might be in a recession, it's capital city London seems to be in an economic world of its own. Many in England feel London is on another planet because it is so heavily multicultural, built on that backs of immigrants as it is, but those working in London see it as a first-rate city with a second-rate country attached.

Although many hard-up counties in the England may find UKIP's immigrant-bashing policies attractive, they need to realise just what an immensely beneficial input overseas workers and students have had on the country. Instead of taking money from England, they have not only invested money into it, but they have contributed to its growth consistently in times gone by. Naturally, when anyone takes a good look at UKIP's policies, their policy of kicking out immigrants and fiscal ignorance will - rather than "get the country back" - likely bankrupt England quicker than any recession that could hit this summer, but what if they made sound economic sense? Would we find it acceptable to treat people discriminatingly simply because it was financially expedient to do so?

Read how to communicate with love.

Well, yes it appears we would, but should we? Not to make light of the economic situation - where one in five UK households borrowed money or used savings to cover food costs in April, a Which? survey says - but this isn't like intelligent shopping with coupons, where we cut out people from society we feel don't deserve a place in the country. Nazi Germany (and neo-Nazism) shows us what happens when we try to do that. But even if we didn't have history to fall back on, in these enlightened times shouldn't we instinctively feel that such policies are wrong?

Creating "bad blood" between people in times of hardship erodes civilised society into the law of the jungle, and it raises some uncomfortable questions about how we as a society have a hand in creating our own enemies, our own demons. Instead of peacefully co-exiting societies, we create ghettos, with studies revealing that white Britons are "retreating" from areas dominated by ethnic minorities. It is the epic salvo of superiority, of not feeling another another is "good enough" to live beside you. This is not good news for the cause of integration, and it can be a wake-up call when bad feeling raised between communities creates hostile and alienated members of society - such as shaped the individuals behind the Boston bombings.

And on the issue of violence in America, it feels as the entire country is hijacked by the white and very conservative, when it comes to the issue of gun law. Now with the world's first gun made with 3D printer technology successfully fired in America, it seems that regulating guns has become impossible. Furthermore, while the Americans invent a new firearm, the Swiss make a solar powered aircraft. Notwithstanding the world-changing patronage of American innovation, I'm sure some of us are thinking: Can the Swiss be made leaders of the free world please? Because although 3D printing is an intriguing concept straight out of science fiction, what possible benefit could there be to the mass distribution of firearms done in the name of liberty?

I don't know what's more frightening - the fact that you can now download a working handgun at home, or the developer's blatant disregard for the injury and death that will undoubtedly result. The human mind knows no bounds; it's a shame, however, that we keep using it to come up with more and more inventive ways of killing each other.

A few might well say that some people, not content with killing themselves in their own country, want to export their lunacy for free to every Tom, Dick, Jane and aspiring terrorist and assassin across the world. But what does this say about today's society? It points towards a general decline of intelligent awareness, as well as a decline in the ability to discern between that which is worthwhile and that which is detrimental.

We should be giving out the message that it is okay for people to be different, as long as you have honesty, integrity and some measure of intelligent awareness. What's not okay is to be okay with how bad things are. Instead we opt for the jungle law that pushes for a pack mentality, for people to become a mob persecuting any dissenting voice. In England, some say it is the conservative politics of putting money before people that has created this vacuum of humanity, where in effect we are not only telling the rest of the world they are not welcome, but that filling the nation's treasury coffers is more important than the people that make up that nation.

In my politics lectures at university, I was taught that the first obligation of government was defence of the realm and the protection of its citizens, but clearly that is not the case today. The policy of the Conservatives currently in power in England is not to hold accountable those responsible, whose bad management skills led to the economic decline, but to stop the benefits of those in need.

The British taxpayer puts all their effort into paying tax, and we are taxed up to the hilt, including stealth taxes - income tax, national insurance, council tax, excise duties, air passenger taxes, fuel and vehicle taxes and all the rest - and the stark truth is that this burden costs the average person 150 days of hard labour every year. That's not how long a rich person has to work - it is the time the average person must labour for the tax collectors.

In the Middle Ages a serf only had to work four months of the year for the feudal landlord, whereas in modern Britain people have to toil five months for the government's tax gatherers. For some people, with continuously rising costs throughout the year, they are finding they can't cut back spending any further, and food is becoming a luxury - and more expensive.

Farmers and supermarket chiefs are warning that recent soaking summers and a frozen spring have made “massive” food price rises inevitable for UK shoppers this year. The Managing Director of Waitrose, Mark Price, sounded the alarm on food prices in January, warning that the cost of "bread, vegetables... all produce" will rise by 5% during the summer. Commentators in the media predict that prices across Britain could actually rise by more than that - far higher than wages - and even an improvement in the British weather is unlikely to bring long-term relief.

Yet, the government's preoccupation seems to be with tax, most notably with the rise of "tax shaming" companies like Google and Amazon, rather than searching for a balance between the prosperity of our country and the well-being of the poorest. This shows that the government's first task must be to collect tax, as it seems to protect the highest taxpayers - the banks - from their accountability for the fiscal calamities that have beset us.

The politicians that we placed in power would, instead, tell those in need that there is no more money, and they must fend for themselves. As these individuals don't pay as much tax they don't have a strong influence over the government. As eighties Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher's ousting from power illustrated, her downfall came when she directly attacked the taxpayer, not when she attacked weaker communities.

Those that want us to believe in the economic crisis, don't seem to realise that the real crisis is this incredible injustice that affects the weakest. It is uncomfortable to feel that we have a "fair weather" form of government, where it puts the rights of people first in times of plenty, but abandons them in times of want. What does this communicate to the public at large? How are we expected to build communities out of our societies, when our political parties pursue public policy that fractures us? It seems while those in power talk of a "big society", they walk in the opposite direction away from it.

But the human toll is too high to walk away from - as a result of these government policies, people in need are committing suicide to escape poverty, or because they have had their benefits lifeline cut. It makes me ashamed to be British, when I read that British citizens are taking their own lives out of desperation.

When you couple this with news stories such as the re-election of a Cornish councillor who said "disabled children cost the council too much money and should be put down", then I feel it is time we come out of our own little cocoons, where it's every person for himself. We must take a step back and look at what's going on around us.

We need to get clued up to the fact that what benefits one, can benefit all, we we all work together for a common goal that is going to add value to our lives, and the lives of others. Of course, we can all get stuck in our own framework, and become closed off to different people, opinions and ideas, we get stuck and feel unable to communicate our feelings fully. This is important to note, because when we lose that deep intimacy with others, we can lose our connection with life.

Communication is key

Human beings at their core are social beings of communication. Some scientists believe we start learning how to communicate before we are even born. Take a moment to think for a moment: everything we do is with the aim of communicating with ourselves or others. The most popular gadgets are those that aid in communication. Just under half of the time UK adults spend on a computer is on communicating with other people, while some research claims that text messages are the most-used method for daily communication with family and friends. Most innovations are a form of communication, while science is about reaching out to communicate with the physical laws of the world, to better understand how they work, and what our place is within it.

Experts in this field suggest that to fully dial into your authentic frequency, and communicate with your true destiny, you need to fully understand it - before you can you positively and effortlessly command it to influence your current circumstances. In every great life - and every individual's life is a treasure box of greatness - there's a moment that comes to define you. That can be a moment of crisis that forces you to dig deep, and establish who you truly are. This communication can involve clearing out the old, and making way for the new, to help you rediscover your appetite for life. Bad habits will be easily broken and old baggage can be dumped easily, but only if you're willing to communicate (and commit to) this in life. If you're not willing to release what no longer serves you, and embrace possibility, then experts warn we cut ourselves off from communicating with very powerful and life-changing forces.

Proper communication with yourself is a great motivator to quit bad habits, study, contemplate, and de-clutter. Toss out all that is no longer useful in your life including people, ideas and things. If it's finished, let it go. Communicate to the universe that you have listened and understood you shouldn't hang on. Many things will pass out of our lives, and we should bless them and release them. Proper communication in this sense, is about letting go of the past in order to make room for the future, and setting yourself free so you enter the new cycle with a clean slate.

Click here to change 6 negative habits.

This type of connection is beneficial in regard to all aspects of life, but especially for "cleaning house" when it comes to your personal affairs. Communication is one of the cornerstones to healthy relationships, too, and loss of a loved one is in a very sense, a mourning over the lack of communication. Most people think of the grieving process as something experienced only after the death of a loved one. But we grieve for many reasons - be it the loss of a loved one (I liken breaking up with your twin flame as grieving), the loss of a job, the end of a relationship, or the loss of good health. In fact, even events of a wider scale, such as natural disasters or terrorist attacks, can cause people to grieve at the loss of their sense of safety and security.

Any time something significant is taken away from us, we grieve. And that grieving process can trigger a host of unfamiliar and confusing emotions and behaviours. Ultimately, most of us find a way to carry on after a loss. We communicate to our friends around us, or to ourselves, and try and work through our feelings. But the process we go through to do that can be complicated and emotionally messy. Communication isn't easy. The process can be so overwhelming that some people fail to recover from it sufficiently enough to make good choices for themselves. Indeed, when we fail to communicate adequately, we can become depressed and need to seek medical support.

Luckily for most of us it doesn't get that far, we know instinctively not to cut ourselves off from society, or from ourselves, and we intuitively reach out in times of need. Communication is also about learning to survival socially, and sometimes bypassing the superficial content and connecting with the real issues underneath will help us gain a deeper intimacy with our lives. Love is the great communicator in such times, and it is is also a powerful motivator to regenerate trust. Love and good communication share many mutual elements - both require passion, honesty and simplicity - getting to the point - for success.

Correct communication also gives off the correct signals, while violent acts can give off signals that are unfortunate to all involved. An "eye-for-an-eye" mentality might work in the Old Testament, but it feels less uncomfortable to see it communicated in what should be more enlightened times. Illustrative of this, the sadness of the Boston bombings is not the loss of life - when it so clearly should be - it is the way the American public seems to have reacted. The public lynchings that took place of dark skinned people in the public that day while suspects were still being searched for, the very real fear of Boston Muslims that fear recrimination are only a few incidents that are emblematic of miscommunication.

Had the bombers been of the Roman Catholic faith - as many bombers have been in the past - would Americans have gone on rabid searches to publicly beat any Catholic (or any person that looked like one to them from the Hollywood bad-guy version lodged in their brains) as they have done to Muslims? We can't even imagine it happening. Meanwhile treating the Boston perpetrator as an animal, simply because he behaved like one, communicates how we share a lack of respect for life with the people we prosecute of the same crime.

Moreover, Americans somehow seem to have communicated that they feel more for the three people who died and over 260 that were wounded in the 15 April Boston attack, then they do when American soldiers rape young Iraqi girls and massacre entire families, or when 31 people are killed and more than 200 others wounded in bombings in Iraq, caused by the American invasion of the country.

Why do we feel that American lives are worth "more" than Iraqi ones? Or do we? Such types of miscommunication show Americans to be no better than the people they malign, but we know that this isn't the case. We know better than to tar all Americans with the same brush of a few, don't we? And yet, we can easily do it to others of different colour, creed or culture. But I am not saying that in place of an "eye-for-an-eye" we should simply "turn the other cheek", but if we keep our dignity in the face of such attacks, and afford our "enemies" the same dignity, it would communicate more clearly what the best of us (and not just Americans) really stand for.

Loving communication also helps us to define and put down our boundaries with others - and with ourselves, because pragmatically we need to know our limits, accept them, and then go on to exceed them where we can, and to embrace the ones we can't. Naturally, the way we communicate and the challenges we face are unique to our time period, but the human spirit is timeless, and although the way we communicate will change, the need to do so will always be there. Moreover, the challenges we face as we grow over a lifetime, and discovering our own definitions as we do so, will mean that, one way or another, we will have to "communicate" or link up with our passions.

Read how to discover your passion.

Our passions are our greatest guide through life; see it as a treasure map where its "x" marks the spot you've been searching for. For our maximum spiritual and psychological growth in our partnership with life, communication is vital, but loving communication is the key. And when we feel the echoes of the lost parts of ourself resurface in our present to cause us problems, rather than turn our backs on the problem, we need to reach out with love and understanding, and forgiveness. A communicative clean-out of the trash of the past, to make room for the present is paramount, because it's a part of ourselves that needs expressing.

Communicate yourself to the modern world

Make no mistake about why we journey in life. For the life you live is an expression of soul. Your life on Earth is a special one, and by association your journey here is special, too. Although the way we choose to live our lives varies from person to person, we are often told we are here not just with our minds and bodies, but with our souls. And to live life harmony with all that you are, you need to inspire yourself to allow the expression of your soul to shine through.

In finding our own expression, experts often recommend we ask ourselves: What activities bring you a sense of fun and adventure, joy, peace or contentment? If you've ever questioned what your passions are and felt frustrated that you couldn't figure out the answer, then the problem is a lack of communication, or that we lack the skills of communication. Because communication isn't just about speaking, but listening, or reading, and understanding. For example, the two common mistakes that most people make, which can actually block them from discovering what their true passions are, are linked directly to our communicative skills.

Firstly, we need to ask the right questions, in the right way. When we put pressure on ourselves to try and figure out what our biggest biggest passion is, when we might the chances are we may have more than one thing that interests or inspires us. So, if this sounds like you, instead of putting pressure on yourself to identify just one passion, you can come from the place of "what are my passions" instead of "what is my passion". When you do this, you give yourself the freedom to explore different areas of life that you may not have considered before, rather than feeling like you have to nail yourself down to just one.

Secondly, we need to listen to the answer - properly. The second common mistake that holds a lot of people back when it comes to figuring out what their passions are is believing that your passions have to be interests that make you feel like you're practically on fire inside. A lot of people get stuck into thinking that if something they're interested in doesn't make them feel a feeling of intense fiery passion inside, then it isn't really one of their true passions.

But it's important to remember that your passions are whatever interests you have that - when you're in the middle of living them - makes the rest of the world just melt away, and this can look different for different people. For some people, diving into one of their passions gives them a deep sense of calm or inner peace. Other people might feel a sense of love, fullness, completion or joy, and others might well feel an intense fiery feeling. Once we figured that out, the next step is to communicate the things you are passionate about to your loved ones, and the world.

If you've got something of value that lights you up inside, pass it on. It will return to you in ways you can't imagine. For we shouldn't hide our passions; lack of communication is even believed to affect us at a cellular level, and so just talking about our passions and problems can sometimes make us feel better - a passion shared is a passion doubled, a problem shared is a problem halved, as the adage goes. But communication is more than a healing or growing process, it is a covenant we make with life. Communication is an explicit partnership agreement we have with life, because to communicate is to live.

When we look back at the history of communication, we can see how important it was in shaping our modern world, and also at the "ills" that currently plague it. Learning (as opposed to being stuck) in the past is another correct form of communication, because when we see how we have arrived at this point, we can better speak to the present of what needs to be done to solve the challenges ahead. For those interested in history, the following mini-series of about how our modern world was shaped by communication will be an eye-opener, and also an insight into how we can use communication in our own lives to get closer to love in our everyday lives.

The period that most historians point out is England in the 17th Century. You could call it the English Spring. A time when the whole geometry of the country shifted and revolved. The moment when everything we now think and feel first came into the open. The dignity of the individual, mattering more than the old hierarchies. Science taking its place alongside religion as a way of understanding the world. The broad expanses of the world itself, as the arena for a rich and fulfilling life. And none of it would have happened without written communication. Writing made this revolution possible; when we look back at how people communicated back then we see a world truly reshaped by writing.

10 old letter-writing tips that work for emails.

Despite an appreciable decline of handwriting in recent years thanks to computers, the written communication has made a successful transition to the digital world, and some say it first really made its mark hundreds of years ago. At an intimate level, the 17th Century was the most revolutionary time this country has ever known. It was an age in which more people in this country could read and write than ever before. It was a world on the move. The streets of London were filled with people in search of new lives and new opportunities. The city tripled in size in this century. More than half a million Englishman emigrated either in search of God or to get rich.

England's communications revolution was a transforming moment in British history. The literacy revolution of the 17th Century spread its energies and ambitions out across the Atlantic Ocean, allowing people to experience an expanding world. Distance had entered English lives. Britain was turning from a small insignificant island to a booming international economy. Writing made new ways of life possible in this expanding world, fuelling the change from an insular country to an international economy. The key transition to modern life. Writing made love possible when lovers were hundreds of miles apart, allowed people to own things on the other side of the ocean; it changed Britain, opening its ports to a modern future.

This was a century of ambition and mobility, of people prepared to seek prosperity and happiness away from their roots. There was a need to make life coherent at a distance and only writing could do that. Some people have tried across the centuries to bridge those distances with intense love letters, but the 17th Century saw a sudden burgeoning of intimate family correspondence, producing some of the most poignant and beautiful ever written experts say, enabling loved ones to co-exist at a distance. Evidence, if any were really needed, at how communication is vital to the ties that bind us to life.

Possibly this is indicative of the most important asset of communication, like love, it keeps us in the loop. It tells us stories, explains our human story, and provides an opportunity for us to enlighten others, often with the hope of empathy as we open up about our personal challenges. Communicating with each helps us share tips on how to do things better, provides advice on how to rear our young, or how to save money in a harsh economic climate.

The world is a far stranger place than humans can possibly imagine, and love sets us a common ground. But love isn't really an equalizer between people, it's a balancer of life. Because while we focus on fear, worry, or hate, it's not possible for us to experience happiness, enthusiasm or love; what we communicate out to the world is what we get back in reply. Ultimately, we need to communicate to others as we would have others communicate us for greater understanding - with honesty, with respect, and with love.

Read more in this series: -2 -3 -4 -5 -6

Yours in love,