A Stronger Bridge to Love

“In Paris, there is a bridge over the Seine where lovers attach a lock with their marks - initials, a date, or a quote. After locking onto the bridge, the keys are heaved into the Seine. But this tradition isn't exclusive to Paris. Humans have been doing this in Italy, Scandinavia, Turkey and in many other regions that have hosted global and nomadic superpowers. It's evidence of a common ground between cultures during our unique journeys throughout the centuries, where the inner voices of our humanity have whispered to us that love is the bridge between two hearts - padlocked to those courageous enough to throw away its key.”
— Mickie Kent

There's no doubt that we all hope and wish for a more peaceful world. But have you ever considered that in order to achieve this, we must first find peace within ourselves? Ask yourself this: what are you doing right now to cultivate a more peaceful life? What have you done today to make a positive contribution to your life and the lives of others?

When I mean contribution, I don't mean huge or elaborate shows of charity. It can even just be a pick-me-up smile to yourself in the mirror, replacing one negative thought with a positive one, to call a friend you haven't spoken to ages, to ask someone how their day is going and to really mean it.

Finding inner peace during turbulent times, regardless of who you are and where you live in the world can be difficult, but it's when you need it the most. In previous posts I've been currently touching upon the multiple crises we're experiencing like wars, financial crisis, violence and terrorism, but I've also emphasised how only a clear understanding of love is the way to inspire people to engage in the movement toward a more loving (and thus peaceful) world.

After publishing these posts on Mickie Kent I received numerous emails thanking me. A few readers opened up about their personal and spiritual journeys that empowered them to make a better contribution to their lives and to humanity. Those letters reveal how YOU can make a positive contribution not only to your life, but to the lives of billions of people worldwide with simple, small steps each day that bring us all closer by building a bridge with love.

So strong is our symbolic need to build bridges of love in our lives that we have have even turned existing bridges into grand love tokens. Bridges covered with small padlocks can be found all over the world, and these signed love locks are said to have began appearing on bridges, fences and gates in our modern cities in the early 2000s - although as a tradition it goes back as far as the invention of the lock and key itself.

But how ever many theories there are as to the modern-day origins of love bridges, of more importance is how it's captured the imagination of people across nations. Since signed padlocks started appearing on bridges, particularly in Paris, lovers and individuals alike have flocked to add their lock to a timeless display of love. You only have to go to the love lock bridges in Paris to see a testament to the love people have shared, or to their American, Italian and Far Eastern counterparts.

Pragmatic realism always has to have its say, too, however. The padlocks are attached to the bridges, and the keys thrown in the rivers so you can't remove them in the hope to keep them there forever, but the padlocks are removed regularly. In Paris after a few months, when the locks have completely filled a panel, the panel holding the locks is removed and wood is affixed in place of the panel, until it's replaced with a new iron panel days later, and people fill it up with locks again.

The answer to where the locks go after they are removed is unknown, but lovers who go back looking for their locks may be disappointed. When I learned of this, my twin flame and I decided to build a tiny love bridge in our garden instead. Every Valentine's Day and subsequent special occasion we re-affirm our love to each other with padlocks in our Zen-styled garden. We were going to bury the keys in the garden, but we have pets we're responsible for, so I'm currently collecting them.

In the spirit of recycling when I have enough I will have them melted down to custom make another padlock for our bridge - without a key this time. And when I go out in the garden to meditate, I notice how our love locks have grown across the years, gradually watching how our loving intention have manifested into a special shrine across the years. Every lock is a testament, a promise made to each other.

Likewise turning city bridges into love shrines may be romantic, but many cities aren't feeling the same love - and not merely because of lock logistics, either. City councils have begun to complain about the upkeep of these bridges. With Paris's bridges groaning under the weight of an estimated 700,000 padlocks scrawled with lovers' names, a campaign started by two Americans living in Paris say it's time to end the love locks "madness" - with some calling the charming gesture an act of vandalism.

Not giving credence to the age-old common saying across traditions that "cursed shall be the one who divides what love unites", countries like Germany, Ireland and Italy have already closed or threatened to close love bridges down that have popped up in their major cities.

Love bridges as the one in Paris currently inhabit every continent in the world, adorned with similar love locks (also known as love padlocks and, in Taiwan, wish locks) affixed by sweethearts to symbolise their everlasting love.

Before the romantics among us (with myself first in line) start to grumble about kill-joy politicians, there has to be someone to calculate cost, and space and damage to the bridges (just last June the Pont des Arts footbridge in central Paris was so weighed down by the thousands of locks affixed to its grillwork that a section of the fencing collapsed), when that's the way society is primed to work. We don't attempt to discover solutions to accommodate such innocent nuisances, it's just more cost effective to ban things that have no outwardly evident practical purpose.

But humans are primed to work in their own way, too, and as sure as one bridge closes, another will bloom elsewhere. For there is a very practical need in us to connect with love - and for some that means displaying their love across public fences, gates, and bridges as a symbol to the voice that calls us from within to truly bind us together. And what is inside us we reflect to the world outside.

And the bridges we build in our lives, with each small brick laid down in the foundation of our actions, must be based on the common ground on which all the great wisdom traditions in the world stand - love. This bridge not only focuses on connecting you to your inner peace, but via your actions towards others to link you to the manifestation of a more peaceful world for everyone.

These universal principles can be used to help clear up the physiological junkyard we've made thanks to the disharmony with our modern societies, and achieve a sense of inner peace and wellness. Living with universal principles means to focus on the common threads that unite us all, rather than focusing solely on our differences. These are compassion, patience, understanding, tolerance, kindness - and really all come under the number one universal principle of love.

This not only aids as a moral compass for our core values, but it's a way into discovering our purpose in life, and thus who we really are. It gives self authenticity and a confidence and drive to attain, grounded in respect for the sanctity of ALL life, thereby becoming a process - a journey - of self-discovery. When the connections to our spirit are strengthened, then we can exert more influence on how we view the outcomes in our lives. In fact, it is only when we have a strong spiritual purpose we realise that outcomes are not as important as the way we view those outcomes are.

We all have the ability of intention and visualisation, but more importantly we all have a mental outlook that can inwardly change crises into opportunity just because we are intent on seeing it that way. Using universal principles with such positivity (united under the common theme of love) can power up our minds in unimaginable ways. It strengthens our focus, our imagination, and creativity, so that we may begin to apply (even if only with very small baby steps) common unifying wisdoms across the entire spectrum of lives to benefit ourselves, our immediate environment and the world at large.

Walking with love

Building bridges is the only effective way of communicating in all areas of our lives, and as humans we are THE animals of communication. We live to communicate. Even in our dealings with other animals we share the planet with, when we reach out to them with human communicative efforts (instead of killing them) almost miraculous discoveries occur in captivity and in the animal kingdom. Pandas can fake pregnancies to get more food off their keepers, dolphins trapped in nets will seek help from humans, while win the trust of a lion and you can produce scenes that feel straight out of The Lion King.

Deep in the African bush a lioness gives a giant hug to the man who helped save her.

This particular lion story is enough to warm even the wildest of hearts: As a cub, Sirga was driven out of her pride and rescued by Valentin Gruener and Mikkel Legarth who could not stand by and watch her die. Now the 110lb lioness has developed an incredible bond with the pair who are fighting to save her species in Botswana, southern Africa. Videos of the loving friendship between men and ferocious beast will leave you agape in amazement. It would have been easier (and safer) to just let Sirga die as a cub, however the men chose the harder option.

The path they decided to walk is a different one than we are yet fully accustomed to, but the end results can be spectacular. It shows that the only way we can create events where a fully grown lion gives a human prey an affectionate hug is through the bridge built to that animal. Centuries ago a human would have been standing at a far distance from a lion aiming a gun to kill it for fun in a hunt, and although this still happens, many more of us are now prepared to build bridges. We are beginning to understand that our sociability (however much we have tried to suppress it) is not only the key to how we reached the current stage of our brain's evolution, it's also the key to our future survival. Building bridges isn't easy - joining two distant sides by a common feature takes time and effort - but it's essential.

Part and parcel of seeking a common ground means that we will have to befriend love in our lives. As the single most important unifying principle of universality, we need to open our arms out to it, embrace it and welcome it in all its forms. Only then will we find the threshold to what many described as "inner peace".

This inner peace is more than a state of tranquillity or calm inside regardless of what is happening on the outside. Such tranquil states are a (very favourable) by-product of real inner peace, but the actuality is that the states of inner peace won't be constant. Rather they will be states that constantly fluctuate and recalibrate within a strong sense of fluidity of self and its place in the bigger picture.

In this context, inner peace, instead of the envisioning of a constantly stable and unshakeable platform, is more akin to a well-oiled set of scales on a moving wheel, constantly re-aligning itself between the wheel's momentum and its own need for equilibrium. The subtle and finely tuned harmonies attained within that partnership is what inner peace really is. Once we have this at work inside us, it means we have built a strong bridge to love.

Let's take the issue of our physical health as a working example. Diet and exercise is touted as the cure-all for what ails us. You want younger, smoother skin? What to have great hair again? Want to turn back the muscle clock? You can bet there'll be a food or a move for it. However most people simply pick a diet and then pick an exercise training program, or vice versa, without ever really thinking how those two programs work hand in hand, or if they DON'T provide any additional benefit to one another.

Unless we build bridges between our healthy regimens, they may even conflict with one another and cancel any benefits out. But when diet and exercise are synergised, they can team up to achieve a MUCH greater result than any benefits you could get from either of them alone. That's strategic synergy - when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. However, we won't even think about building bridges between them unless we start loving what we do.

We need to get a passion for staying healthy, and build from that bridge into the other areas of our lives. Similarly, for inner peace to work - and be at one in modern society - it has to work this way. As a case in point, it's easy for us to achieve "inner peace" when our senses are soothed: we are in a quiet, safe environment, surrounded by calming sounds, our favourite candles and scents. But what is really important is whether your inner peace can be activated on the inside when you have all sorts of challenges going on around you on the outside. In fact, those people we celebrate as masters or gurus are those people who do this automatically, and thus make inner peace look effortless.

This is more than remaining calm no matter what happens to you, because that isn't practical. There are times we are genetically in-built NOT to be calm for our own survival. Sometimes we need that "fight-or-flight" response to get us out of a tricky situation, and it doesn't matter if you're the greatest transcendental master there is, if you're in a physical body you're going to feel fear at one time or another.

Inner peace, then, is more correctly about being prepared in one's own heart, mind and soul to quickly become aware, get present and centre yourself when the need or a circumstance for fear does arrive. When we centre our heart, our devotional self, as well as our intellect we can then respond accordingly, because we'll remind ourselves that we have evolved and become enlightened enough not to forge life constantly in the heat of battle. Fear is not as central to our survival as it once might have been. Although modern society has its own set of unique stresses, civilization responds better to constructive responses instead of destructive ones.

This is why when you're in a particularly stressful situation, and you have a whole lot of things going on around you, breathing deeply, doing on-the-spot exercises (such as placing a hand on your heart), or using rehearsed mini-mindful meditation techniques can help you to navigate a path through those "storms in a teacup" much easier. You'll get unstuck from sticky situations much quicker when you stick to love and not your problems.

Sticking to love

Our human tendency is to remain stuck in our problems, when really we need to focus on getting unstuck. Most people feel stuck in their lives because they lock themselves completely on what's wrong instead of trying to find the real message behind it by trying to solve the REAL problem at hand.

The fact is we are all going to feel stuck some time in our lives, but being stuck can have its own spiritual purpose. It can actually be a sign that it's time for a transformation, and, if you let it, will guide you to where you need to focus your energy.

In accordance with school of thought, there is a theory that it's never your career, relationship or finances that causes the ACTUAL problem, but rather your own energy that simply becomes stuck. If you're at a point in your life where you feel uninspired and are craving to start enjoying life on a deeper level again, then it's believed you need to shift this spiritual energy so you can move on and reach your dreams. If this theory is too "woo-hoo" for some of us, then you can look at it as a series of mindful techniques that shows you how to find and use your own strengths to overcome any challenge in life.

I prefer to envisage this as promoting the building of bridges in our lives to the right sources, because the bridge can be a powerful symbol in helping us get unstuck. It reminds us that there IS a way across what might sometimes feel like an endless chasm. It can be a positive image to keep with us as we work through our individual issues, and positivity is the first technique we need to employ.

Thinking of one positive thing about about an existing challenge can open a door to this bridge and to solving the issue in your mind. Naturally, in life with some challenges - such as the death of a loved one - it will obviously be difficult to find a positive at first. But though the time frame for this positivity process may change, the principle is the same for your way out eventually. And if we can find one positive thing about a current crisis we can find two, four and so on, until the you discover the problem may have even solved itself before you get to listing ten positive things.

Often, especially in relationships when there is a break-up, the biggest positive it brings to the table is clarity, because it was not the thing you thought it was, rather it was a misalignment of values. So, having a crisis at that time may be the perfect opportunity to discover your core values, or those missing or that you have ignored in your life.

Having a more flexible mental filter in place means you take in more pleasure, too, as you participate in activities to boost your mood while you discover those values missing from your life. Whether you're taking a walk in the woods, biking on the beach, or picnicking at the park, chances are with this state of mind you're also noticing more than you did before. You are savouring life in its present moment of flow with its swings and roundabouts. It's about seeing the forest when you get lost, not just the trees, and enjoying the journey that's going to help you find the way out.

The more we can step outside of our situations and look at things from this divine perspective, that perspective, too, will expand. The bridge being built gets longer, and stronger, and sturdier - it will grow to become a fixture in your life that can carry any weight. During this process you'll either get a new perspective on your situation, or you'll start finally asking the right questions that leads you to the right answers. You may need to mentally prepare yourself before you start on your journey, and meditation can help you get into a happy place, before you work on getting unstuck. But when you feel ready, your first step is to start with just one positive thing.

The second step comes from a technique known as finding the "bigger me" or the "soul-self". The theory is that our soul-self is not simply a voice from within, but also the harmony we forge with the energies without. It's bigger than the physical container of our bodies, because if it was solely contained in our physical bodies it would be secondary to what is called the "ego-self". This opposing ego-self actually works to pull us away from our spirit, or soul-self, or our "bigger me" - who you are meant to be, or your defining purpose in life.

According to this ancient theory, we are asked to imagine that our soul-self is joined to our ego-self with a rubber band, so that when your challenges or someone else's problems arise, your ego-self will try to pull you away from your real self, causing tension on the rubber band. Thus, every life challenge is providing us with the opportunity to re-align with your soul-self and your purpose in life. Once we are aware of this tension line, we can replace it with a bridge we build with love, so when problems arise there is no tension between one or the other, but a sturdy bridge that carries us effortlessly through the crisis.

The defining qualities of the soul-self are again those universal principles already mentioned (and which we all know) - compassion, kindness and all those goodies that combine under the umbrella of love to keep us dry when the rain comes. We make the mistake that "soul-self" is a thing: We think we are simply the job we do, or the gender we are, and we have all these labels for each other we use to form useless judgement based opinions.

We put upon ourselves to describe who we are, and place the same burden on others. We think we are our personality, programmes and patterns, but in actuality we are the harmony or disharmony between them. This spiritual part of ourselves or harmonious energy is who we really are - a unique frequency connected to the divine and all that is. When we can tap into that, it really gives us a power of purpose, a real intuition on where we should go, and what mission we should be on to be able to fulfil our purpose on the planet.

On the opposite end, the qualities of our ego-self is negativity, destructive anger (ours or someone else's), indecision, doubts and worries that stretch us away from our soul-self - anything that has the purpose in life to create distance, or destroy bridges instead of building them between ourselves, other people and the things we wish to manifest into our lives. Next time you face a personal crisis in your life imagine your ego-self pulling on the rubber band that joins it to your soul-self. That's the source of the tension you feel.

However whenever we connect with the positive we are re-connecting or re-aligning with our soul-self. And when we feel stuck, we pull ourselves back. Instead of viewing the situation we're in as the problem and begin to attack it, we view the problem as energy that has become misaligned and stuck to our ego-self. In essence, it's we who has blocked the very bridge we need to cross. And even if we're not, it's we who can unblock the way forward.

Moving on with love

This struggle between the ego and the soul is sometimes likened to the tug-of-war between the brain and the heart, but they are just the instruments of both. Logic and reasoning can be soul-based, just as much as emotion can be egotistical. It depends on where we direct our energies, and how we release the tension in our lives. If this resonates with you, then you may want to research on many different fields of thought in this regard. For example some say that the science of twin flame love (ultimately realised in its final stage) works to bring harmony between the brain and heart, and the sense of balance back to Self. Its love in your life is believed to maximise you.

Others believe that alternative maximization strategies of your higher energies can be assessed via numerology or your astrology. Adherents to this view believe that numerology can reveal a lot about your specific abundance blocks, because your personal numerology chart is actually the blueprint of your soul. While others put their faith in a detailed look at how their ruling planets and stars are currently charting. Within both, followers believe a proper reading can illuminate all you're meant to experience and achieve in your lifetime, but more importantly, also uncover the sneaky subconscious blocks that are misdirecting your life path and ruining your chances of ever getting there - so that you can clear it at the source, and centre yourself in preparation of a crisis.

How to get heart-centred in a crisis

Continuing on the subject of creating bridges towards wellness and betterment, we are ALL experiencing unprecedented transformation both personally and collec­tively. All of it not good, but all of it necessary. No wonder we can feel overwhelmed or fearful from the changes being required of us. We are trying to hold on to our balance, keep our spirits up, stay positive and move forward when there are so many things pulling us back - especially with the way the world stands at the moment.

Additionally, it's time to release any resistance, most notably your resistance to the changes taking place in your life. In other words, choose your confrontations wisely. Hang loose on any judgements to what is happening. You may not yet have a full understanding of the events unfolding. Often taking a step back is in actuality taking a step forward. What seems to be negative on the surface could turn out to be a blessing in disguise. For instance, the new lover to whom you were ready to give your body, mind and soul reveals that he is married. This can feel negative and painful at first, but in the end, you are being offered clarity as to what it is you don't want out of a relationship.

Ask yourself: Is your heart into what you are choosing for yourself? Because it's time to choose wisely. If not, it could be a false start and a waste of your precious time, resources and energy. Remember that when you do what is right (heart centred) for you, it is (real love) right for everyone else.

♥ What does your heart really want?
♥ What is right for you?
♥ What is right work for you?
♥ What is your right living location?
♥ What is right relationship for you?
♥ What is your right life path?

The purpose of any breakthrough programme you employ in your life should be to strengthen and empower you. A journey of self-discovery that offers you fresh insight and new solutions to old problems. It will help make your changes less stressful, and breakthrough to your who you were meant to be. It may require that you raise your standards, and upgrade your relationships. You want to be in your integrity and practice the golden rule: Do unto oth­ers as you would have others do unto you. You want to speak your truth, and choose what is right for you. This is true empowerment. We have to tell the truth about how we feel and what we want.

When you find yourself at the end of a situation, a rela­tionship, a job lay-off, closure of a private enterprise, you can feel as if you are operating in crisis mode and things around you seem to be falling apart. But many people are experiencing job changes, long-term relationship completions, health issues and financial problems, and in truth, we are all in completion and ending. Life is a constant state of transition, and these events are not always graceful. Go easy on yourself if you feel less than a transcendental master and feel more like a lost soul. Take comfort, you are not alone. Everyone is experiencing these life-changing events. This is one world, and we are all in it together.

We often find that people and organisations that deal well with change are prepared for the inevitable emotional stages of the process. This experience is like a death of sorts. Each of us has our own timetable for this process. We do not want to rush the process of breakdown and we do not want to stay too long in grief - as it can become addictive. To get through this process, seminal research on grief and death tells us there are six recognisable stages of grief that it's believe we all go through (although the time frames will differ for all of us), namely: denial, an­ger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and hope.

During the breakdown phase, we may find ourselves in denial, depression and then moving onto hope and acceptance. We can jump around quite a bit in the first few months of our endings, for instance, we feel acceptance then flip into denial and hope, then reverse into anger. These stages seem most likely to manifest when change is externally imposed and something of value is being lost or given up because of the change. Each one of us will process in our own unique way. For instance, you may find your process takes you from denial to anger to acceptance only to find yourself back in anger. There are no short cuts to our growth. We need to be patient with our process and allow our life to unfold naturally, as we make a daily intention to commit to positive action over fearful inaction.

Your process to alignment with your true self is as important as your destination. You can choose to be positive and proac­tive, even if your growth is swift and painful. Attitude is everything. You must be willing to do your inner work and take full responsibility for your choices and behaviour. You can turn your obstacles into stepping-stones. Remember: every adversity, setback and challenge carries with it the opportunity to learn, grow and advance from the experience.

Start from the endings that are currently happening - whether that be a job or relationship − and evolve to new beginnings. You are the pen and the ink that writes the story of your destiny. Your thoughts are your tool of empowerment and your day-to-day life journey is the exercising of your instruments. Your intention is to empower you and your new life. Hope and a dream can take you there. Life is a journey. Get started today, and remember have some fun!

Another modern school of thought gives prominence to our hormones. As the seasons cycle and the moon cycles, and so, too, a woman cycles. Throughout the month, as well as her life, a woman navigates a complex play of hormones. Even if it's not as apparent, men go through their own cycles that they have to deal with throughout their lives. Our diet and daily physical activities - basically our lifestyle habits - are said to play an important part on the regulation of our hormones, and so what we eat and the exercises we do are all believed to impact on our mood and emotional wellness, too.

Towards this aim, along with a whole food approach to diet, yoga and meditation is said to be most beneficial. A 2010 study found that subjects who meditated 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had a reduction of grey matter in the amygdala - which is linked to fear and anxiety. And for those of us who are not interested in such alternative therapies, just staying positive daily and eating and exercising well can be just as empowering as putting your faith into spiritual based wellness goals.

We all instinctively know the subliminal power of smiles, don't we? Just as we're pretty good at figuring out when someone tries to manipulate them. As a fake smile - one too long, or simply inappropriate to the situation - might actually hurt more than help, so, too engaging in alternative therapies you don't really believe in or is unsuitable to your needs may harm or bring disillusionment in the long run.

But building bridges are journeys of discovery. We won't know until we try to find those methods that will help us manage our challenges to have less impact on our emotional behaviour and more on our emotional experience - so that we are able to look at our struggles more divinely, and thus more helpfully.

On an energetic (and practical) level, the stabilising pose we take towards life will help us build stamina and determination, while simultaneously setting our sights on life's higher purpose. The uplifting posture of positivity promotes courage and dispels despondency, invigorating us to fulfil our true potential in this world. This has many evolutionary advantages: it makes us more attractive to others, as some evolutionary advantages are wont to do, but more fundamentally it makes us resilient to the changes we will all endure as time goes by, and help us take one step higher upon the evolutionary ladder towards enlightenment.

With continued practice, there will eventually come a time when we will readily step into positive emotions to get to our soul-self, by using our positive qualities. When we can stand on the bridges we have built, and recognise the challenges and the negativity in ourselves and others as passing clouds in the sky, which we recognise, but neither identify or attach ourselves to. The more we let negativity float away, the more it will help us move forward in a more conscious manner.

And when we look at world events as they stand, we need to move forward more consciously than ever. There is still much work to do, because, unfortunately, we still "rule" even our most developed societies with our ego-selves, when our urbanised civilisation HAS to become more soul-based for it exist in harmony with its environment.

It's easy to blame it on systems seemingly founded on solely physical principles that dismiss the need for internal peace (which is why we quickly wear ourselves out). The usual argument follows that we need a shift from patriarchal systems, and it's not difficult to see why, when we see the latent harm done in what we advertise as a man's world - where different groups and giant monopolies have been vying to assert their authority down the ages.

To further that cause, we continue to develop the scariest weapons imaginable, with governments paying out millions for national security, while their citizens are going without food to pay their rent. This is happening in Britain; at home - and at work - we are atomised, staring at our screens watching politicians getting physically assaulted for airing their opinions, alongside the announcement of tougher terror laws as the terror threat is raised to severe - meaning that an attack is imminent on the shores of the United Kingdom. People are living in fear, and not just in Britain. The land grabbing opportunists and power plays between Russia and the Ukraine, the civil war in Syria and many other hot spots in the world highlight that we are not yet free as a species from the infections of the past.

So pervasive is the inclination towards violence and the mood of competitive authority, it even rears its head in the most innocuous of discussions: we discuss everything in terms of war, whether it be "price wars" between supermarkets or a TV "ratings battle" between shows. And if you can't compete, you're rendered obsolete. We turn our cities into prisons to protect huge political gatherings and spend millions doing so, yet we say we don't have enough money to look after the most vulnerable in our societies.

Paired with the mistreatment of vulnerable citizens is the systematic racism towards the minority groups, whether they be religious, people of colour or a different culture. This poison of prejudiced perception has infected the most important of our institutions sworn to serve and protect the public. Worse still, we put the responsibility for ending this racism on the shoulders of its victims, but putting minorities on clean up duty over our own mess won't solve the problem, it will exacerbate it.

Irrespective of creed, culture or colour, people don't wake up and simply decide to give up on life and subsequently misbehave. Nihilism is not inherent; it is beaten into the psyche of those to which it afflicts. Thus it falls to all of us to shoulder the consequences of people who have historically acted without inner peace to beat into us this psyche we are stuck with today.

Building bridges to love

“Race is there and it is a constant. You’re tired of hearing about it? Imagine how exhausting it is living it.”
— Jon Stewart on the Daily Show

Tyranny is tyranny, no matter who's running the domination system. Speak to any religious fundamentalist from any belief and they eerily all echo each other in their intolerance and hatred of difference. Christianity became tyrannical, the nation of Israel - when it was not itself enslaved - had tyrannical periods, even relatively gentle Buddhism has a history of violence and fascism - not to mention the depredations of atheist states in the forms of communist China and Russia.

Remembering this is a much needed jolt that we can't live on any one set of teachings. Teachers are fallible people who walk in and out of light, and we have got to keep moving on our own path. There is no settling on wisdom; it's a journey, not a destination, and the bridges we build guide us on our way. True religion is the one you hold in your heart. Faith is what the individual believes, and not what is forced upon you by any other.

But driven by the ego (or by the systems of ego) no one is immune, and so we find ourselves in societies where people are chasing a constant high - of violence, of dominance, or authority over another - where you feel you have to top it with something crazier each time. This has subverted our relationships, skewed our thought processes, and even damaged the very genetics of our humanity.

When we were born into this world, we came as a dream fulfilled by two people, to give and to receive joy, and yet as a result of these systems we waste so much of it imbalanced and disconnected from our soul-self, fighting people over what we "believe" and what we think they should believe. This creates societies without a training of the heart, fosters communities with their hearts disabled to their neighbours and their loved ones.

This is why we still have a prevalent "shame culture" within families and communities, built up over previous centuries that means many victims of harm often suffer in silence - especially victims of sexual abuse. It harks back to more barbaric times, but is kept alive by the way society continues to perceive women and children. And yet the true measure of whether any working society is really civilised is in how it treats any group it perceives as a minority or as "weaker" - most notably its women.

The emergence of the social media has highlighted with almost alarming accuracy how women's voices are often stifled within society, as they were in times of ancient Greece. As you probably know (especially if you're a woman), there are a lot of terrible people saying terrible things about women on social media, and much of it goes unchecked. Some sites are now taking action to create what they describe as a "blueprint" for fighting online misogyny in the hope that others will follow. Case in point, Drew Curtis of news aggregation site Fark, announced in 2014 that the site is cracking down on misogyny in comment threads.

There are other blueprints out there that show there are people across the planet that are running their lives on different, less abusive, systems. When we look at different communities to see what blueprints they follow, one Brazilian town of women stands out sharply. The town of Noiva do Cordeiro in Brazil made the news headlines recently, a place run by women, who are not ready to give up that control to their men.

The town, whose name means Bride of the Lamb (meaning Jesus Christ), was founded in 1891 by a woman, Maria Senhorinha de Lima, after she was branded an adulteress and exiled from her home and church. Her descendants now do things a little differently. One resident summed it up in the news report by saying: "We have God in our hearts. But we don't think we need to go to church, get married in front of a priest or baptise our children. These are rules made up by men. There are lots of things that women do better than men. Our town is prettier, more organised, and far more harmonious than if men were in charge. When problems or disputes arise, we resolve them in a woman's way, trying to find consensus rather than conflict."

It seems that the ladies of Noiva do Cordeiro have attained a large measure of inner peace and it reflects in their community as a whole. It's evidence that the energies we use to transform our lives are the same ones that have the ability to transform our world. Therefore, to go back to the start of this article, any discussion on how we can achieve a more peaceful world would be incomplete without talking about personal inner peace, because we all take our first psychological baby steps within the heart and mind. Our communities are really just a joining of hearts and minds, and whatever we emanate, dark and light, is what we shall voice as a whole.

And if we believe that the road to peace starts within our own mind and life, then when we look at our world, we can see the problems arising today are due to the global systems set up by people in the past who had no inner peace. We remain infected by the disease of previously sickened centuries. But this is one bridge we truly do need to knock down, because it was not of our making. Sometimes burning our bridges can be empowering, too, offering a complete break with the past, and a chance to start anew.

As we create our own future by design, by the choices we make today, so, too, are our communities run on the design of others, of choices made yesterday. Imagine, what you do in the next seven minutes will determine whether you age quicker or slower, stay healthy or fall ill, and then take another look at the problems currently facing our world and imagine what actions determined how sick our societies are today. Their vibrations work down through the generations, because time and distance doesn't matter to energy. All that matters are the bridges that are built to accommodate them.

Some thinkers have likened these bridges to computer pathways. The technology you're using to read this now will have an operating system, to ensure the equitable distribution of its resources. Without it, applications would be fighting over the gadget's resources, its memory, its hard drive capacity, CPU power, etc., and it would be unable to peacefully operate multiple programmes. However, with a stable OS in place, your gadget is able to seamlessly and peacefully accommodate the operation of multiple applications at the touch of a button.

Adherents to this analogy say it should apply to the world at large. Whereas today we are completely connected and interdependent, and yet don't have a smoothly running society, the conflicts we're experiencing should come as no surprise. Without a smoothly functioning operating system in place, any single program can come along and start sucking up the planet's resources - whether this be oil, water, precious metals - without feeling the need to share. This isn't advocating a "world order" or a global government, but it's a blueprint on how we should view the soul of our societies. The women of Noiva do Cordeiro have discovered their own operating system, and it obviously works for them.

One of our fundamental tasks is to figure out how to configure our own personal relationship systems to affect and not reflect the larger world, thereby ensuring that global harmony is that much closer to achieving in our lifetimes. To aligning our communities with the real soul of community, rather than its domineering ego. And there is no reason why, if we set that intention, we can't live in a more peaceful world, in a system under which we can exist more peacefully with each other. But for a harmonious world we first and foremost need to do our homework on our own lives. It starts with us.

We have a responsibility to build and maintain our bridges of love, so that we can travel back and forth to keep harmony within ourselves and with our world. If we don't have that, then our outward actions in the world can produce a lot of turmoil, as we have seen. Because we can't try fixing things while being badly unprepared. We can't be kind when we feel bad or disconnected from our source.

Even if we use kindness towards others to stop us thinking about ourselves, or put others too readily above ourselves, that kind of suffering martyrdom won't really heal any of us in the long run. This isn't about asking for repayment on kindness, it's about understanding that the payback we look for must be in the value of the service itself. We need to be inspired while inspiring others. We need to be able to take lessons and grow internally from our loving acts to others, so that it benefits us both as the giver and receiver and doesn't act as a trigger for the ego.

The bridges we build must work both ways, otherwise all we have are semblances of peace and harmony, a superficial patchwork quilt of attempts at solving our problems, when really all we're doing is covering up the systems still at work, sweeping their faults under the carpet. Then at the tiniest shakes, the cracks begin to show.

It's truer now that ever before that love will fall through society's cracks if we let it. If we allow ourselves to become a stranger to love, love will always be a stranger in our lives. However if we openly welcome love, we'll quickly discover that love is the strongest bridge we can build between us, the universe and everything in between.

Yours in love,

The "L" of Life

“It will come as no surprise that health is the most talked about topic on the internet. But what about the health of the planet? Or our species as a whole? When you take a look at our world today, do you ever get that feeling that sometimes you just want to cry? I have to confess to being a bit weak in the tear ducts, anything can set me off. And sometimes a good cry can be cathartic. I do wonder, though, when that moment will come finally where we realise there is more to take out of life than being taken out of it. And when those enlightened future generations look back on our times, what will they say about these specific years where everything just seemed to be on the brink?”
— Mickie Kent

I have been watching with horror after the (most) recent case of racial profiling in America ended in the death of another African-American teen. I asked myself if this would be the one-too-many fatality to push people over the edge. Even one life is too many, but as the body count piles up in similar tragedies across the United States, it's going to get harder for even the most conservative American to stomach. At least, one would hope.

An independent post-mortem examination has determined that the young boy was shot at least six times, including twice in the head. Witnesses said the unarmed teenager's hands were above his head when he was repeatedly shot by an officer in Ferguson, Missouri on the 9th of August. For strangers like myself here in England, peering into the US from a microscopic media lens and reading stuff like that, it feels like people of colour are easy targets for the police and public majority alike, to literally take pot shots at. The resulting protests and clashes are unsurprising, but the official overreaction to them has been creepily surreal.

Ferguson officer not charged in teen shooting.

I had just written in a previous post that authoritarianism was spreading across our world in mind as well as spirit, but had not envisaged that there would come a time when I would see Amnesty International dispatching organisers to US soil for the first time in its history. Let that sink in. Not Ukraine. Not Gaza. ST LOUIS. Where the police have military-style battle gear and use it on their citizens, and a state of emergency was declared alongside the imposition of a curfew and the deployment of the National Guard TWICE. Tear gas has been fired, and American and foreign journalists have been arrested and injured in the fall out.

Not only does this happen in America: we've been reading of such riots all across the world - of how dictators have quelled dissent and silenced protestors with tactics like curfews and tear gas. Just this Wednesday violent clashes between authorities and residents of an Ebola-stricken neighbourhood erupted in the Liberian city of Monrovia, as the death toll from the disease continued to climb. But was it REALLY only a matter of time that we would be reading about such violence against demonstrators in the land of the brave and the free?

I know the recent killing has touched a chord with many in the African-American community and beyond, which goes further than the shooting itself. Race isn't really the issue. Division is the issue. Insensitivity is the issue. Seeing other human beings as animals is the issue. Race is just a label we stitch onto its particular fabric. Proving the point aptly, one white American citizen, who came out in defence of the police likened those demonstrating over the death of an unarmed black boy by police to dogs. "It's as simple as training your dog. If you don't tell them stop biting, guess what, he's going to continue to bite," he opined, speaking on behalf of "white" America.

However, when we reduce human beings into animal analogies we not only offend ourselves, but the animals we use as examples for our violence and insensitivity. They at least have an excuse. When we react on basic emotion rather than thoughtful emotion we become just as culpable. We are quick to apportion blame, and refuse to ask why people react the way they do. We act on reflex rather than in thought, and liken people to animals, when with such reactions, it's we who are the most befitting to our animal analogies.

Of course America is a huge place. We cannot brush the tar that sticks to the streets of one city across a whole nation, but I think that it does reveal the dark shadows of ghosts past that continue to haunt the continent. On the subject, correspondent Charles Laurence of theweek.co.uk described the recent police killing and the resulting riots as "a story of black poverty and white supremacy".

If the increasing “militarisation” and excessive force of the police had been the spark in the tinder box – as dissenting voices had been warning for months while police binged on armoured vehicles, machine guns and sniper rifles left as surplus from the “war on terror” – there is a dreadful irony in that it now takes the actual military to restore order.

Powerful irony indeed: if we become bedfellows with violence, then our lives become its products. Another correspondent, Nyle Fort writing for The Guardian believes that white supremacy is the real culprit in Ferguson, too, and the excuses being used are the evidence of it. "To be black is to be a victim - and then to get blamed for it. To focus on the people's resistance more than police repression devalues black life", Fort says.

Every type of action and opposing reaction is indeed a chain. Just recently, we have seen its links forged within the ongoing tensions between Ukraine and Russia, as well as between Israel and Hamas. Ukraine accuses pro-Russia separatists of killing dozens of civilians in an attack on a convoy fleeing a besieged rebel-held city, while ceasefire upon ceasefire is broken between Israel and the small pocket of terrorists who refuse to stop attacking a country it can't possibly hurt. But violence, anger, revenge, punishment - these are all addictive cycles. We watch the world at large, and we react like children emulating their parents. And round and round we go down the decades.

You can paint it anyway you like, but ever since those with power decided to pursue policies of violence, we have been breastfeeding those more vulnerable than us on our violent attributes. It's only natural they will grow up and attack us back, because they believe it's the only language that gets results. Such desperate self-preservation will, with yet more irony, eventually lead to our extinction. It will most certainly lead to the death of what makes us human, if we have made violence the victor.

One reader, an attorney from America emailed in to give her account and feelings about the terrible image the Ferguson riots have painted about America. Her letter became even more poignant when she informed me that she had lost her brother in a similar shooting in New York City just seven weeks ago. He had been arguing with his white girlfriend, when the police mistakenly thought a verbal assault was in progress. The couple had been arguing over their wedding list, and were to have been married the following month. His sister had this to say about the killing of the black teen in Missouri:

I'm an American and proud to be one. But I fear for the life of my children when I live in such a trigger-happy nation. It's a horror story. It just goes on without stop. It's relentless, Mickie. I can't tell you how disparate we've become here.

I mean, even if you are shooting an armed person, why would you shoot them six times? What is it inside a person that would just want to destroy another human being that way? Watching the video footage where the white policeman casually walks away after shooting the black teenager six times is worse than chilling, I felt as though I was watching humanity die.

Once the protests began, and I saw the banners that read "Stop Killing Us" it resonated with me deeply. That message spoke not only to the incident that sparked the clashes, but I felt it spoke to the world as a whole. To that majority of us, the billions of us mortified how such a thing could happen in America, it was a plea to violence to stop killing our humanity. One we all share."

Unless we realise that this is a world we all live in, and that we shall exit it one way or another, then change will not come. We'll continue to shun and hate people we don't know and have never met over imagined differences, we'll continue to judge strangers over the stupidest reasons, and think that only our own feelings matter most. We shall remain insensitive to others, and even worse, become insensitive to what we label as "certain types of people". Naturally, no one in their right mind would condone disgruntled minorities using terrorism tactics - violence is not the way to get your message across. However noble the message, once you smear it with blood it will stink and rot. No hand remains clean. And yet we condone violence against those different than us (we've even named national holidays after nation-forming genocides), because it means we don't have to accept responsibility. Even when, clearly, we share in the blame.

For instance, we must accept responsibility for the political machinations of the West since the 1950s, and even further back during the British Empire, which culminated in the devastating events of 9/11, and our calamitous violent response to spawn the violent manifestations of Islam we see at work today in certain parts of the world. Robert Fox writing for theweek.co.uk questions why the lightning campaign, which has seen Islamist militants seize a huge chunk of Syria and Iraq and declare its own Islamic state, was not anticipated by analysts in Britain and the United States - blaming it on George W. Bush's disastrous response to 9/11.

The case against Blair and Bush’s hasty intervention strategy in Iraq is that they never thought through the strategic consequences in going to tackle a non-existent threat - the phantom weapons of mass destruction - and of turfing out a dictator with no idea what to put in his place.

These errors were compounded by the wilful dismantling of the professional core of the Iraqi army and the Baathist civil administration, including those who ran Iraq's hospitals and schools. These two institutions were the only things that stood a chance of holding the country together.

Undoubtedly, when jihadist militant groups gleefully share their kills over social networks, and mention the word "revenge" there's a reason for it. It's historical revenge, keenly felt by a lunatic fringe group splintered from a moderate minority who have felt the pinch of being different, having for decades paid the penalties we have violently dished out because of a violent few. These young misguided people, drawn to such juggernaut jihads, have been fostered by years of hate and injustice - seeing their parents, families and communities singled out as outcasts over the murderous actions of a few. We have made them feel as though they don't matter, and they obviously want to create a society where they do (or destroy the one that doesn't to them). It's an abhorrent society that they wish to create, make no mistake, but we can't ignore the fact that when they felt stuck in a corner they must have asked themselves, "What would America or the West do in this situation?" Then they would have looked back at 9/11 to get their answer: To attack, to hunt, to go after their enemies "dead or alive".

Consequently, by setting a bad example we have left behind a terrible legacy of violence in the wake of 9/11. We are being punished with what we taught by example - with our knee-jerk reactions of revenge. What we have put out into the wider world has come back to land on our doorsteps. And when it comes to civil rights, rarely have we practised what we preach when it comes to anyone but our own citizens, and that it seems - as America shows - we only do if you're the right colour of person. Similarly, with Israel and Hamas. Whatever arguably justifiable reasons we have to set our Goliath-killing machines upon masses of protesting civilians, when there are internationally sanctified schools being bombed and hundreds of children dying - these are means that cannot justify the ends. And if we choose to blindfold ourselves with cultural or racial bias so as TO justify them, then we lose our humanity in the process.

Channel 4 news broadcaster Jon Snow recounts the scene in Gaza's al-Shifa hospital, where doctors struggle to treat adults and children wounded by Israeli attacks (26 July 2014/YouTube)

Kick-starting a process of violence is a downhill, slippery slide. Especially when the civilian casualties begin to disproportionately pile up on one side and not the other. Or do Palestinian children have to be the "right sort" to get acknowledged? Israel keeps putting out the "human shield" theory - which is becoming as offensive as the "blood libel" slander aimed at Jews - to excuse the hundreds of children slaughtered, but even if these children, women and entire families are willing to get bombed, should we not ask why? It's inconceivable to us in the West why people would waste their lives in such a way: What their lives must be like, what terrible conditions they must endure to make them feel they have no other choice but to add their own life to the body count to give voice to their plight? And we in the West, tongue-tied by our historical genocidal shame over our treatment of the Jewish people say nothing. Or is it more than that?

Is it that we believe these people aren't human? That they are somehow dumb, feral creatures whose lives are not worth the same as ours? Or do we believe that once we eliminate all Muslims (as if that were possible), then world peace will suddenly come to our streets? It's not us, it must be them, we believe. We're civilised, they are the barbarians. But when there is not one single Muslim left on our streets then we'll start on the Jews (no longer united by a "common enemy"), because their religious practices are almost identical to the Muslims. And when they are gone, who shall we start on next?

Naturally, we'll just start on each other. The fact is we are becoming as bad as the people we think we're so against, and in their absence what else will addicts of violence do, but start on each other? Until there is no one left to fight. Because that's what we do. We war over everything. Over culture. Over who owns what food. Over where we should live. Postcode lotteries where the rich push out the poor. This divide has even leaked over into the topic of wellness. Your income and environment can make a big difference to the weight loss methods you choose and their success rates, according to new research. So, are you a victim of the great dieting class divide? And if you're not lucky enough to afford to live in a clean air environment outside of the urban cities, and afford clean food, then what do you do?

Going back to America, Dr Martin Luther King Jr said in 1968: "A riot is the language of the unheard". Today, nearly 50 years later, it's not only black America that demands to be heard AND heeded - by any means necessary - it's rebel groups all across the world. In defiance of the fact that America may continue to alienate these rebels abroad by calling them terrorists, or alienate their own citizens by blaming them for the recent riots, and despite the fact that Israeli air strikes will continue and successfully kill senior Hamas military commanders, violence does not end violence, it only begets it.

Did a violent response to the protests in Ferguson make things better? Of course not. The police killing of a SECOND black man in the St Louis-area has threatened to further enflame tensions rather than pacify the fears of the demonstrators. Furthermore, in the cause of our righteous self-defence, we tend to forget just what it is we are really defending when the fighting goes on too long. Have we once, since getting caught up in this blood lust, checked ourselves and our motives to see if what we are so zealous over defending even exists any more? The freedoms and dignity afforded to life we fight so hard to protect, do they even exist, even if just for "a chosen few"? When our anti-extremist laws become as extreme as the extremists themselves, then who has "won"?

It's the same elsewhere, across the world. Israel has done more harm to its public image than good, further bloodied with child butchery, rather than present itself as the dignified bastion of democracy it really is, defending itself against terrorists who would destroy them. Israel may indeed view itself as the latter, but in the eyes of many, including some of their allies, the disproportionate amount of deaths of so many civilians and children is too much to stomach. To make matters worse, there are very few Jewish moderates in Israel protesting against their government's actions. In their silence they are condoning violence as a proper resort, like those in America who came out in defence of the police, like those moderate Muslims who refuse to condemn those using their peaceful religion as a weapon. But it only means they have given an open invitation for that self-same violence to make an appearance on their streets some time down the line.

A demonstrator throws back a tear gas container during riots over death of teen in Ferguson/Photo by Robert Cohen

Endorsement of violence means the horror stories will just keep on coming. Relentlessly. And those of us - the majority of billions - will continue to allow the few to hijack the future of the many. Because that is what's happening. We mustn't forget that these horrors spun around us are not our stories, but we have allowed them to be written as such. Is every policeman in America a white supremacist? Of course not. The majority of Americans are good, decent, honest and loving people, as is their police force. As are Israelis. And Muslims, of any sect, from any region.

Yet we tend to forget that fact, even the moderates amongst us who sit back watching ever horrified as today's tales of upheaval, murder and mayhem play out in front of eyes. On this staged drama, peace is analogous to struggling indie artists who're trying to attain a modicum of recognition for songs against an industrious, money-making, massive machine of war that controls the populace. Feeling stuck within this cycle of hatred, because we feel it has become ingrained in too many of us, is soul-destroying. And we are setting up more generations of hatred even as we speak. As women, we may blame male dominance, but even men feel victims today. Chris Goode's controversial one-man play Men in the Cities, while exploring the anxieties facing men in modern Britain, also cuts to the heart of violence and masculinity. In an interview for The Telegraph, he said:

Patriarchy seems to me like a giant self-harm machine. It feels like as a man, or becoming a man, you fear what seems to be an inherent capacity for violence and knowing that that violence is present somewhere in your circuits and if you disavow yourself, than you become the victim of it.

Once you allow violence to take the wheel, it goes on auto-drive and you don't know where you'll end up. But you can be sure that the destination won't benefit anyone - and especially not the driver. Violence sets us up for a fall. Take our Western film industries. We are casualties of Hollywood's violent addictions; it's the only way some of us can express our disillusionment when our reality - or more correctly our perception - doesn't live up to expectations ballooned with movie hype. We begin to see an enemy behind every corner. We go for the gun believing it can solve all our problems, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Unfortunately human nature itself encourages this folly to spread widely; let a critical mass of people begin to believe something, however fictitious, and soon the contagion of popular hallucination has everyone knowing it for a fact. It's the same with the violence we might feel is erupting all around us like Iceland's Bardarbunga volcano, but its ongoing magma movement is only a moment in time. The truth is, whether it seems that way or not, compared to other centuries, the world has never been better. We are more sensitive to misogyny, prejudice and casual racism than we were in times gone by. Few would want to see a return to the world of the seventies and eighties, when groping a woman was seen as standard practice and nobody batted an eyelid if you derided people as wogs or yids. We're more accepting now, more than ever. Other people are allowed to be other people. Your perspective is only yours, and you have no need to force it on others, just as they don't need to force their values on you.

Conservative Republican Ron Paul said that the true antidote to racism is such liberty - but then cheapened it with his own personal libertarian ideology based on a 20th Century creed of selfishness. But for liberty to be an antidote to intolerance, money and wealth should not be its measure. For liberty to work it has to be liberty for all, not left to be dispensed out in the hands of a few. When that happens, our liberties, like capitalism, becomes corrupt and decrepit and brings chaos. We've all been casualties of that, too.

Undeniably we need freedom and space to grow, but in all respect to Paul, money shouldn't be the equalizer of human life - as though you should only be taken seriously when you have wealth. Liberty isn't something you should have to work to get or accumulate. Human dignity isn't something only for those who can afford it. It doesn't have a price tag; it comes attached to the sanctity of life. And not to only one way of life, either. Many conservatives think the minorities in their societies are trying to do to them what they're doing to the minorities - oppress them and make them lesser people. It's what we see happening in Ferguson, today. It's like when you see a man who constantly accuses his wife of cheating, and it turns out he's the one who's been cheating all along.

Now ask the average person what's wrong with government, and you'll hear all about corrupt politicians, corporate lobbyists and shady back-room deals. But, of course, we elected those corrupt politicians, and the more you look at the situation, the more it appears that as people, we are just really bad at democracy. Because we attach a price to it.

That hypocrisy, so pervasive in our political systems today, has also infected us. We excuse our prejudices, our biased actions - however racist they might be, because we can't see what we're doing is not protecting our values, but devaluing our human worth. We do it every time we give more (media) attention to the death of a white person above a person of colour, but the loss of life, whether by beheading or by shooting, is equally horrific despite the colour of that person's skin. I've even had many people try to argue with me that racism is just another form of censorship, and "nonconformists" should have the freedom to be racist if they want to - when it's just an excuse to give vent to the nasty attitudes that lurk in the dark recesses of the mind. They even argue that the origin of the word "racist" comes from a Jewish communist, as though that somehow negates the word's loaded meaning today.

Of course, what's important is the meaning common culture and our modern societies have given to the term racism. Moreover, why on earth would any intelligent person need to belittle, attack or subjugate another as a safety valve over the suffocation of excessive political correctness, or adhere to a stereotypical caricaturisation to make a point about another person? And the point is that we should never generalise a person to what we perceive to be the (negative or positive) traits of a single race or culture. Because what we're doing is dehumanising that person, and a precondition of doing violence to any group of people or nation is to make them less human. Highlighting their differences to us. Setting up walls in our minds before they even exist. While another excuse of the anti-politically correct brigade is the claim that there can be too much sensitivity, swinging the pendulum the other way too much in favour of the minorities. But this defence of reverse racism is defunct because we live in a culture that supports and enforces whiteness as the norm and people of colour as the other. It's like being bigoted against white supremacists, it may sound plausible in theory, but it doesn't work in practice.

Frankly, notwithstanding the reality that we all have biases, I've tried to remove these outmoded mindsets, and the people that promote them, from my life. Two years ago I met a person who outwardly seemed as nice a person as you could want to meet, but the minute I realised he was racist, I politely severed the friendship. The issue was over a white South African friend of his who argued that apartheid never existed, and Nelson Mandela was jailed for being a terrorist who deserved his punishment. And my friend saw nothing wrong with that, and was perfectly comfortable about making racist jokes about it - describing it as irreverent gallows humour or friendly "banter". Both are gay, which proves that being a victim of discrimination doesn't mean you can't discriminate yourself. Likewise Israelis, who were once the victims, have now become the culprits in a vicious cycle of hatred - where what goes around will invariably come back around to you.

Although disgust is not a word I use lightly about how I personally feel about such matters, the incident did serve as an important lesson for me. I thought: I've no right to judge people who think that way - all I can do is make sure MY path is on a different route. We mustn't be lax in ourselves, because if we feel the need to keep highlighting people's differences, or we want to separate people simply because we perceive them to be different than us and thus a threat to our way of life, then we should expect more of the same horror stories we're inflicted with today. That's not the sort of story I want to write. I want to write a different tale in my life. To sing a different song.

Poet Langston Hughes wrote during the 1920s, a period known as the "Harlem Renaissance"
because of the number of emerging black writers.

In my attempt to do that, I forgive those people who are racist, and forgive myself when I find myself discriminating against others, too, but always aim to correct it. As the poet Tagore has pointed out, our passing thoughts are more like approximations, in need of correction, than truth. When we come at it from a divine perspective as an inner witness, it gives us the confidence to see that our imperfections and distracted thoughts do not constitute who we are. We find that our temporary patterns of mind prove not to be the final version of ourselves - that in the end, we are something more than our thoughts but an experience of mind that is awakened when we have the wisdom to understand (as I put it) what the "L" in life stands for.

Deep down we all know the answer to that one. Even the friend I had to let go, if he brought the "L" of life into his own existence, he'd realise that his racist friend does him more harm than good. We are not defined by our associations, but we can be infected by them. We can forget that the "L" in life stands for love. But if we concentrate, strengthen and nurture love over the daily course of our lives, then we will come closer to our true humanity. Love is the healing agent that can awaken an enduring new vision of ourselves, despite all the violence we're subjected to - a violence which will eventually have to tire itself out. In the long run peace is the proverbial slow turtle that wins the race against the speedy hare. Whether the Israelis or the Islamic militants get what they want, they won't truly be happy until they learn to love their neighbour. And if those so hell-bent on a jihad continue in their violent manner, once secluded from the majority of civilisation, they'll start exterminating each other, or finally realise that there is more to life than the taking of it.

So, once we start putting the real "L" into life, rather than making a hell out of it, we'll understand the wisdom that the late astronomer Carl Sagan arrived at. And we won't have to go to his great heights to discover it. I'll let him have the last word, because he has said it as eloquently as I have read anywhere. Whether Jew or gentile, his words are filled with a truth that will resonate with us all, because it does not speak to a single race, colour or creed, but to the human inside of us all.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being that ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1997 reprint, pp. xv–xvi

Putting the "L" into life,