What do you think of Putin? And could you imagine yourself being like him, even a little bit? Actually, we are all somehow like him even though it may not be so obvious. Of course, personal work always requires looking at the shadow, and Putin is providing us with an excellent opportunity to meet a bit of our own shadow. Well, at least something to be grateful for to him… In any case, if you are curious to discover the little Putin in you (even though your inner voice might be screaming at this outrageous and seemingly absurd thought), do read this article.
As on the inside, so on the outside
What’s on the inside (of each and every one of us) is always reflect on the outside. The scale doesn’t matter, the principle does.
So if we all witness and somehow feel touched, affected or triggered by a war, we must be all participating in manifesting it. That’s right – the outside world is always but a mere reflection of our internal world. And if we are not finding peace on the outside, that’s because there is no peace on the inside.
Now, many of you would argue that you personally did nothing to invade Ukraine for instance, that you are certainly not crazy (unlike Putin), and you have never started a war of any kind. But really?
Think about all the little (or big) wars you are in with your parents, your neighbor, your kids, your colleagues, drivers on the road, with your spouse or an ex, and most of all – with yourself! Are they that much different from the war Putin started in Ukraine? Are you that different from Putin himself?
To start identifying and acknowledging the similarities we all share with Putin, think about how many times you have withheld or twisted the truth (or even told lies) to control and manipulate outcomes. Think about all the hate, irritation, frustration, impatience, envy and revenge feelings you might experience when you are in the middle of a conflict with other people in your life (or when you are mentally fighting politicians, authorities, rule, regulations, etc.). Those states we so often find ourselves in release a huge amount of poisonous substances into our bloodstream (hormones of depression, disease and destruction) which, in turn, weaken and sicken our body, not to mention what they do to our mind. Even more importantly, this self-created poison we release on the inside starts to leak out into our environment and spills onto the people around us. The result is more isolation and alienation from others, more suffering and more pain (both physical and emotional). So we never achieve what we think we are out to achieve (which is mostly proving that we are right), and we hurt ourselves and others in the process.
Now, guess what! This is exactly what Putin is doing: in trying to take on Ukraine, he is actually slowly but surely destroying his own home (country). Putin is not only failing to achieve what he set out to (i.e. prove to the world that he is right); he is finding himself more and more cornered, his home is more and more isolated from the rest of the world, and his own flesh and blood (the Russian nation) is getting poorer and poorer, sicker and sicker. (NB: Disease is scrambled information or misinformation which we find plenty of in Russia these days.)
To our collective horror, Putin might get so frustrated as to start a chemical war. Now that would be a classic case of drinking your own poison and waiting for everyone else to die. The poison is in fact already working inside of Putin anyway, as well as inside of Russia as a country (which though doesn’t mean that most Russians lack the rational to at least question the war). And of course any further release of poison in the form of chemical weapons will continue to backfire. Hence, lesson #1: Don’t do to others what you don’t want to be done to you. And lesson #2: Don’t do to yourself what you don’t want others to do to you. Importantly, these are not just lessons for Putin. These are lessons for all of us.
Sadly, we all do it – small scale, medium scale or large scale. We all lead our battles and they all backfire making us sicker and increasingly more isolated from the people we are trying to connect with (and/or subsume). We get what we all project. So to stop the war, don’t try to stop Putin before you have become aware of the Putin within you. Change starts from within. And so if we don’t want to manifest more war, we need to do the internal work on ourselves first. Therefore, I invite you all: as you take your next breath, connect with Peace. Breathe in Peace and breathe out Love. The more peace we each generate within, the more peace will be reflected back to us by the planet.