Dear Friends,

I haven’t been blogging much lately, as when I’ve not been seeing my clients, I’ve been spending my time writing a new book about how I see the severity of the world situation challenging all of us to play more active roles in determining what goes on in our societies.

I don’t believe we can leave everything to our world leaders and so-called ‘experts’ any more; all too often they are the cause of many of the problems which we face today. My sense is that if you and I wish for a better world to come into being, we need to find our own unique ways of being ‘active’ in bringing about change.

I believe we can be much more effective if we learn about the Spiritual Warrior tradition, well known to the Japanese Samurai and also reflected in the chivalry practiced by King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

My upcoming book, “Global Regeneration; Exploring the Sacred Vision of the Warrior Activist,” is nearly finished, and I would like to offer you a chapter I wrote, “Understanding the Insanity of War,” which is very topical, and it might help give you more insights into the war mentality.

Here is an excerpt from this chapter:

Insanity

I am now going to explore perhaps the most destructive and evil mentality that exists on our planet, and that is the war mentality, which doesn’t only manifest itself on battlefields but in many other areas of life as well. Nothing brings more devastation, pain and suffering, and I think that all of us warrior activists, regardless of our particular areas of expertise, are challenged to find that place inside ourselves where we can serve as antidotes against it.

I therefore want to devote an entire talk to this topic, as it is very important that you and I understand what wars are really about – what really underlines them – which is generally far removed from what we are told they are about and which those who start the believe they are about.

To be effective as agents of peace, it is important that we have some understanding as to why wars break out and the greed, dishonesty, stupidity, pathology and shadow projections that lie behind them and which can often result in them taking strange and unexpected forms. Sometimes they seem to emerge out of nowhere. For example, whoever would have thought that when Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary was murdered in 1914, that the chain of events resulting from it would lead to a world war!

As I give this talk, Trump is busy dropping 2000-pound bombs on the city of Tehran and is not only busy destabilising the whole Middle East, but many pundits believe it could lead to another world war, not least because Iran has a close relationship with both Russia and China. I wonder what will have transpired by the time this talk sees the light of day!

To make my points, we will look primarily at America’s relationship to war, the Russia/Ukraine war and Israel’s horrendous treatment of the Palestinians, as these sagas can answer most of our questions about why wars come into being and why they so often seem to be handled so brutally and stupidly. I will start by quoting from philosopher J.G. Bennett in his book What Are We Living For? ….

To continue reading, please open or download the full chapter in pdf format (it is a kind of ‘everything you wanted to know about wars but never asked’) to read at your leisure.

What Liberates?

The Oxford Dictionary defines liberation as: ‘the act of setting someone free from slavery, imprisonment or oppression’. Liberation, therefore, has both inner and outer dimensions which are intrinsically inter-related because if we are not free inside ourselves, it will inevitably limit our ability to live a liberated outer life, even if the society we live in is a relatively free one. The same can hold true the other way around as well. Many of us, therefore, need liberating not only…