Reflections on Noach, War and Peace, Life and Death

In the Torah portion Noach, the Almighty gives humanity seven simple rules governing the affairs of man to maintain civil order and peace:

Know God. Respect God. Respect Life. Respect Marriage.

Respect Property. Respect Animals. Preserve God-Centered Law.

Notice that the method depends upon a knowledge of God, a state of mind that operates from a God-consciousness, free of the destructive forces of unbridled instinct and ego.

Please be patient with me as I reflect on the events unfolding in the Middle East.

I've listened to many opinions and analyses on the fighting taking place there. Each podcaster, journalist, and pundit differs in their sympathies or antipathies towards Israel and Hamas. Many sensationalize the carnage as click bait to generate traffic, sacrificing truth and journalistic and moral integrity to please sponsors and advertisers. All the while, profiteers profit, politicians posture, combatants battle, and noncombatants suffer cultural destruction and ungodly, barbaric death. Both sides claim moral outrage over civilian casualties to gain favorable public sentiment and international monetary and military assistance.

I'm done listening to futile attempts to make sense out of insanity.

The insanity of war will stop when the human mind of everyone involved and everyone commenting on it becomes sane through a shift in psyche from a self-conscious mind to a God-conscious mind. This is a state of mind that recognizes universal unity with every person as a son or daughter of one Creator, that abhors murder and mayhem, and that feels and emanates respect for life and loving kindness towards all.

God-consciousness doesn't come from religious observance or pious living, nor does it result from virtue or even rigorous prayer. It comes from a mystical moment of awareness, a gift from the Holy One, that another paradigm exists, a spiritual realm parallel to the material plain we know. It is accessible to anyone despite induced animalistic conditioning or self-possessed intellectual thinking, both of which exist outside a God-consciousness and both quite capable of justifying and committing human rights atrocities with no end in sight.

The endless wars in the Middle East and elsewhere around the globe, within and between nation states, are a manifestation of the insanity concurrent with a spiritual bankruptcy of those instigating, assisting, participating and fighting in these conflicts. War will end when a God-consciousness transforms the human mind into a mindset offered to us by the Almighty after the great flood, when we gratefully know and gladly worship the One God who creates all life, and we happily and joyfully celebrate each human life.

Cecily

May there be abundant peace from Heaven, and good life upon us and upon all Israel. Amen.