He lay in the trenches and others in the forest and some flat on their bellies in mud and grime, some in the tropics in the jungle with snakes and other horrors, some rain drenched, some parched by the sun, the noise deafening or eerie quiet. Some had shells bursting around them from mortar fire, aeroplane rapid gun attacks raking and scouring the ground and themselves.
Then the training to hate the enemy kill or be killed, fixed bayonets screaming loudly ---Yaaargh as they pierced the sack in training and fiercely tearing into the flesh and bone in combat and experiencing their own flesh rent asunder and bleeding.
Some began to question the madness of this war; are we not all human be it of differing religion, skin and ethnic colour, are we not shared 'owners' of land, is this not just political, brain washed cultures, had we not thought this through. The generals estimating what is a satisfactory percentage of loss of life to win a hill, a valley or a strategic place, an ammunition dump, a terrorist stronghold and were not the perceived enemy doing just that as we the same.
It shattered many a minds, bewildered and then wanting to run away from this horror yet in a conflict and being essentially patriotic. The madness of the war, the battle between running and defecting, being loyal to country, King, Queen, President and yet so scared and not understanding how the simple fact of taking life just for the sake of world domination, to force one into another culture and religion or even being atheistic.
Why has not humankind contemplated its essence of its own humanity and yet there are those who love the smell of death, torn bleeding flesh, the pungent acrid smell and taste in the mouth of sweat, pain, rotting corpses, blood lust hungry and like a hunting pack of animals up for the fight and encouraged and rewarded for their bravery and of course the enemy up for it as well.
Those that feel the pain and subdue it and feel the wrench that is being there and the madness of it have trauma when it is over or go completely insane and breakdown, they are often called cowards, nancy boys, and those that would not go to war as cowards, not manly and conscientious objectors are imprisoned and some shot.
It is crazy when Northern Canada was invaded the invaders said to the native Canadian's 'we want your land' the reply was ' the land is not ours to give it belongs to the Great Spirit who created all things' 'Never the less we want your land' so they were driven off their land where they had lived for years. The native community appreciated that the land was not theirs to give it was a common heritage, the invaders wanted to own and posses and hoard the land to make profit and mine for minerals and gold and so on, yes they could do this and share the bounty with those that had lived there for ages.
Its too simplistic to share and care, to have compassion and reach out to all others as family, the family of Humankind, is it childish to be equal in feeling and perhaps one maybe more accomplished in certain ways but to be forbearing to those less skilled and learned, those less well off it is indeed welcome to nature and Life.
And then one returns home after the war torn country one has left, seen women and children raped or children taught to murder and maim, the bombed out ruins, people eating grass and rats, rubble everywhere, people spitting at you and the look in their eyes to kill you and the Generals who talk about acceptable collateral damage.
You get home and there are you loved ones who have been frantic and are overwhelmed to see you, some are not so badly psychologically scarred and can just about cope, others cannot come to terms of what they had seen and experienced and probably suppressed and pushed down somewhere in their psyche. The nightmare, the noise, the stench, the inability to come to terms with their reoccurring nightmares, maybe to drown it with drugs and alcohol and other distractions, then perhaps to become angry, rebellious, violent then if one is fortunate some therapy with a competent therapist.
The real question I raise and do in all my work; who are we in essence? Who am I before I was raised in a culture, religion, ideology, politic, peer pressure of the age and so on, and my enemy presumably being or having the same but different form of brain washing, I may then realise I have been following and believing someones else brainwashed paradigm inherently passed down by and through many, many generations. My enemy as well.
So if we seriously go about stripping away these brainwashed 'genetically' (although now through epigentics and neuroscience with brain neuron plasticity)it is not genetic so much as repetitive beliefs and drumming and drubbing day and night, that ones brain becomes conditioned and trained until it is habit and not even questioned or thought about, just as the drill sergeant shouted and screamed at you in military training until it became normal. one's reality. Even in sport or driving it is train by repetition that one becomes the process, it becomes a habit and often when driving it is unconsciously performed.
Until the day comes when a wake up call comes it can be war, disease, some sort of tragedy and so on, or it can gradually though questioning, meditation, contemplation and various ways. OK so in therapy one may come to terms with this but still have the layers of brain washing in a way when one understands that the other side were also indoctrinated and in a way not to blame because they fought for their beliefs and way of life as I did in my belief system.
Then on further examination one can go deeper and discover who am I when I strip away my brainwashing. At first it does not seem possible or even improbable. It is difficult to not just stop a former belief or way of life, a discipline however it can happen suddenly and for me it has been gradual and my fear of only having a few tenets in my life would leave me immoral, unkempt, wild, lustful, subjects to every whim and desire, a mad raving simpleton and the like. Gradually I realised there was something precious 'underneath' this all pervading net, this carpet and covering of these beliefs coming to me as clouds of thoughts, fears, fantasies and health scaring punitive ways as punishment for something I know what and then realising it was a ploy to keep me fixed to my beliefs and brain washing, stray from these and you will be sick, have no money, never loved by yourself or others and so on.
Underneath was me. There is this calm, this peace, this bright illumination of something tangible not to my physical senses but to my mind to my 'brain' space and yet this space was beyond all brain confinement it was an endless sea and ocean of bliss and beyond bliss to a tranquil state of being. I cannot claim this all day every day, yet there are prolonged moments and who knows that those moments which turn into hours and sometimes days. I cannot manufacture it or psychologically conjure it up, it is when I just become aware of the absurdity of the world madness and my own when I embrace my conditioning which has a stifling and suffocating effect and my letting go of trying to eliminate and just observe and let it melt away for the conditioning it is and I realise it has not foundation and the dream shattered by the awakening of my true nature.
