What can we do about the nation of Ukraine? One essential message is: “By not forgiving you are harming yourself.” Most people of course look at forgiveness as: “If someone has harmed me, if I am to forgive them, they have to live up to certain conditions. They have to either regret what they have done, they have to change, or they have to be punished for a certain period of time. When they have been punished enough, then I can forgive them.”
What are you doing? You are holding yourself in that state of consciousness and as long as you think these other people need to suffer, you yourself will be suffering. Non-forgiveness is a state of mind, a state of mind that could be called “hell.” What is hell? Well regardless of the images projected out there by the Christian religion, it is more than anything a state of mind. What is it that blocks progress in any nation? It is a state of mind. What was the Soviet Union? First of all, a state of mind.
Consciousness comes before the physical manifestation. Any condition you look at in the material universe, there is a state of consciousness that precipitated that condition. Now you may do certain things in the physical realm to change conditions. This is in no way denying that this can be done. But the question is: “How can you actually come to the point where you can take certain actions?” You may say that there are nations in the world who have created a more peaceful society, where there is more affluence and freedom. They did this by taking certain physical actions, but what enabled them to take those physical actions? It was that there was first a shift in consciousness.
That is the central message that higher awareness has given to spiritual students for a long time, but the majority of those students who have heard this message, have not truly internalised it. They have not fully accepted it. Therefore, they are still projecting out that something out there needs to change. They are not willing to themselves be the forerunners by changing their own state of consciousness.
The more aware people can step up to the realisation that you can have a tremendous impact on your nation and the world by changing your own state of consciousness. Only by changing your own state of consciousness, will you have the full impact that more aware people can have. There is simply no way to have maximum impact by only working for other people to change, while not being willing to change yourself. You can have an impact, but it will not be the full potential of what can be achieved when a group of students are willing to look at themselves, work on themselves, set themselves free. Because when you are free in yourself of a certain state of consciousness, when you call for other people to be set free from that state of consciousness, or for the judgment of those who will not be set free, your calls have an almost infinitely greater impact than when you have not freed yourself from the consciousness.
What the people of Ukraine have said by electing this new president and this new parliament, is that we have had enough of the old patterns, the old politics as usual. We want something new, we want more. So the question is: “How can they have more?” Only by realising that they are more. How can you truly forgive? By realising that you are more than the self that was hurt and that feels the desire to punish those that hurt you. You can only forgive by leaving things behind. Not just the outer situation, not just the other people. What are you really leaving behind? You are leaving behind the self that was hurt. What gives people a desire for revenge? It is that they have a self that was created when they were hurt by other people, when they reacted to that situation. Perfectly natural and understandable that people at a certain level of consciousness react to being harmed by building a self that is hurt.
The fact of the matter is, and some would call it a brutal fact of life, but it is simply a fact of life, that this self is projecting that there is a problem that has to be solved. These people did something wrong, they need to be punished, they need to be made to suffer. They need to be made to see that what they did was wrong but this problem can never be solved. It can never be solved enough. If you doubt this, go to the Middle East, look at the situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Arabs. Can you ever punish the other side enough, so that the one side will feel: “Now they have been punished enough, now we can forgive them.” Well, maybe you can, but it hasn’t happened in the last five thousand years, has it? Is that not some indication of the impossibility of the task?
This self is projecting that you have to solve a problem by making these other people change or by punishing them and then you can forgive, then you can be free of the self. But even if you could solve the problem, you would not be free of the self, because the self would just find some other condition that needed to be fulfilled, so that it can stay alive. So you need to come to that realisation: “Do I want to be free? Then I need to move on.”
What do the Ukrainian people want? It is perfectly clear and there can be no doubt about it that much suffering has been done to the Ukrainian people by Russia, by Communist Russia, Soviet Russia and Stalinist Russia. The Holodomor (man-made famine) is a big wound in the collective consciousness. Higher Awareness is in no way trying to belittle this. But there is an attitude in the collective consciousness of Ukraine, most former Soviet Republics, most Warsaw countries, that the Russians should either be punished for what they did, or at least be made to see what they did and see that it was wrong, as the Germans have seen that the Holocaust and the Nazi regime was wrong.
There are many people who feel that the Russian people have not seen that the Soviet Union was an aggressive force that precipitated immense suffering on people outside of Russia, as it of course precipitated immense suffering on people inside of Russia. Many people feel that the Russians have not seen this, they have not acknowledged this, they are not determined that this should never happen again. Of course, when you talk about the largest part of the Russian population, it is perfectly correct. There are of course many Russians, the creative people in Russia, the many spiritual people who have embodied in Russia in order to bring Russia forward who have seen it, who have acknowledged it, but it has never been acknowledged officially by the Russian government. There has never been a willingness to ask for forgiveness as for example, you saw not very long ago, there was a celebration or a memorial in Poland to commemorate the German attack in 1939 and the German government sent a representative who openly asked for forgiveness, as they have done many times before. This has never been done by any Russian government. There are many people who feel that this should be done before we can truly forgive the Russians.
What do you want? Do you want to continue to be tied to the Russian people or do you want to be free to be yourselves, to create your own nation on your own terms? And if you want the first then just continue to not forgive the Russians. But if you want to be free to be your own nation, then this can only happen if you forgive the Russians unconditionally without waiting for any change in them because when you are waiting for other people to change, you are keeping yourself trapped in a certain state of mind that prevents your progress. You must let go.
It is the same that you have now with the civil war in Eastern Ukraine. You cannot right the wrongs, you cannot change the past. You can only determine: “How can we find a way to move on?” There must be dialogue. As the President has already demonstrated, he is willing to at least attempt to have such a dialogue. This needs to happen in the collective consciousness so that people are saying: “Let the past be the past and let us look at what kind of a future we can create for this nation. Can we move forward together or can we find a peaceful way to move forward separately?”
Other nations have done this. Other nations have divided and moved forward in a more or less peaceful manner, the same can happen here. This is not saying it must, but that it is certainly far better to split Ukraine into two nations than to continue a civil war that claims more and more lives, one might say, without having any chance of achieving anything constructive. There is a concept from the bible that you can find in the Old Testament that there had been warring for a long time and people came to a point where they had just had enough of it. Even though there was no decisive victory and nothing had really been achieved, the people just decided to beat their swords into ploughshares and move on, to start building something up instead of destroying and tearing down.
This is, seen from higher awareness what the Ukrainian people, a majority of them, have decided that they want, but it is one thing to decide that you want the outer change to manifest. It is another to decide that you are willing to change your own state of mind so that the outer condition that you want can be manifest. You want peace, you want progress. Why do you not have peace and progress? Because there is a state of mind that blocks it. There is a state of mind that precipitated the current conditions. Unless you are willing to change your state of mind, how can the outer conditions change? It cannot happen. A critical mass of people need to shift their consciousness and decide that whatever happened in the past, we see that what we actually want is a better future. A future that is more than the past, and we want that future more than we want to hold on to the past. This is the simple choice to be made.
Naturally, the Russian people also need to be willing also to move on, to let go of the past, even be willing to acknowledge that the Soviet Union did create immense human suffering both inside and outside of Russia. They need to be willing to ask for forgiveness and forgive themselves for this as well. You may say that there is a big scar, a big wound in the collective consciousness of Ukraine because of what was done by Stalinist Russia. Do you not think that there is also a scar in the collective consciousness of Russia because of what happened during the Soviet Union?
Whenever there is conflict between groups of human beings, there is often a group that feels that they were the victims. They were the ones who were the victims of the aggressors. Many people feel that the Russian people were the aggressors through the Soviet Union. Those who feel like the victims tend to think we have been hurt, but they have not been hurt because they are the aggressors. You need to recognise here that the Russian people were not the aggressors. There was a class of people in Russia who were the aggressors but not the general population.
The Soviet Union claimed to be the classless society but it was divided into two distinct classes. Those who were suppressed by the Communist regime and those who were carrying out that suppression. It is simply not so that all Russian people were able or willing to be the aggressors, to be those who suppressed others. They could not do so. There was a group of people in Russia who were willing for various reasons to suppress others, to arrest their own countrymen, sometimes even family members, to report their family members, even in extreme cases report their own parents to the authorities for not having the right Communist beliefs.
You need to make a distinction here, where you do not see all Russians as being the aggressors, as being the ones who suppressed your nation. You need to realise that the vast majority of the population in Russia or in any nation, are people like yourselves. They are people who want what? To live a good personal life according to their own decisions without being forced by any external force. This is what most people want. They are not aggressive, they want the good life.
With this you can begin to forgive the population of the country you feel has hurt you. Then you can identify that there was a class of aggressors in Russia and those you don’t need to forgive as such, at least you can call forth the judgment of them, the dark forces, the consciousness behind them and when you have done that you can say: “Well, now I have done what I need to do – now I can let go.” That of course is another word for “forgiving” because what do you do when you forgive? You let it go, you say: “enough is enough, I leave it behind.” By letting go you are setting yourself free.
The Ukrainian people have a right to be their own people, to not be forced by Russia, by the West, any external force. You have a right to be your own people, in your own nation but in order to be your own people, you have to forgive and how can you forgive? Well, here is one additional thought. The question that needs to be asked is: “Why were you suppressed by the Soviet Union?” It was partly, not saying fully, but partly because you were not willing to take responsibility for yourselves. You were not willing to decide “what kind of people are we, what kind of nation do we want to live in, and how do we have to change ourselves in order to manifest that kind of a nation.” This is the same problem that most Russian people have had throughout history of not wanting to decide this, therefore attracting one dictatorial ruler after another. What you can do in Ukraine, and what is very close to happening in Ukraine, is that you can have that shift where you dare to take responsibility for being who you are and manifesting a better nation.
This is not blaming anyone, but there has been that pressure building in the collective consciousness and this determination is very close to breaking through, where a critical mass of people in Ukraine can suddenly see this. It is not that there is something that forces them, but people are set free from the blindness. Like the Bible says: “the scales fell from their eyes” and they suddenly see and now it is obvious to them. You don’t have to argue about it. You don’t have to convince them. You don’t have to convert them because from within they see this is obvious. That is the change that is very close to happening and that you who are the aware people can call forth so that it can truly break through to the physical octave.
We need to talk about one more thing and that is the topic of corruption. Corruption could be said to be the one thing on the outer that is preventing the progress of Ukraine, that is preventing a major shift in the Ukrainian nation. It is certainly preventing economic growth and that the majority of the population will have a raised standard of living instead of just a few rich people. Again, yes of course, there is an outer condition that is taking place but what is the consciousness behind it? There is always a consciousness behind it. We talked about the “perfect storm” and the fall of the Soviet Union was the condition for the perfect storm in terms of creating this corruption both in Russia, in Belarus, in Ukraine, in many former Soviet Republics and Warsaw countries. It is because there was a condition that was created in the Soviet Union and it has several aspects.
One aspect is the majority of the population were beaten down to the point where they simply wanted to survive and they wanted to have as secure and as comfortable a daily life as they could. It wasn’t a very comfortable life, but at least it wasn’t unbearable so they were willing to submit to this ruling class that you had in the Soviet Union. This is deliberately using the word “class” to counteract this lie of the classless society. It is a complete lie that communism freed the people from the class struggle. It just created a different kind of class struggle. One elite, the Bourgeois elite, was replaced by another one, the Party elite and the apparatus behind them. It was a class structure with one class totally subverting and beating down the other class. This was one condition.
But what was really behind this was that most people just want a good life for themselves. There are two types of people, two reactions here. There are people who will settle for something and they will say: “What we have is good enough and I don’t want to risk losing what I have by taking a risk.” These are the kind of people that Marx called the working class, they were the workers. What Marxism is designed to do is to take advantage of these people’s unwillingness to take an initiative because those are the kind of people who can be controlled by the state. If you offer them a secure job where they have the standard of living that they think is the norm in their society, they will settle for that. They will say, “That’s good enough, let’s just be comfortable within the parameters set by our nation.”
Then you have another class of people who want more. They are willing to take a risk, to take an initiative, to try something new. They are the ones who might start their own business or who might take a job. They might get an education or even if they take a job, they are constantly seeking to improve their skills so they can perhaps rise to a higher position. These are the kind of people that are the backbone of growth in any society. They are actually what in most societies form the middle class that Marx identified as the enemy of the workers. They are not the enemy of the workers. They are the ones who can pull the economy of an entire society up so that the workers get better conditions and better salaries for doing the same job. The workers don’t have to take a risk, they don’t have to take initiative but as the economy is raised to a higher level, it will naturally spill over and they will get better salaries, better vacation and better working conditions, as you see in most of the modern democracies. When the affluence is raised, everybody benefits to varying degrees but everybody benefits.
What drives growth in any society is this class of people, this group of people who are willing to try something. They want more. What these people know, what they know within, is that there is a natural law. It was a law that Jesus described when he talked about the three servants who received different numbers of talents by their master. The master goes away, comes back and now says: “Show me what you have done with the talents I gave you.” Two had multiplied them and one had buried them in the ground. It was the two that had multiplied the talents that brought society forward. They were rewarded by getting more than they had because this is the natural law. As you give of yourself to improve conditions in your society, you will receive more in return. This is a natural law. We could call it a spiritual law, but it is really a perfectly neutral law. It has nothing to do with any particular religion. It’s a function of the universe being a mirror. What you send out comes back to you multiplied. So these people know that this is how the universe actually works.
But what did the Soviet Union do? It actually destroyed the natural flow. It destroyed the return current from the universe. The State inserted itself between the people and the cosmic mirror and interrupted the return current. There were people in the Soviet Union who were the model workers, who did more than they needed to do but who reaped the return current? Well, the State did. Who was the State? Well, the ruling class in society. They were the ones who were reaping the return of the people’s labour, of those who wanted to take initiative. There were many workers in the Soviet Union who went to work every day and did the minimum required but they were not multiplying the talents, so they were not producing any return current. They were just keeping the same level. There were many who were willing to do more but they were never rewarded, the State was rewarded and that actually helped the Soviet Union survive longer than it would have done if everyone had just worked and done the minimum.
So, you see here that the return current had been interrupted. This is what set the stage for the fact that when the Soviet Union collapsed, in all of the former Soviet Republics and in all of the Warsaw countries, you saw (it was already there to some degree) but you saw an explosion of this after the collapse of the Soviet Union, an explosive increase in corruption. Why? Because now there was more freedom in society, so that the people who were willing to take an initiative had the freedom to take that initiative but you still had the ruling class who thought they were entitled to reap the reward and that is how corruption was started. That is the mindset behind corruption where there is a class of people who feel: “Well, I’m entitled to use my position in the government to enrich myself.” What on earth is the logic that says that when you are a servant of the people, you have a right to use that position to extort money from the people that you are meant to serve?
There are many, many people in the modern democracies who are in positions of power in the government and who could not even dream of using their position to enrich themselves, but you saw in all of these former Communist countries how there was this class of people who felt they were entitled to do this. You saw that there was a group of people who were so beaten down that they couldn’t even object to it. They can complain about it maybe, but they could not really muster the determination to stand up and say: “this is not the kind of country we want to live in” and so, this is what you see. But you also see that many nations, many of the former Warsaw countries and some of the Soviet Republics have freed themselves from this and have reduced corruption to a level that is more in line with what you see in the more affluent nations.
You see here that it is possible to make that switch. It is also possible for Ukraine but it will require some very determined people who will stand up, speak out and demand an end to this corruption. Now these people have already taken steps by electing a president and a majority of parliament that are not part of the political elite. It doesn’t mean that all of them are angels, some of them are still corrupt, but at least some of them do not have that mindset, but it will still require a determination from the people. It is not enough for a problem like this to just elect a new president and a new parliament and then sit back and wait for them to do their job because corruption is a problem that is found at all levels of society and there is only so much that the government can do about it.
There needs to be a change in the attitude of the people, so that those who are on the receiving end of corruption will simply refuse to take part in it. They will refuse to pay up and this will gradually make those who are in that class of the corrupt people realise: “We just can’t get away with it anymore.” Now you also need to have a very dramatic change that will take some time, where you decrease the incentive to be corrupt, because public employees are actually paid a salary that they can survive on and raise a family on. It is a multifaceted process but other nations have done it. Ukraine is in a position to do it, to make that leap and seriously reduce corruption. That is why again, your energetic work can have a major impact on tipping the nation over, tipping that critical mass of people over where they say: “Enough, we do not want to live in a nation with this level of corruption. We will not take it anymore.” When a dictator feels that a critical mass of people have shifted their determination, the dictator must give way, and it is the same with this class of corrupt people.
The psychology of those who are demanding payments or other things from people is that they feel they can get away with it. They can gain more through corruption than they can lose from it, but it is not a very big change to tip this so that they suddenly become afraid that they could lose. These people, you must recognise their psychology. What are they doing when they are doing this corruption? They are trying to gain without doing more. They are not multiplying the talents. They are trying to get from other people who are multiplying the talents without them having to do anything extra. So their mindset is one of easy gain, but you cannot have a mindset of “easy gain” without having the opposite polarity of loss. Sudden loss. Now a person might be in this: “Oh, I’m gaining from this corruption, I’m getting rich, I can buy this big car, I can buy this big house.” But it is a very small switch that he realises: “But I could lose it all. What if they come after me? What if I get in prison? What if it doesn’t go anymore?” Then suddenly people can shift and say: “I’d better stop this before something bad happens to me.” These people are selfish and self-centred. It doesn’t take much to shift from thinking you can enrich yourself to thinking that you could lose. Once that shift happens, it will spread almost like rings in the water, like a wildfire through this class of corrupt people. It is a matter of the determination of the people has to be there first and then the government can ride that wave of determination of the people and carry through and actually enforce the laws that have already been enacted and that will be enacted. But it doesn’t do it any good to create a law if the people aren’t behind it, if there isn’t that shift in awareness.
Ukraine is close to breaking free of the past and building an upward momentum that becomes self-reinforcing. In a matter of a few years, this nation can change beyond what most people can even imagine right now.