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Jason All,
If I follow this all the way, it gets uncomfortable fast.
We say we want peace—but without conflict, how would peace even be known? Without contrast, it’s just a word with no meaning. So it does seem like what we call “the whole” expresses as both—creation and destruction, harmony and violence—not as errors, but as part of the same movement.
That’s easy to say at a distance.
Harder to say when it’s close.
Because if we’re honest, something in us does not celebrate violence. It recoils. And that recoil isn’t conditioning to get rid of—it may be just as much a part of the whole as the violence itself.
So I don’t buy that understanding non-duality means flattening everything into “it’s all the same.” That can become a kind of bypass.
Yes—nothing is outside of this.
But the impulse to stop harm, to protect, to care—that’s not outside of this either.
So maybe the real tension isn’t something to resolve.
Maybe it’s this:
The same field shows up as violence…
and as the refusal of it.
And we don’t get to stand outside that and philosophize.
We are where that tension lives.
We don’t stand outside the balance—we are the place where it chooses its direction.
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All,
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-Jason
Cheers!
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Jason All,
If I follow this all the way, it gets uncomfortable fast.
We say we want peace—but without conflict, how would peace even be known? Without contrast, it’s just a word with no meaning. So it does seem like what we call “the whole” expresses as both—creation and destruction, harmony and violence—not as errors, but as part of the same movement.
That’s easy to say at a distance.
Harder to say when it’s close.
Because if we’re honest, something in us does not celebrate violence. It recoils. And that recoil isn’t conditioning to get rid of—it may be just as much a part of the whole as the violence itself.
So I don’t buy that understanding non-duality means flattening everything into “it’s all the same.” That can become a kind of bypass.
Yes—nothing is outside of this.
But the impulse to stop harm, to protect, to care—that’s not outside of this either.
So maybe the real tension isn’t something to resolve.
Maybe it’s this:
The same field shows up as violence…
and as the refusal of it.
And we don’t get to stand outside that and philosophize.
We are where that tension lives.
We don’t stand outside the balance—we are the place where it chooses its direction.
Jeff Angelson
On Fri, Apr 10, 2026 at 2:43 PM Jason Klav <jasonklav1h...@gmail.com> wrote:
All,
I had asked a similar question at the end of a Thursday night group a few weeks back, and then this article came through my feed and brought it back up for me. Figured I’d deposit the questions here. Fair warning, some of you may feel offended or triggered by them, because this is very much a devil’s advocate kind of conversation. So read on with that in mind.We often find ourselves talking about how we wish everyone would wake up so the world could become a more peaceful place. But I have to ask, if the universe, God, consciousness, or whatever name you want to give the thing I’m pointing toward, truly wanted peace above all else, then why does it seem to express itself through conflict so often?It plays out everywhere, in every form. Even in the article below, chimpanzees are described waging a civil war, killing each other and even the babies of the tribe. Are we supposed to be saddened by that? Should we intervene and stop it? Should we preach to them that if they could just step outside their thoughts, everything would be better? Or do we dismiss it because they are just animals, even though their behavior so clearly mirrors our own?Or is all of this violence and strife actually part of the purpose of the world of form, to live out tragedies the formless itself cannot? It is uncomfortable to say, but should we in fact celebrate the violence the way we celebrate the peace, if both are equal parts of the whole and both keep showing up endlessly?Can we actually find gratitude and even love in the violence? Gratitude that these forms are living out the struggle we, the whole, so obviously seem to want, because we keep creating it. Love for the violence we seem to return to over and over again in so many different forms. Or does that violate the human mind too deeply, and are we too conditioned to seriously entertain such a thought?
<AgEXQUhDUWJpY3Y3UkFTRTRTQmp4SWctd2cAMA.jpeg>
-Jason
Cheers!
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On Apr 11, 2026, at 11:45 PM, Willow <idd...@gmail.com> wrote:
Jason,
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Jason, All
I don’t think anyone really loves violence.
What they love is what violence seems to restore—power when they feel powerless, justice when they feel wronged, belonging when they identify with a side.
In that sense, violence can feel clean. Even righteous.
But that “love” depends on distance—psychological or physical.
Up close, stripped of story, it’s much harder to sustain.
Awareness doesn’t exclude anything.
In that sense, you could call it unconditional love.
But not excluding something doesn’t mean loving it, celebrating it, or wanting to enact it.
So maybe the question isn’t whether we can love violence like we love peace…
…but whether we’re willing to see clearly what’s underneath the pull toward it.
Because if it’s identification, fear, hurt—then violence isn’t some deep truth we’re meant to embrace…
it’s a movement trying to resolve something that doesn’t actually get resolved that way.
Nothing is outside of what is…
but not everything needs to be lived out.
—Jeff
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