Let's Play Soldiers

I have been bothered about the fuss over the deaths of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan for a long time, but could not quite put my finger on the reason for feeling bothered about it.

Was my concern about the fact that people died? Not really. People die, and that is a law of nature. People choose to die in many different ways, and that is destiny.

Was my concern about soldiers dying in a war? No. This was more sadness about the choices that these soldiers made. But then they planned the blueprints for their lives before they came into this world. They had reasons to plan dying in a war. We have to respect their choices, even if we do not understand them.

Was my concern about soldiers dying far from home? No again. Where a person dies far from loved ones, the focus should really be on the loved ones, because they are left with questions and grief. The soldier is gone and taken care of in another dimension.

I was also more irritated than concerned about the fuss in the press regarding the number of soldiers that have died recently. For goodness sake, if you go to war there is a very good chance that you may kill or get killed. So why on earth do people get so excited about the number of people that got killed because of a lack of equipment? If the equipment was available, they would probably have been killed by their own equipment.

And why do people get upset about soldiers getting killed in a war? This does not mean injustice or foul play. They did not attend a tea party, they went to war, and people die in wars. And if more people die on my side than on your side, is it suddenly unfair, like when you buy a hotel in Monopoly because I have run out of money? War is not a game, it is real and real blood flows. I want to say to the body-counters: grow up!

I realised this week what was bothering me about this whole war business and the fuss about the soldiers who died. One of these forward-me-to-ten-people-or-you-will-get-rabies emails were sent to me. For a change I did not simply delete it, because it hit me that this is the reason for feeling disturbed about the soldier deaths.

The email was allegedly written by a soldier in Iraq. The author describes the way Americans are mourning Michael Jackson, even with a moment of silence in Congress. His argument is that Michael Jackson was just an entertainer. OK, not just an entertainer, because he was hugely successful as an entertainer worldwide. But still, he was an entertainer who did not "give his life", and therefore people should have given far less attention to his death.

On the other hand, the author argues, soldiers give their lives "so that others may live" and therefore we should all be so grateful to them and have a moment of silence for every soldier who dies.

Of course I can say but I did not ask any soldier to go and die for me, and I do not believe in war. All that is true, but still one-dimensional.

This reminds me of a company that I once worked for where there was a company-wide celebration, complete with balloons, computer games during work hours, lollipops in company colours (yes, this was for adults, and you would not believe how seriously they took it all). And then someone commented on how ridiculous all that may have looked to outsiders, and one person piped up and said "but think of the effort we put into ordering those balloons and lollipops - you are really ungrateful and make us feel bad after all our hard work." Really? Shame.

What the email brought home to me was the contrast between Michael Jackson and the soldiers.

What did the soldiers do? They fought and killed. Their actions were entirely centred in the base chakra, which governs fight or flight. Our base instincts relate to self-protection and preservation of the self.

We may try to justify our actions at that level by saying "but I do it for you", but that does not ring true. The sacral chakra does relate to relationships, but it is not about fighting against the world to have a relationship.

The base chakra is about exploring the self, and the sacral chakra is about exploring the self in relation to others. When you use violence against one person, you do not do it to protect another person. As long as you feel the need to use violence, your focus is on the self and on self-preservation.

When you move up to the sacral chakra, you in fact become less destructive and more co-operative. Saying that you voluntarily kill people to protect others does not mean you have moved from the base chakra to the sacral chakra, just like singing in the shower does not make you an opera star.

What did Michael Jackson do? He sang, danced and entertained. He touched the hearts of millions of people in many different ways. He loved and was loved. He gave of himself, even when he was in pain, because he wanted to make people feel happy. Michael Jackson worked from the heart chakra. He touched people's lives because people wanted to be touched.

I would not go as far as saying he was an angel or without fault - if he was, he might not even have bothered to incarnate. But if you look at his entire life, and if you really feel that you are in a position to judge, you would probably find that the good in his life weighed far more than the bad. And if you compare the sales of his records in the year before he died to the sales in the year after his death, it will show that he is still touching people's lives.

Why does the American Congress have a moment of silence for Michael Jackson but not for the soldiers? Why did millions of people crash the Google website when news of Michael Jackson's death leaked out, but the newspapers come up with politics and crocodile tears every time a soldier dies?

Could it be because humanity chooses to function from the heart chakra rather than from the base chakra?