Fill in the _____ with such things as contempt, hate, jealousy (a mistaken form of love), revenge, retaliation, the oppressed, any random deity or religious doctrine, any political or philosophical dogma, and on and on.

In the realm of concepts, we can debate forever whether or not one human being killing another is a natural act, but if we understand that to kill another is to kill ourselves, all debate would cease and compassionate behavior would prevail.

Some seek martyrdom in the name of a god or extreme belief (actually, all beliefs are extreme) by killing themselves and taking as many others along with them. Some commit suicide to end the personal suffering caused by the belief that negative inner voices are real.

Once you discover that there is no self that is not other, in other words, a self becomes an other as an other becomes a self, you find that there’s no one to disagree with and therefore no one to kill. With this understanding the desire to harm dissolves in the loving embrace of that which is one without a second.

Self and other arise in consciousness and are therefore made of consciousness. Have you ever experienced any thing, any object, any appearance, coming from outside of consciousness? If you check it out in your own experience, no ‘outside’ to consciousness can be found. Actually, no boundaries of any kind can be found. With this understanding we have the direct experience that there is only one consciousness – not two – no division between any things. Therefore, self and other are one, and one cannot kill one. It would be like asking the sky to cut itself in two.

Optimists, idealists, dreamers ask: will the killing ever end? Human history will play itself out in its own way, but even if it were just one human being who understood the limitlessness of being, the inclusiveness of consciousness, that all things are one, not two, ethical behavior would be a natural part of life and he or she would not kill, could not kill in the name of . . . anything.

‘Love is the discovery that others are not others.’ ~ Rupert Spira