Syria's Pathway to Healing

By Stephen Dinan
 
While the situation may seem hopeless in Syria, I do believe there is a pathway to a transformational outcome — one that results in real evolution for our world.
 
That pathway begins by looking at the situation with the lens of our new, global consciousness: how do we ensure that criminal acts on the scale being perpetrated now, are stopped and transformed for the good of all future generations?
 
This leads us to the role and importance of the International Criminal Court, which was created to address such “crimes against humanity,” with justice and due process.
 
From a nation-state perspective, Assad has not committed any direct crimes against the United States, and so the nation-centered logic goes that we should not be involved in settling it. However, when we see ourselves as all linked into one global family, it becomes clear that we cannot stand by as genocides happen. We cannot allow another Holocaust or Rwanda to tear apart the fabric of human life, and set back our evolution by decades. It damages our moral fiber and our collective consciousness in ways we cannot fully fathom.
 
So an end goal in which the global community unites around a call for Assad to stand trial for the use of chemical weapons in the International Criminal Court, is in alignment with the new global operating system. Everyone from the West to Islamic leaders can recognize the righteousness in that call, and eventually rally around it.
 
Assuming we collectively adopt this goal, what then is the pathway to the transformation that lets us get there nonviolently? I believe that, when dealing with behavior on the scale of Assad, that we do need the threat of force to curtail the level of abuse — just as police officers need guns to manage hardened criminals. And it may come to the use of such force, but it really needs to be an intervention of last resort, as violence needs to spiral and multiply. With police officers, they may go decades without ever firing their gun. The fact that they have it, is vital to stop criminality, but the use must be cautious in the extreme
 
So, if military strikes are not the real transformational possibility, how do we collectively put enough pressure on Assad and opposition leaders, so that they choose to cease hostilities voluntarily — perhaps, in exchange for amnesty for extended family and key allies.  
 
One thing we can do, as people committed to a unitive spirituality, is send our positive blessings, prayers and spiritual energy to Assad and the other leaders — recognizing them as fellow children of God — and empower them into remembrance of who they truly are. There is real evidence now around the power of intention and prayer at a distance. It’s vital that we aren’t simply sending negative and angry intentions (which tends to lead them into more isolation), but call them into their soul’s truth. Why did they REALLY come here – to create this kind of hell? Or to transform the root of these patterns?
 
The more we can create a unitive field that calls Assad and others into their inner divinity (and yes, I realize that may be hard for some to even believe), the more likely he is to recognize the destructiveness of what he has wrought, and have a change of face for the good of all.
 
An about-face, in which Assad and the other leaders truly come to terms with what they have wrought, would be so powerful for the world and the Syrian people, far more so than punishing strikes. So, we should leave enough time for the peaceful methods to work their magic before rushing to a military solution, especially one designed merely as punishment, rather than a legal and just police action in the service of the International Criminal Court.
 
On the practical level, we can create daily meditations and prayers (we’re launching one soon) that support this transformational outcome energetically, we can support refugees, we can have rallies that call for Assad’s peaceful resignation, and lobby our own Congress to ensure we don’t careen in with military options too quickly.
 
And we can also work on the roots of the polarizations in the world that still live in our heart.  Our ultimate call is to end destructive behaviors, and shift all of us to the unitive global family that is our real spiritual truth. That requires each of us to make it a living, breathing reality. So remember the dead and the displaced in your prayers, as well as the leaders on all sides who are currently stuck in a destructive cycle — while also recognizing the ways that we create these same patterns on a smaller scale in our own lives. And let’s all prepare to minister to the aftermath of such devastation with funds, healing and friendship.