Azrael Ondi-Ahman | Know Your Enemy: Peace Warrior pt. 3

The True Gnostic lives to guarantee the survival and continued evolution of humanity, adhering to a model of peace that begins and resides with the individual. Gnostic peace is grounded in relentless commitment, graceful resistance, and kind acceptance. The Song of God provides the tools and methodology to master the art of living peaceably.

Other models for peace tend to be short lived because they rely on forcing the individual to submit and conform. These movements tend to create states of mandatory compliance rather than a lasting peace, and often result in underlying resentment and future retaliation against the institutional assailant.

With the exception of assisting in medical services, the True Gnostic refuses to engage in war because to do so involves killing humans.

“To kill humans is to strike at the birthseed of God, because God arose from humanity. We will not do that. We just simply are not going to do that.”

To live peaceably, one must be able to identify the true enemy. Azrael identifies the real enemy as that internal dark speaker, the mortal ego that resides within us. It’s our hurt ego that tempts us to respond in kind to the person who is acting non-peaceably. Every time we respond in kind, we are not only justifying their behavior, we are empowering the real enemy: our lesser selves.

“My enemy, the one that I’m always fighting against, struggling against, is me…My dark speaker has to open the door and dredge up all these hurtful feelings, passions that we all have, and set them loose. And when you set them loose at the guy in front of you, you become the victim.”

The only enemy we really have is our own lesser passions: our fear, our anger, our own intolerance. People and circumstances often evoke these feelings, but in the end, it is you who chooses what will be: your lesser passions set loose and made real, or the divine made manifest in the affairs of man.

“By loving your enemies, you protect yourself from yourself.”

Always retain one right: the right to be kind.

Do the unexpected: respond to your enemies with kindness.

A mass of individuals committed to living peaceably will have a dramatic long-term effect on the world. We can’t rely on government to make the world more peaceful. A better world starts with you, with us. No one else.

“It’s done quietly, until one day the leaders of the nations will look out at the world and see an ocean of peace staring back at them, and they’ll wonder where it all came from. That’s what we do. But it will take your life.”

We are here to change the world. Change one thing about yourself and the world is changed forever.

Related Verses from the Song of God

For in the controlling of our violent passions are we made most quiet and still, even as the calm before the storm…

For the man who controls best the violent passions of his flesh, even he is the strongest man of all; for weaker men yield to lesser passions, while the strongest man controls and guides his passions to some greater end.

3rd Endowment 22:24-25

I tell you truly that if one man should conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand, and another should conquer himself only, even he would be greater in the kingdom of God than he which conquered many.

For the evil which men do is harmful first to the one which doeth it; for you know yourself that it is easier to do evil than to do good.

If you would be wise then know of a surety that to conquer the thoughts of your own soul is greater than the conquest over many others.

For by oneself, alone, is evil done; by oneself is one injured. By oneself is evil left undone; by oneself is one purified.

Purity and impurity is found in the soul of oneself. You can by no means purify another.

Yeshua 23:42-46

For you have heard it said from old: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’

But I tell you: resist not the evil person. But whosoever would strike you upon the right cheek, turn to him the other also.

And if there should come before you one which would steal away your raiment, give unto him your cloak also.

And he that would compel you to walk with him a mile, go instead with him two.

Give to him which asks of you, and whosoever from you would borrow, turn you not away.

Is it not said among you also, this saying: ‘You shall love your neighbor, but hate your enemy.’

But I say unto you, love your enemies and bless them which curse you; do good to them which hate you, and pray for them which spitefully use you and persecute you.

By such means shall you prove yourselves the children of God; for even so great a one as the Father in Heaven causes that the sun should shine upon the evil and the good, and unto the just and the unjust alike does he send forth the rain.

Yeshua 15:38-45

…for this truth alone is worthy and preferable above every other in moments of trial and tribulation.

For it is yourself which you must live with, long after the trial is gone; it is the soul which lasts forever, while pain is just a passing thing.

And if it should be that you would betray your own soul to ease for yourself a momentary pain, or to gain for yourself some small advantage, then do you become as someone lost and a stranger to your soul.

5th Endowment 9:22-24