Civilians are similarly affected, most carry wounds carved into their physical, emotional and spiritual lives for more than a lifetime.

Of the many wars and resistance movements across the globe, the war in Ukraine is particularly gruesome, unfair and bloody. It also is receiving the most media exposure and having the largest effect emotionally and mentally.

Many of us feel anxious, sad and even depressed, it cycles endlessly around and around in our thoughts and feelings.

It is crucial that we strive for peace.

Spiritually it is us that creates our world. For there to be war there must be hate and anger in our minds and hearts. We can say we want peace and perhaps this war will soon end, but whilst there is still hate and anger, another war will have to vent us.

Our actions to counter this, are usually more hate and anger, sometimes traversing multiple generations and often infecting even our genes. Peace is buried deeper and deeper.

We crave revenge. We want what we perceive as justice.

The most powerful and greatest contribution we can make to lasting peace though, is to radiate the exact opposite of hate and anger; love and peace. This may seem trite or even naive against the backdrop of the horrors of war but the answer being simple does not mean the action is any less true or easy. To love those that have acted with voluminous hate stretches the bounds of sanity.

But as you know, this is not something we need to go find, our real, innermost nature is love, all we need to do is be still, dive deep within and be love, be our real self. Whilst we are angry or hateful we live on the surface of our life, in our ego, thinking we finish where our body ends and separated by our perceived differences. Many years erect the myths higher and higher. As soon as we are able to be still and silent and rest in love we realise we are not separate but we are each other, that nature, animals, rocks and earth are all our own heart and even our ‘so-called’ human enemies, are our family.

War feels wasteful rather than just. It feels ludicrous and vacuous rather than purposeful. Against the backdrop of love and oneness, war feels infantile, childish; but that is a travesty, for it is only egos that choose war, stupid egos that exist only to our last breath, like sandcastles washed away by the tide. As we breathe no more we see it all clearer than the clearest day in a sea of regret that we are each other, each and every other, not the labels of color or creed, of time or space, of birth or death, we are each other.