War of Beliefs (or Nature's Wisdom)

Sometimes (actually quite often) when I write, there are emerging ideas that stay on my mind.

It's like I share some wisdom and when I read myself afterward, I realize that there is something in it, another layer of understanding, that I need to take more time to properly sink in.

In one of my poems, I mentioned that the wars we are waging today are not about territory, resources, or even power. I think this is true for both visible and invisible battles we are fighting. The battlefields have shifted from lands to minds, from physical borders to mental boundaries.

Wars are mainly about beliefs, not about ''energy''.

I feel strongly about this statement, but I also feel like I need to take some time to properly observe this dynamic inside myself and outside of me to fully comprehend what I am talking about for real.

History proves this point.

Consider how the Cold War was fundamentally a conflict between opposing belief systems rather than a traditional territorial dispute. Or how religious conflicts throughout history—from the Crusades to modern sectarian violence—reveal that humans will sacrifice more for their beliefs than for material gains. The land is merely where bodies fall; the conflict begins in contradicting worldviews.

This realization is both disturbing and liberating.

Disturbing because beliefs are so deeply personal and resistant to change; liberating because if wars are primarily about beliefs, then peace is possible without the redistribution of finite resources. We fight not because there isn't enough to go around, but because we cannot tolerate the existence of worldviews that contradict our own.

This intolerance—this desperate need to be "right" at all costs—is the true source of our conflicts.

Look closely at any war, any social conflict, any political division, and beneath the surface rhetoric about resources, territory, or power, you'll find the same fundamental pattern: the inability to accept the validity of different belief systems coexisting with our own.

We assign moral superiority to our perspective and moral inferiority to others, creating an artificial but powerful mandate for domination rather than cooperation.

The majority of people who express their opinions publicly about war have actually no idea what they are talking about. They mainly talk about themselves and their personal deep conditioning—not about the enemy, not about the victims, heroes or saviors, not even about justice or peace. More often than not, they talk only about themselves.

They mainly disclose their personal beliefs and unprocessed experiences, thinking these perspectives have some kind of power on the decision process of their community. And they surely do, but probably not in the way they think or would like it to be.

They might actually be fueling conflicts all around the world even more without being able to realize this is what's happening.

If you have any opinion about a war that is polarizing in beliefs in some way, if there is a good and a bad side of the conflict in your own head, you are one of the participants, collaborators, and co-creators of the war-based system we are currently experiencing in this world.

You are a bloody warrior and soldier as well in this timeless systemic battle, even if the war is happening somewhere else (or only in your own head).

This is how our inner conflicts manifest externally: what rages within projects itself onto the world. I have witnessed this in myself.

When I once held rigid beliefs about what defines "right action" in the world, I found myself constantly at war with those who didn't share my values or personal perspective. The more I solidified my position, the more enemies I created.

It wasn't until I examined why I needed these polarising beliefs—mainly to protect my sense of identity and ensure my own survival in this dysfunctional system. Only then could I recognize how my internal conflict was creating external division in my own relational systems.

What we see in the world—the abuse, the violence, and the presence of national-scale conflicts—are the visible results of what is happening right now in our collective consciousness. The wars we observe and talk about in the news are not the real deal. This is just a small visible and distorted fragment of what is going on right now in the realms of the invisible.

What we see is simply a reflection of what we collectively believe in and what we feel. Our shared physical and experienced reality is a perfect image of what is happening in our mental and emotional realms of existence.

If the topic of war is of any interest to you, this actually means that your soul is currently fighting this battle in the invisible as well. You are a part of it, and your own mind is already engaged in a serious conflict between various systems of beliefs.

You don't really seek peace in the world. You mainly seek peace in your own head and heart.

But you still believe that you are stressed, unsettled, and unhappy because of the world at war, or because of others, so you think it will fix you internally if the external chaos stops.

The reality is quite the opposite.

To stop the external chaos around you, first, you need to make peace with all your personal core beliefs. If there is a conflict between different parts of you, your entire system will be in a state of stress. If you push the stress too much, it might become an internal war. This could manifest as sickness or have impacts on your mental or emotional health.

Making peace with your core beliefs doesn't mean abandoning our values.

Rather, it means examining whether your beliefs serve life or death, creation or destruction, connection or separation.

It means holding space for contradictions without needing to resolve them through domination or control.

When I practiced this—sitting with opposing viewpoints within myself without forcing immediate resolution—I found that my nervous system gradually relaxed. And often, the strategy for inner reconciliation would simply emerge by itself.

The beliefs that truly mattered remained, but were held more gently, with space around them for other truths to exist as important and valuable as well.

This inner practice of creating harmony among diverse beliefs within ourselves is the foundation for any meaningful external peace. Yet how often do we skip this essential first step? How rarely do we apply the same respectful approach to our own contradictory beliefs that we demand others apply to theirs?

So, instead of looking within and making sure there is peace in you no matter what, you spend your energy giving your completely useless and very limited opinion about how others should be doing it.

By doing this, you don't contribute to making the external war stop—you fuel it even more.

You don't really take care of your own limiting beliefs or inner wounds that are still polarized in your own consciousness, but you allow yourself to publicly express your opinion about the state of our collective-level strategies.

You judge entire communities of people to be stupid or less than you.

When you do this, you literally compare your own very limited mind to a group-level intelligence and collective form of wisdom. You say what you personally believe has more value or importance than what an entire population thinks or does.

Do you even realize how much arrogance one must have to do this?

Do you also see how this makes no sense at all?

A group-level or community-level consciousness will most likely always have more power than the individual one. A person cannot influence or manipulate the system of beliefs of another, especially not of an entire group. A skillful "dictator" can overpower their people and corrupt public opinion in some way, but they cannot change the core beliefs of the population.

Only you can change what you truly believe in.

You might choose very sad beliefs because you are scared or because you were programmed in this way, but it is still your own personal responsibility to make sure that at least your own beliefs are not at war in your own head.

…

Individuals who become true leaders speak from the space of collective awareness and consciousness, not from their personal ego. What they personally believe doesn't really matter if they consider themselves as leaders of an entire group.

If they are true leaders, they ensure proper coherence, harmony, and performance of systemic beliefs at the level of the entire community. They don't really care about their own preferences or personal matters.

Leaders see the community as a collective forest. And they see themselves as guardians, not gardeners, of that forest. They don't select which tree (or idea) should grow more or less in the shared ecosystem. They don't destroy species that trigger them personally. They have no real power over what the forest will look like next year.

They are concerned about the well-being and the performance of the entire forest. They share what they observe at the systemic level, but they have no power to change anything about it. This power belongs to individual beings and sub-systems that are part of the forest, not to the "leader" or the simple guardian.

You can see a leader as an eagle.

The eagle flies very high to see the big picture. It can notice things that no one else could perceive about the forest from that point of view. Even the tallest and strongest tree could never see what an eagle could.

An eagle can come back and share with others what it saw, but it can do very little to actually transform the entire system of the forest in any meaningful way. Its actions to actually do something about what it saw are very limited to its role of "leadership." Trees, plants, mushrooms, other animals, and even the elements like wind, water, and fire must all collaborate together if they want to transform the state of the forest they live in.

An eagle can say and do whatever it wants, but if mushrooms don't agree and don't collaborate with trees in their process of systemic transformation, no meaningful or lasting change could occur at the level of the collective.

The eagle cannot change the forest. It can bring a unique and original perspective, but it does not have any influence over the free will of others.

Yet we persist in this bizarre relationship with leadership—this fundamental misunderstanding of what leaders are meant to do.

We have created a system so aberrant, so contrary to nature's wisdom, that it's almost comical if it weren't so tragic. We don't ask our leaders to observe and report what they see from their elevated position. We don't ask them to identify threats to our collective ecosystem or opportunities for systemic growth. Instead, we demand they tell us what to think, how to live, what to believe.

This unhealthy transfer of responsibility is the core dysfunction of our civilization. We complain endlessly about elites having too much power, yet simultaneously refuse to reclaim our personal sovereignty and collective agency. We have become so accustomed to eagles making our decisions that we don't actually want our freedom back—we just want "better eagles." More ethical eagles. Wiser eagles. Less corrupt eagles. But we still want eagles to tell the rabbits how to dig burrows and the bees how to make honey, roles they know nothing about and have no business directing.

The most profound irony is that we don't even ask our leaders to do the job they could genuinely perform—that of systemic observers who share their unique perspective for the benefit of all.

No, we ask them to solve our personal problems, to regulate our happiness, to ensure our individual success. We surrender the very responsibilities that give our lives meaning and purpose, then wonder why we feel powerless and unfulfilled.

This systematic abdication of personal agency creates a fundamental paradox: we expect centralized leadership to solve problems that can only be addressed through distributed participation. We've forgotten that meaningful change never comes from the top down alone. Just as in nature, transformation emerges from countless interconnected actions across the entire system.

The forest can change itself. But for this to happen, everything that is part of the forest must collaborate in some way. The entire ecosystem must be on board if we want the change to be successful, and everyone needs to be an active participant in that process.

From this example, you should also realize that it is probably not the eagle who drafts the secret strategy that the forest will use to transform itself. The eagle has only one perspective. The overall vision and strategy must be crafted by including the unique points of view of each member of the forest.

The more the vision and strategy are inclusive of authentic desires and constraints of all the inhabitants of the forest, the easier, safer, more pleasurable, and more effective the change or transformation process will be.

If everyone in the forest knows what they are doing and why they are doing it, and it is aligned with what they actually want and need, there would not be any conflict about who is right and who is wrong. They will all work in perfect coherence with each other. And a multidirectional, network-like collaboration methodology would be the only viable way to do it successfully.

…

So, if we now come back to our original topic of wars and various scales of belief systems, how can we better understand what is happening in the world right now?

Imagine for a second our collective consciousness as a huge and wild forest shared by all of humanity.

Each being has a unique point of view, different capacities, resources, struggles and strategies. Different needs and desires for their future.

Some individuals are more like trees, well-grounded, strong, and solid. They mainly need water, soil, and sun to survive. So, they are very resilient. But they can't really move around like animals. Trees are stuck in the same place. To communicate or to exchange resources with other beings that are farther away, they have no choice but to collaborate with mushrooms, the wind, water flow, or with other plants and animals.

Some individuals are like very small grass-eating animals. Adaptable, flexible, and resilient. They can hide pretty much anywhere. They can be very fast and survive quite easily with almost nothing. A bit like the working class in our social forest that do bunch of different stuff to make the forest an interesting place. They are key to the health and performance of the entire ecosystem.

They can also be very easily eaten by bigger and more powerful animals. They are also prey, the literal food for many other species to be able to survive and thrive in the forest.

And then we have those who are like invasive species—ideologies and beliefs that aggressively spread, choking out native diversity and destroying the balance.

Much like how kudzu can overtake a forest, fundamentalist thinking—whether religious, political, or social—can smother the natural diversity of perspectives that make our human ecosystem resilient.

But even invasive species eventually find their balance or collapse when they've consumed their resources.

This dynamic of seeking safety through uniformity versus embracing the risks and rewards of diversity plays out across every level of our ecosystem. Individual beings, just like entire belief systems, often make similar trade-offs—choosing perceived security over authentic expression and engagement. Consider a familiar example from our own forests.

A squirrel in a forest probably has a very beautiful and rich life experience, but do you know why so many of them still prefer city parks to the wilderness?

The answer is pretty simple. Squirrels are not in the city for food. Trust me, they would much prefer the quality and quantity of food directly in the forest.

They moved to the city to escape from their predators. They have actually chosen an unnatural environment for themselves, less efficient or fun, just to avoid being eaten by someone else.

They preferred having a lesser quality of life in a city in exchange for safety. They just ran away from wolves that live in the forest; they didn't come to the city for food.

So, yes, in our forest-like humanity, some individuals are like wolves. They have other types of responsibilities and strategies to collaborate with others and to survive in the wild. Some are scared of them. And some other species are very happy they are part of the forest as well.

As you can see, I could probably extend this metaphor to talk about pretty much any social dynamic or systemic challenge we are experiencing at the level of our global community.

Even forest fires—so destructive yet essential for certain ecosystems to regenerate—have their parallel in our belief systems. Sometimes an entire paradigm needs to burn away before new ideas can take root and flourish.

The painful cultural shifts we've experienced throughout history—from scientific revolutions to social justice movements—often began with the destruction of outdated beliefs that were once considered sacred.

And what about media and technology in our forest?

They are like the wind, carrying seeds (ideas) from one corner of the ecosystem to another. Wind doesn't care what it carries—beneficial pollen or invasive spores—it simply provides the mechanism of transmission.

Our digital winds now move at unprecedented speeds, spreading both life-giving truths and destructive falsehoods with equal efficiency. We must learn to be more discerning about what we allow to take root within us.

…

When you truly understand how nature operates her magic and how exactly a forest builds its collective-level complexity or systemic wisdom, you will be able to clearly see how conditioning and mass manipulation truly works in our tribal mental beliefs or in our shared consciousness today.

You will see why our system doesn't work very well.

We still look for very educated and very honest eagles to tell us what to do next. We don't simply ask them what they saw from above; we literally want them to tell the entire forest what to believe, what to do, and how exactly to do it.

This addiction to centralized authority, to having someone else make our decisions, is perhaps the most persistent disease of our collective consciousness. It infects every level of society—from governments to corporations, from religious institutions to families.

We have created elaborate hierarchies that contradict the fundamental networked intelligence of natural systems. We've convinced ourselves that complicated problems require centralized solutions, when nature constantly demonstrates that the most resilient answers emerge from distributed, collaborative networks.

The tragedy is not just that we keep electing, appointing, or following the wrong eagles. The real tragedy is that we keep perpetuating a system that expects eagles to perform functions they were never designed to fulfill.

No single perspective—no matter how elevated—can possibly contain the wisdom needed to direct the infinitely complex interactions of an entire ecosystem. Yet we continue this charade, election cycle after election cycle, revolution after revolution, always changing the eagles but never questioning the fundamental absurdity of what we're asking them to do.

Our "eagles" are very confused about the forest they are in. They don't understand why they are supposed to tell a tree or a mushroom how to do their job or what to believe. They don't understand why everyone in the forest wants to be controlled and manipulated by them.

The most honest eagles among them feel the weight of this impossible task. They sense the fundamental mismatch between what they can offer—perspective—and what is demanded of them—omniscience.

They know they cannot possibly make the right decisions for billions of unique beings, each with their own context, needs, and wisdom. Yet to acknowledge this limitation is to risk being replaced by another eagle who will happily pretend to have all the answers.

Meanwhile, the rest of us abdicate our sovereignty while simultaneously resenting those to whom we've surrendered it. We criticize every decision from the comfort of our passive position, never acknowledging our complicity in creating and maintaining this dysfunctional system. We don't want the burden of genuine freedom—the responsibility of true self-governance—so we settle for the hollow freedom to complain about our eagles while waiting for them to save us.

The eagle just wants to fly in freedom and observe the big picture; this is its joy and role. It also eats a few animals in the forest from time to time, but it couldn’t care less about what daily choices the trees are making to be happy and healthy. Because eagle already knows it has literally zero influence, meaning or impact on the freewill of a tree.

…

So, today we live in a very funny (or not so much) forest, aka our civilization.

We have squirrels in a war of opinions or beliefs with eagles. Some say eating other animals is not cool (probably squirrels say that, because they are just scared of wolves). Some, like eagles, just don't understand why squirrels are imposing their menu or eating preferences on everyone else in the forest.

No matter how many squirrels are scared to be eaten, an eagle will probably still never eat only grass.

It's a completely useless battle and argument in the forest where each being has its own unique needs, preferences, and place in a collective food chain.

If everyone in the entire forest was behaving, thinking, and experiencing reality exactly like squirrels do, we would have a very poor and very boring forest to live in... if we could even call that a forest.

In our current social forest, we have trees who spend their time complaining, arguing with, and judging eagles for not being proper and respectful "bosses" and protectors to them.

We ask our eagle-leaders to fly to other unseen territories and unknown forests to set fire to them and to destroy them. Because our squirrels are way too terrified that wolves from abroad will move in and eat them.

We ask the army of our ants, the soldiers, to move to a different forest to protect their forest's trees from their very mean eagles.

Should I continue, or do you already see the complete nonsense in how we manage ourselves as a collective today?

Do you understand that if we all realized that each one of us has a very unique role to play, comes from a different place of existence, and has our own perspective, we could create a really cool, abundant, resilient, and beautiful forest all together?

If only we could stop fighting over whose vision, strategies, or beliefs are better or wiser—those coming from squirrels, from trees, or from eagles.

If only we could all gather as humanity, as a forest where the reality of each being is valuable, respectable, and meaningful. Where we don't put responsibilities on eagles that don't actually belong to them. Where we are all collaborating to co-create a beautiful home and abundant shared ecosystem for all the inhabitants of our forest.

If only we could stop sacrificing our own nature and the beings at home, just to prove to other foreign ecosystems that our completely dysfunctional forest is in some way better than theirs.

If only we stopped asking our eagles to fly abroad just to steal the resources from other lands.

If only we could create a society, a culture, a civilization that is based on the same principles of freedom, respect, systemic wisdom, and coherence that our forests embody.

If only humans remembered that they are nature itself already. That they are intimately interconnected to each other and dependent on the entire forest whether they like it or not.

If only they understood that their inherent diversity of perspectives and the uniqueness of their beliefs are precisely what makes the forest so rich, so beautiful, and so eternal.

If only they understood that the ultimate truth of our existence and collective evolution is about collaboration and co-creation, not about destruction or competition.

If only they understood that it is in the interest of all to strategize together more like a forest-level consciousness than a world of war and violence where eagles, trees, and squirrels are fighting over whose interests are more important to protect or whose beliefs are more morally "right."

Peace is not the absence of different beliefs—it is the presence of respect for that difference.

When we stop seeing diversity of perspective as threatening and start recognizing it as essential, the entire paradigm shifts. Just as a forest needs both sunlight and shadow, water and fire, predator and prey to maintain its balance, our collective consciousness requires opposing viewpoints to evolve and adapt.

What if we approached each encounter with a different belief system not as an opportunity to convert or conquer, but as a chance to expand our understanding?

What if we recognized that each perspective—no matter how foreign to our own—contains something we need, some piece of the truth that our limited viewpoint cannot access?

The path to peace lies not in eliminating difference but in transforming how we relate to it.

When we see others not as wrong but as complementary, not as threats but as teachers, not as opponents but as essential collaborators in the project of understanding reality, the entire foundation of conflict dissolves.

This doesn't require agreement.

Trees and mushrooms don't agree on how to process sunlight, yet they exchange resources in ways that benefit both. Eagles and squirrels don't share the same priorities, yet they belong to the same ecosystem and each contributes to its balance.

The question is not whether different belief systems can agree, but whether they can respect their essential differences while recognizing their fundamental interdependence.

Begin by examining your own forest of beliefs: What contradictions do you harbor?

What invasive thoughts have you allowed to take root? What beliefs nourish you and what beliefs deplete you?

Once you've tended to your inner ecosystem, you can contribute to our collective forest in a way that promotes harmony rather than conflict. For the war of beliefs ends not when one side triumphs, but when we recognize that our diversity of thought—like biodiversity in a forest—is not a problem to solve but the very solution we've been seeking.

How might your perspective change if you approached the world not as a battlefield of competing ideas, but as a collaborative ecosystem where each belief, even if temporary or perhaps absurd, still serves some sort of needed purpose within the whole?

.:. 𝑊𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑛 𝑏𝑦: 𝐾𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑛𝑎 𝐷𝑒𝑟𝑘𝑎𝑐ℎ

……… …................ ..... .. .. . . . ..............

(𝐀 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫:

I've received this question multiple times, so I'll answer here. No, I do not copy-paste. All my writings are original and done by me. Yes, I share them publicly just because... mainly because I think they might potentially be valuable to others and because it feels really good to push my own boundaries in authentic expression and selfless service.

Yes, you can freely share what I write here with others. But please, if you do, make sure you mention the source (me). It is not cool to share creations you have received for free without acknowledging the actual creator behind them.

And, yes, you have the freedom to do what you want and how you want it, but I will most likely sue you if you try to make money from my personal work without collaborating with me directly.

This being said, I do openly look to publish and make some revenue directly from my work. Apparently, I love writing these days way more than strategizing about how to potentially make money out of this. I have no experience in publishing and I have no idea yet what would be the most appropriate way to better valorize my work.

I seriously need help with that. If anyone here who enjoys what I do has some ideas about this—how I can better (and in a simple way) promote, valorize, and monetize what I do—please don't hesitate to send me a private message. I would be super grateful for your insights or potential support on this.)