The Karmic Savings and Loan, Chapter 283: Why There is War Part 5 Learning about the Team

So people join the military for a thousand different reasons, but in the end, what they really learn, is that there are all kinds of people out there, from all kinds of places and that if you don’t help each other, if you don’t pull together as a team, then everyone suffers. There are karmic lessons everywhere and you really see it in the military.

The military builds you up, fills you with a sense of pride and teaches you discipline. They teach you to be responsible for yourself and your fellow man. They teach you to care about your body, your finances and your family. They show you how to build community and they absolutely impress upon you the value of human life.

The value of human life is worth fighting for and this is why they go to so much trouble to make sure that they actually train you in your job, so that you do not hazard anyone else’s life.

It used to be that roughly 80% of all commercial pilots came from the US military. No one trains pilots like the military does. It teaches those pilots to be safe, how to work as a team and the absolute requirement to follow procedure to keep yourself, your ground crew and your passengers safe at all times. Today only 20% of pilots come from military sources. Who is doing this training? The military teaches you that what you do matters to someone and that the better you do your job, the better everyone will be.

The military is also a microcosm of society as a whole. As the ideas of society change, you readily see this reflected in military society as well. For example, the military had to integrate because it needed people and that happened in World War II. Today, the military is one of this country’s best equal opportunity employers. The military teaches every young man or woman that it doesn’t matter what the color of your skin is, your sex or your nationality, that your job is to incorporate that person as part of your team and to help them at all times.

The US Navy was the last bastion of maleness when they began to incorporate women in World War II. By the Viet Nam War, they were bringing in more and more women. Finally, women could see that it was possible to have the same pay, benefits and career options as men. It was utterly life changing for many women. The service academies finally were forced to open their doors and to offer the same free educations to women that men were offered and women are now on combatants, and have command at sea, all in the space of 20 years. This need to incorporate women has enabled the ‘All Volunteer Force’ to be successful because there aren’t enough men who ever join the military in these times.

The experience in managing and leading people that the military offers is tremendous. It is tremendous because not all experiences are great. There are some lousy leaders out there and they offer the opportunity to see clearly what leadership isn’t. Then you have people who really show you what good leadership and people management skills are. You have to see both.

The military rewards people in a thousand ways from letters of commendation to medals for outstanding performance and service. The military works hard to appreciate its people because you need your senior people. You cannot hire a lieutenant, a general, a Chief Petty Officer or a Master Sergeant. You have to grow those people from the day they enter. Once they leave, you have to start all over because you cannot ever go out on the civilian economy and hire that level of experience. You have to grow it from within. And they let you leave when your contract is up because you have free will.

The military is terribly flawed because human beings are terribly flawed. However, this organization is ever changing. It is never the same two days in a row and its views are ever broadening. Understanding that the military while it appears to be about war, is only about people who care about other people and want a chance to prove themselves. Once they do that, often they find that they don’t need a 20 year career, they only need a few of these experiences and then they move on to other civilian jobs, taking their precious experiences with them.

Can you be a spiritual person and be a military person all at the same time? Of course you can because if your goal is to help people on a day-to-day basis, to see karma in action continually, there are few schoolhouses that provide this like the military does. This is why they call it the service. Consider that in times of domestic crisis, it is the military that organizes resources and helps to create some order out of the chaos of a hurricane or earthquake. So, whether or not you love or hate the concept of a military, the internal workings of it are only about the service of people helping people and often that is a very positive place to be.

So, to return to the beginning, the reason there is war of some type is so that people can learn and grow. Perhaps when the people on this planet no longer need the experience of war and what it offers, there will be an end to all conflict at every level of humanity.