We live on a strange planet, don’t we?
We all want peace but we all experience its opposite in one way or another……
During humanity’s recent 3500-year history we have been at peace as a planet less than 200 years!
Before that we were probably always fighting one another, simply for survival.
Amazingly no country has ever lived peacefully.
Even Greenland once had to suffer Danish troops and laws and peaceful Nepal lost parts of four of its provinces to Indian incursions as well as several civil wars.
Whilst Switzerland has taken no part in war for a century it was littered with wars previously.
Britain probably holds the record for the most war-hungry nation, having at one time or another invaded 90% of all the countries on the planet.
Australian military personnel have served in at least fourteen overseas wars and combat situations.
During the 20th century, as community, our wars caused the early death of 110 million souls.
Today, if you wanted to find lasting civil peace you’d probably have to migrate to Antartica!
So what’s the answer?
In short, it’s personal peace.
Only Personal peace leads to communal Peace.
Personal Peace consists of six simple attributes:
1. Mindfulness. Lack of peace is violence – and this arises out of anger in the Mind. Remove the anger and you remove the violence.
And this we most easily do by replacing anger with Love.
To truly achieve this radical transformation we must surely move from being governed by the Ego and instead allow leadership to come from the Heart. This requires vigilant focus on our part……to remain centred within our Higher Self and to deny the Ego its rampant grab for more of this and more of that.
2. Gratitude. Through Mindfulness we will find Gratitude – and we will be centred on the abundant and freely-given gifts of the Spirit with which our life teems….rather than the latest fads and gadgets of an ever changing ego-driven mania for newer, brighter toys. We will deeply appreciate the warming sunshine, the refreshing rain, the giving earth, the caring smile, the loving touch, the every opportunity to share and care and dance and sing and love, the mystery of endless creation, the unfathomable magic of colour and sound and touch – and the very awesomeness of life itself…..
3. Meditation. Ignorance is a blackness that corrupts our peace.
Meditation, the going within, past all selfish thought to the Temple of Our True Being, extinguishes the darkness of our illusions and reveals to us the Light of Our Inner Presence. It is this Inner Presence, alone, that lifts us out of the insanity of our everyday world and offers us the bounty of Real Being. This bounty naturally includes a recognition that we already are peace.
We just have to recognise it, own it, embrace it and allow it to be the activator of our living.
Thus, meditation becomes far more than simply a regular exercise……it becomes the ‘bolt-hole’ of our life.
4. Kindness. Selfishness impels us into greed, brutality, lust and insatiable desire.
It will always pit us against another.
It will always create a them-versus-us mentality.
As long as society is selfish it will have divisions and the rich will seek to get richer, the poor will get poorer and the folk in the middle will struggle.
Kindness ends all this.
Kindness reaches out, one to the other, and gives a hand out and a hand up.
Kindness is the ‘Truth in Action’ that we are all divine beings of Light.
Through expressing kindness in everyday life and toward everyone we meet in every circumstance we bring into reality a Higher State of Realistic Consciousness.
We allow the ‘god-within’ to flower through our every action.
We remove the illusion that our ego, our small scared self, is the Master of our destiny – and we offer ourselves in practical selfless service to the True Presence within.
5. One-ness. As separate, individual, self-sustaining, self-striving, self-centred beings we have successfully botched up almost all life on this planet. We have fooled ourselves into thinking that, due to our own efforts, we are some kind of Master-race at the top of the pecking order due to our intelligence, creativity and competence.
Tragically, we suffer from mass delusion.
We have become the virus capable of its own destruction.
The truth is we are shards of divine light.
We are aspects of angelic expression.
We are love in human form.
But we have forgotten this truth.
We have forgotten we are here to help, to co-operate, to care, to share, to dance, to love, to sing, to work harmoniously together in seamless expression of the Divine Presence which exists within us….and expresses itself as us.
It is recognition of our One-Ness – our complete equality through diversity – that will bring us back to peace, will lead us away from all prejudice and return us to our true state.
6. Happiness. When we release all our childish needs before we’ll accept happiness we find that Happiness is who we already are.
The freedom we demand always was ours.
The abundance we seek always awaits us.
Happiness is our birthright.
When we stop struggling to create it – thereby causing all the mayhem, chaos, destruction and confusion that overwhelms us – we find that Peace shines brightly, welcoming us into its eternal radiance.
Ultimately, we realise that Peace was never up to ‘them’……it was always up to you and you and you and you and me……….and most importantly, it still is, today.
Peace Be Within Us!
Les