Exploring Meditate Peace turned into a very deep inner journey for me this year.
An unexpected inner journey towards peace.
A profound meeting with where war crowds out peace on the inside – the cause of so much suffering.
When I started this journey my motivation was certainly peace. I was motivated by a strong desire to do all I could to see more peace in the world. But my focus naively was on achieving peace on the outside.
This journey has taken me on a roller-coaster ride through the battered and bruised internal no-man’s-land of myself. Like most of us, of course I knew the outer world was a reflection of our inner world. But boy did I not know the full lived experiential truth of what this meant. I do now. And it’s been a horrid trip to get here.
Why horrid?
I had no idea how much war I lived on the inside. Truly, where was the peace in me? Wherever I looked deeply I couldn’t find it. It was buried and drowned out by fight energy. All that I did, all of my attention, all of my application of energy, was war. I fought everything, especially myself. This doesn’t mean that everywhere I went I argued with people, that I fought people, that I kicked-off and got battered and bruised (win some, lose some etc.). War will manifest in this way when it’s running amok inside. Yes some of that may have happened, I’m no saint, but not a great deal to be honest. My discovery was far more all-encompassing and subtle than that. War doesn’t have to express as outward fighting. You need to look closely with an open mind to really see it for what it is and it’s mostly quite subtle, mostly hidden, and only barely visible as the true motivation behind a thought or an action.
War is a sly yet blunt and pervasive energy. It can manifest in a myriad ways in a myriad guises. It’s very happy as passive war. It can be cold, calm, silent or hot and violent. It really doesn’t matter.
It can be about pushing, pulling, worrying, fearing, or hating.
It can appear to be affectionate.
It can be self-doubt, self-criticism, self-loathing, or self-punishing.
It can be silent. It can be loud.
Truly, it can manifest as anything that isn’t peace.
Most of the war happening inside me is against myself – indeed all of it ultimately turns out to be self-harm when you get down to it. I harm myself before I harm others. Seeing this and knowing it as truth was a revelation.
Every self-doubt, worry, insecurity, negative self-talk, is an attack on oneself – is war. It’s certainly not coming from the certainty of peace and it’s not creating peace.
War is manipulation. Peace doesn’t manipulate. Peace just is. Manipulation is separation from peace.
This journey into the inner realms of self has been so uncomfortable. At first, you become slowly able to recognise the war behind the motivation that animates you. As your focus develops you see that it’s everywhere in you. It’s behind all aggression (however passive), every fear and all anxiety etc… Once you see it, you experience it, you feel it. An unpleasant experience. But now you can recognise it. Now that you see what causes so much suffering, you understand not only the anguish of that suffering, but you see that you are the first victim of it. As soon as you see that you are at war on the inside, that you’re fighting, that you approach everything with war energy (even a search for peace) then you get the opportunity to stop.
Recognition is the beginning.
Once it’s fully visibly, emotionally, mentally, physically seen and experienced consciously, you’ll naturally want to let it go. It’s like the reflexive dropping of a red-hot oven tray!
However, we need to remain alert because the dropping is an ongoing process enabled by the seeing. Warring was habitual. Habits persist for a time. Ongoing awareness allows you to choose to fall into peace consciously whenever you recognise war energy.
There can be no peace out there if there’s war in here.
When there’s peace in here there’s peace out there.
There can be nothing else. It’s the law of nature. It’s how the universe works. Energy expresses itself at its own frequency.
Fight is expressed as fight. Fight creates fight. You become the creator of more fight. This becomes your world.
Peace is expressed as peace. Peace creates peace. You become the creator of more peace. This becomes your world.
You want peace?
You need first to see the war within you and to choose instead to allow peace to live you in that moment.
I had no idea back in the summer that this would be my journey.
What else comes from this discovery?
What comes is the sister discovery of joy – there can be no joy without peace.
Peace is a deep joy.
I’ve read the phrase “Wishing you peace and joy at Christmas” inside so many Christmas cards over the years and now I recognise the ultimate blessing of this wish.
