Being Peace

Jason Chan

If you are reading this article, I can assume that you long for world peace. Spiritual seekers usually hate wars and violent conflicts of all kinds, and pray sincerely for an end to this seemingly endless form of human suffering. But we still tend to define peace as simply a period of relative calm and stability between episodes of conflict. So we refer to the period between World Wars 1 & 2 as a time of peace. We also talk about being peaceful in our personal day-to-day lives until someone comes along and upsets us.

However, if peace can come and go at the whim of external circumstances, it cannot be real peace. True, permanent peace lies beyond this physical world, and beginners on the spiritual path need to take a lot of time out from their busy daily routines to find inner peace. You will need decades, if not lifetimes, of spiritual practice before you can dwell consistently in divine, or unchanging, peace.

Most people in this world cannot dwell in a peaceful state for long, because they are at the whim of the moodiness of their minds. Whenever we feel irritated or anxious, love and peace have to disappear for a while. Most people in this world are looking for romantic love, but this type of love is exciting rather than peaceful. I can tell you now that love without peace is not real love, and that peace without love is not real peace!

Before you awake, neither your inner nor your outer world is peaceful. You are always in conflict and chaos, and you are constantly in pain, but you get used to it. I never met anyone in this world who was not living in emotional, mental and physical pain to some degree or other. Then we all seek some kind of physical pleasure - alcohol, sex, drugs, spiritual highs - to try and ease this constant pain. But the best we can do is to anaesthetise ourselves for a while. Peace before you awake to your true self is just a temporary period of relative relief between endless conflicts.

It is impossible to find lasting peace in ordinary living. Even in so-called peaceful countries, such as England or Ireland, we can see conflict everywhere: in the workplace, in politics, at football grounds, in family homes. Then we say ‘Let’s have peace’ but what we really mean is let’s call a temporary truce in our battles, so that we can re-gather our strength for the next round of conflict.

The world, at this moment, is incapable of finding lasting, universal peace. All we can do is to find temporary, compromise solutions to violent conflicts. We can only try to find common ground and mutual interests between warring parties, whether they are nation states, or divorcing couples. We can promise not to kill each other for a while, but in the long run we never keep our promises, because the solutions never go deep enough.

You need to understand that we actually do not hate and kill each other for purely rational reasons. Our hatred and aggression go much deeper than this.

Mediators in conflict situations always try to find a rational reason for making peace, but wars and conflicts and killing have virtually nothing to do with rational thinking! Only if both parties in any conflict are prepared to find their own inner peace, will they manifest lasting external peace between them.

Please see all this clearly and try to understand that there is no way out of endless wars and conflict, until we each begin to awake and see the craziness of all human separation, differences and hatreds. If you really want to get away from this fearful, warring world, you have to follow a true spiritual path that will force you to look within and to see clearly the conflict in your own mind, so that you can find a lasting solution to it.

When we first look within our own minds we all find tremendous devastation and anger. Your subconscious inner world is actually very dark and aggressive and full of separation, hatred and fear. Then you project all this inner conflict outwards and see an un-peaceful world all around you. Most spiritual seekers want to save the world, but first they have to save their own internal world. Most human beings are constantly struggling in their relationships and their careers. They are struggling to maintain good health and a healthy bank balance. They are certainly not at peace. Go to the most beautiful, luxurious, peaceful places on earth, and you will still see people arguing and complaining. Something fundamental is not right.

We live in an insane world full of attack and fear, and yet we still think that we can create a peaceful planet. Who are we kidding? Most people simply try to escape from the fear and conflict in their own minds, and in the world around them, by trying out a new activity such as a holiday, a change of home or even a new relationship. But fear is in the air, and physical life is inevitably painful and insecure. Even millionaires are still afraid of being kidnapped or losing their wealth in stock market crash.

Do you really want eternal peace? The honest answer is that you don’t. You actually prefer drama to peace. Arguing with others helps you to feel alive and self-righteous. Even highly civilised groups of people all hold attack thoughts towards one another, so what chance do all nations have of finding lasting peace? Even those who have dedicated many years of their lives to serious spiritual training still harbour so many attack thoughts!

Where can you start to bring true peace back into our world? You can’t. You can only bring peace into your own mind and then into your own life. You were born with the ego’s attack thought system already in place, and then you were educated into conflict by your family, your society, your race, your nation. In order to transcend all this conflict, you have to let your soul awake.

In our world, the majority of human beings’ souls are not yet awake, and so we all remain unconscious and ignorant. This is an unconscious planet. Everything attacks everything. Animals attack and kill each other. Even some plants kill other plants. Cancer cells attack and kill healthy cells in our bodies. All these attacks reflect our loveless mind. If you attack yourself with unloving thoughts, you may eventually get cancer. If you have no love in your heart, your heart can block up and become sick.