While it is easy to talk about it, teaching peace is not that easy to do. The prerequisite is learning how to make peace in our own lives. “We teach better what we most need to learn,” writes Richard Bach in Delusions. That is because we are unconsciously focused on what causes us problems; and motivated to learn about it. For example, if a lack of peace (anxiety, anger, addiction, or relationship problems) is a problem, your life will constantly be faced with the need to learn to be calmer. Anyone who doesn’t live up to your expectations can set off an upheaval of one kind or another, and inner turmoil evokes a negative reaction.
In my counseling office, I constantly remind myself of how difficult it seems for most people to keep the peace, what the twelve-step (AA) programs call “serenity.” We are all easily displaced from the center. I also see how powerful it is to maintain a peaceful (or serene) emotional climate in the midst of an unsettling circumstance. The calmest person is also the one who thinks more clearly and therefore can control what is happening. People in high pressure situations, such as medical and military personnel, police, firefighters, and rescue workers, are trained to maintain calm demeanor. It makes them more effective.
Inner peace is the key to keeping all relationships on track. In my life, I have found that maintaining my inner balance not only prevents me from making things worse in bad situations, but also influences others to be calm.
Every day I remember the importance of inner peace, a peaceful relationship with myself, and maintaining peace in my private universe. Without this inner serenity, I am not very powerful to create peace in the environment around me. I find that whenever I am agitated, especially when the confusion seems to be caused by an event or another person, the effective solution begins with establishing peace within myself. This is the idea I use to help myself and my clients do that:
I have my own sphere of influence, my own private “universe” that I can imagine as an invisible protective membrane that surrounds me; more like the invisible glass box that mimes usually create around them. All other people and events are outside this limit, but are visible and accessible through it. I can “send messages” in the form of words and deeds, subtle body movements and facial expressions, across the boundary, and other people can send me theirs. I have little control over what people choose to send to me and total control over what I choose to send. However, I have control over how I receive what other people decide to send me.
For example, if my husband, Richard, puts me in a bad mood, I have very little control over what he says or does. Maybe you’re upset about something that happened in your business, or worried about someone you care about, and you feel safe letting your frustration roll out around me. There is little to be gained by trying to read your mind or change your attitude. However, if I remember that I am the Supreme Power in my own sphere, I have many options.
• I can choose to believe that her moodiness is something I deserve and feel hurt.
• I can choose to believe he sent him because he is a bad person and close my love for him.
• I can choose to believe that he sent it due to a separate event in his private world, and check what is happening to him, and if I can help.
• I can choose to take care of myself and put some distance between us, until things settle down.
• I can just react without thinking and not make a decision.
Through experience, I soon learn which options give me the results I want. Once I know, I can choose to repeat the successful options at will. Richard has, and often uses, the same options.
The keyword here is choice. As long as I know that my response to encouragement is a choice, I can create peace. Once I decide that the atmosphere I desire the most in my own world is one of peace, then I create the power to ensure that.
The question I need to answer is: “What is peace to me?” It’s easy, given our social environment, to think that creating peace with others means making war with myself. For example, I may believe that in order to create peace with Richard, I need to deny my own wishes and feelings. That creates an internal fight, which inevitably surfaces externally. Sooner or later I’ll get mad enough at the (self-imposed) limits to want to get back at him. However, I will increase my stress even more to keep “peace” and start creating disease.
Experience has taught me that the only peace that can be safely maintained is the peace that begins at home, within the limits of my own inner being. Once I have created peace within myself by listening to all sides of the internal struggle, and recognizing my right to feel all those forms at once, and finding a solution that calms me down, I know what to do with the situation. that upset me. I. So I’m confident enough to start negotiating with who, or whatever, my fight. Peace with the other person may take a bit of effort to achieve, especially if I have a point of view of my own, but it will last and will begin to build the trust necessary for a compatible relationship.
Paradoxically, this is often the easiest way to work for peace in some respects and the most difficult in others. It is easy because it requires nothing more than myself; just mental / emotional work. Difficulty because there are many ingrained attitudes, prejudices and assumptions that I must challenge and overcome on the way to inner peace.
The path to peace, internal and external, is not a direct line with specific steps. It’s full of trial and error, wrong twists, and delicious discoveries. Sometimes talking to myself is all I need, sometimes it helps to talk to a friend or even a therapist. Sometimes the words of a great teacher help. I like “My religion is simple. My religion is goodness” -Dalai Lama. Or “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and in the house of the Lord I will dwell forever.” Psalm 23. Usually my heart knows better than my head where the peaceful way is.
I have chosen to follow a path of peace, internally and externally. This choice shapes all my subsequent choices and engages me in a process of self-awareness. To the best of my ability, I make my choices and verify the results with my mind and heart. I am often wrong, but I also get it right enough times to make my life that much more peaceful; and I’m happy, most of the time I’m not. When something makes me unhappy, I can find my way to peace faster than I used to.
Hope you find this useful in your own way.
