Developing Peace.
My teacher the honorable Lama Ganchen Rinpoche has been working for peace for many years, his prayer, is a prayer of unity and a teaching prayer of simplicity.
Inner peace,
Outer peace
By all the human beings attention,
by all the human beings blessings
Inner Peace
Outer Peace
Everywhere now.
I think this sort of says it all.
It implies that once we all understand how to create inner Peace, that outer peace will naturally flow, because we will all be peaceful beings, living with attention to being peaceful in all situations.
Padma Devi Sumananda (Founder of Heart of Living Yoga) who is probably the best yoga teacher I know, has a different but also a powerful prayer
May there be peace upon the land,
May there be peace within and on the waters
May there be peace within all hearts
May Peace prevail on Earth
She uses engagement with people to speak and feel this from a place of Mastery. Her life is about teaching raja yoga practices and helping those without a voice. Raja Yoga is a system of developing Inner Peace, which is both very ancient, and also universal, and possible. It’s not complicated. But it does develop the resilience for going beyond bad habits, and for having the inner discipline and respect for self and others, that is a by-product of developing Inner Peace.
Sri Guru Dev Satchidananda, who spent his whole live teaching Integral Yoga, and working for peace, and who is my other great teacher: talks about living peacefully, he advises that every action should be easeful, graceful and useful. i.e. simple, gentle and appropriate for each one, filled with awareness and appreciation of Divine Presence and practically useful in the world.
These are just a few examples of some good instructions and practices. There are so many others who work daily for peace in some way. What I believe, “do something for peace in one’s own life every day and integrate those practices into your earth walk.”
The easiest thing is to learn to meditate. Meditation is a training for the mind to get it to settle down and become peaceful. When people first sit still, the mind buzzes with thoughts, or they go to sleep. But as one cultivates awake attention to presence, to the attention itself, all sorts of changes begin to occur in people’s lives. It’s a resonance thing.
The more peaceful you are within, the more peace becomes possible in your everyday life.
At first one is confronted by the things that are not possible in one’s life. The unresolved feelings of grief and trauma, that one has been avoiding. That’s OK because once one acknowledges these feelings, it’s possible to address them. You just need to cultivate the will and the honesty to do that, with friends, or if there are deeper feelings arising, with a therapist.
Many people when faced with feelings arising, turn to drugs. This for me is a less good option as I believe in addressing the root causes of my distress.
Everything in the 3d world has a cause, a condition, something that has created issues in linear time. Working with sound one can reprogramme the actual root causes, because they are vibrational imprints. One can create peaceful vibrations.
Human beings are like tuning forks and we can learn to tune ourselves to peace, just as if we were tuning to a radio station.
The rhythm is natural, its tuning is to the heart, and letting it become peaceful, it’s the beat of relaxed walking pace. It has the quality of heart, of being in the most beautiful place you have ever been, and the tone is very natural. Earth is already tuned for peace, that is why so many of us head for the beach or the forest, or the river or the streams. The sound and the tones reminds one of that inner peace and we can re-attune.
Human society living together is generally not very peaceful….. it’s quite literally mental. Most of us are engaged in mental activity, that serves the development of corporate wealth in one way or another.
There is also all the activity that arises from looking after people which can be at a different pace. Service industries can be simple, they are about us looking after each other, so its perhaps more possible to be kind, to smile to spread a bit of love and light.
The things that get in the way are twofold. On the one hand, we have the privatisation of service industries where people are employed to care, and the primary motive becomes one of making money rather than taking care of each other. The other issue is; where those doing the caring are unhappy, or have never really ever experienced love or care for themselves- then they may not know how to be kind or compassionate in their interactions.
Bringing up children to be peaceful implies attention to their needs. It implies treating them with love and respect, but also recognising that to be healthy members of society, young people need to learn to listen, to themselves and to the needs of others. They learn that, through being listened to and having their needs met gently with attention, kindness and appropriate guidance.
One does not give a toddler a weapon and allow it to fire it. A toddler needs to be taught the boundaries of society and to pay attention to the needs of others, and to respect others with kindness. It’s very simple really, but it requires an basic understanding of human needs and the application of parenting advice and training. If children are brought up with love and respect, and understand the boundaries of their own ego, they become useful easeful members of our human community. This is not rocket science, it’s common sense. The ego needs to serve the heart, not dominate it.
Children who are out of control, become adults, who are out of control,
Children who are not treated with respect, learn not to respect others,
They do not learn the nature of the appreciation of what being a human being really is. It makes it hard for them to live happily and peacefully later in life. So we have education systems, but they have to work to teach respect for others, they have to cultivate anti-racism and anti-sexism, tolerance and patience, so that human beings learn to be more caring of others.
Amma, The hugging saint, works intuitively at this level, through practicing the power of love, emphasising the practice of sharing love through hugs, through engagement with others, and cultivating the joy of singing & being together in peaceful community, & the joy that can be found through service to others.
Respect for different cultures is harder to achieve, for some cultures have internalised values that are not peaceful. So internationally it seems we need a set of principles that can be internationally subscribed to, and where societies can reach to be the best they can be in respect of those principles. I work with Harmlessness, right action, love, forgiveness, compassion, truth, balance, harmony, peace, bliss, grace and gratitude, and I use Sound consciously to amplify these principles.
These principles are in themselves a methodology to Peace.
I am something of a shaman, because I love to make sounds and to work consciously with the gong and Tibetan and Crystal bowl sounds. Working with sound is a shamanic way and it can be quite egoic. This is an issue to be addressed by all musicians. In its own way it is controlling, because when one wields sound, one is imposing that on everyone in earshot, usually with consent. One has the power to transform vibrations both within people and in the natural world. One can transform and change emotions, for better or worse, and one can plant sound seeds into the energy lines of the earth with the combination of sound and informed intention.
The nature of the laws of sound is a law of entrainment. This means that one’s hearing, one’s being attunes to the core sound. If it is peaceful, and originates from a deeply peaceful well-intentioned heart, it spreads peace and love. How-ever it can be misused and if it is used with power and control as its motivation or if the player is full of ego and distress that is what is spread and transmitted.
In our own ways, we are all potential sound healers, with every word we speak, every emotion we share, we are seeding those vibrations into the places where we are, and in those with whom we speak. Others who come later may also pick up on those vibrations, if they can hear vibration well. Empathy is a way of matching one’s vibrations to others, and hearing and reading or interpreting them. When we really learn to listen, empathy develops into telepathy. Its not mystical it’s physics.
The power of our intent is what determines the direction of our lives and our communications. When we live consciously those ideas, words, sounds are more powerful and seed deeper. When we do not realise our power to transform and interact with land energies, our effect can be less resonant and less intense.
Sometimes people or societies have internalised practices that are harmful. This becomes problematic for world peace between nations.
Harmlessness is the first principle. Every militarised society breaks this, and we are all polluted and affected by it. It becomes a collective karma. Societies then create a mental construction that says “if we have these weapons, they act as a discouragement for others to attack us.” So immediately one has introduced a mental construction into the national psyche, and begun to build not on a space of being peaceful, but on a space of fearfulness. True love and true peace cannot exist where fear is...they are different frequencies.
So we have to ask the core questions together, and dialogue.
Can there be an ending of conflict? How can we achieve peacefulness together so we all can go beyond fear and lay down our arms?
How can we create societies of calm peaceful people, who we can trust are not going to create havoc by misusing personal power, or by getting off on the energy of using power inappropriately, by living egoicly or without attention to other human’s needs (and the needs of animals, the earth etc.) ?
“How individuals and groups can manage power and control responsibly?” is another core question for us to dialogue? It is particularly a key question for groups of men to address. I say this because unfortunately our history books show us it is often, (although not exclusively) men who have abused power and control. Obviously, there are also women who do this: and one only need to look at the ignorance which causes women to sexually abuse children through circumsion, to realise there is a problem there. (2,000,000 women world-wide evidence the suffering of female cirmcision often perpetrated by women.) I think Men and women’s issues with violence often manifest differently. Women are more affected by the fear, that leads to a need to conform to perceived expectations of what is required of them, (for survival or to continue their lineages.)
My observation is that men actually often “get off “on wielding power and control, often quite cruelly. So there are questions to dialogue on, about the links between, sexuality and terrorism.
What are the core sexual needs of men and how can these be addressed easefully and respectfully? Does the porn industry distort these? Once one is sexually addicted to certain practices, is it possible to transform the addiction? How do different drugs of choice affect sexual choices? What is the nature of male sexuality and female sexuality and how do we meet those needs peacefully? How do the historically reinforced, cultural practices of societies, act for and against achieving a peaceful society? If testosterone cannot find a healthy expression, how does it distort perception and actions? What is healthy? Can addictions serve a healthy society?
I believe in the process of becoming peaceful there is a place for “whatever gets you through the night” in the words of John Lennon, and judgement is not a helpful way of approaching misalignments of the psyche. But honestly giving attention to these questions, is helpful and in itself transformative. Understanding the issues is helpful.
As we end ignorance and start to have these dialogues about peace and about impulse control, we bring the issues into the spotlight for awareness to be brought to bear on them.
This process of “bringing awareness to” , is in itself a healing process. Awareness and attention are very precious, and actually very powerful as a transformation tools. They focus the issues, and in the light of attention, there is the choice to act well and with intelligence. This is the real process of the awakening of consciousness: applied attention, focus and curiosity.
When one sees something does not work, it is possible to change it, sometimes with the light of consciousness itself – the “aha moment,” or sometimes through a sustained campaign of action and the development of will power.
Divine will is a further aspect for discussion, and one of particular interest to me, personally, as I engage in the process of developing the inner will-power of not eating sugar, which an international addiction, and a poison to my diabetic body, that loves and craves it.
For me resisting the lure of sugar, is as hard as for a teenager, who has acquired a gun and loves to threaten or kill animals with it, to lay it down and resist “the buzz” of control and power. Both are addictions formed out of ignorant early programming as a child.
So can there be an ending of violence? There has to be… but we have to explore the questions together and support each other, as we move closer in ourselves, to addressing our addictions and becoming peaceful people who act with awake awareness in the world.
Are we ready to wake up?
When the student is ready…the teacher appears…we manifest the answers to our questions when we pay attention and ask…for ultimately the world acts holographically now. What we think, what we believe, is instantly reflected back in our lives.
So being coherent creates coherence. Being peaceful, creates peacefulness. So, let’s be it and lets dialogue with others about how conflict is ended?
Extract from Guidebook for the Soul,
Ammaprema Grace 1/1/2017 www.ammapremagrace.com