Peace Is the Way

Peace Is the Way: Bringing War and Violence to an End

By Deepak Chopra

ISBN 0-307-33981-5

Published by Three Rivers Press 2005

Chopra's latest work is prefaced by endorsements from four Nobel Peace Laureates, Muhammad Ali and an impressive array of other notables. Here, the Indian-born doctor and author of the bestselling The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and other popular spiritual guides contends that the deeply ingrained human habit of resorting to violence can be ended by raising the consciousness of individuals until there is a global change in awareness, similar to the shift that took place when the age of science took hold. Chopra, whose bestsellers and celebrity-friendliness have saddled him with a reputation for being guru to the rich and comfortable, is refreshingly honest about the way our comfort and security are ultimately the fruits of war. "The satisfaction of waging war cannot be replaced by philosophy or religion," he writes. In addition to analysis, he offers daily practices of meditation, thought and actions on behalf of others as a way to live the truth of A.J. Muste's famous quote: "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." Ultimately, however, the ego itself has to be disarmed to live the way of peace, he says: "For me as an individual to be free, I have to confront myself with questions about who I really am, and this is done in large part by examining the layers of false identity that I mistakenly call me." This is clearly harder to practice than it is to read. Still, Chopra's affirmation that "our true identity is at the level of spirit and nowhere else" has the ring of truth and so does the rest of this simple, practical, inspiring book. [This link provides a summary of what I highlighted during my read of this excellent book -- I recommend it on my Top-ten List of Peace resources. My purpose in providing them is to interest you, the reader, and hope that you will obtain and read the complete work. To properly understand the highlights, you need to read the book to put them in the proper context.]

Endorsements:

“In the African tradition of ‘Ubuntu,’ we say a person is a person through other people.” –Desmond Tutu
“ ‘if we want to change the world, we have to begin by changing ourselves.’” –His Holiness the Dalai Lama
“…humanity depends on individual transformation.”—Oscar Aria
“…what you think about and bring into consciousness expands…bring the vision of peace to the forefront of our individual and collective consciousness, where our thoughts will manifest into reality…”—Muhammad Ali
“…there are creative solutions to the conflict in the world.”—Dr. Mário Soares
“…we are as we mind.” –Ashok Gangadean
“In spite of everything we’ve been conditioned to believe, war isn’t necessary!”—Rabbi Alan Lew
“Dr. Chopra explains the development of peace consciousness as a practical project of personal transformation.” –Hal Uplinger

Chapter 1: War Ends Today

“There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.” –A.J. Muste
Today is a good day for war to come to an end.
To end war…what we have to end is the idea of war, which has turned into the habit of war, and then into the numbing constancy of war.
The way of peace has to become a new habit. To do that, it must offer a substitute for every single thing that war provides.
War provides an outlet for national vengeance.
It satisfies the demands of fear.
It brings power to the victor.
It provides security to the homeland.
It opens an avenue for getting what you want by force.
Can the way of peace really substitute for all that?
What it asks for is something new: conscious evolution.
The time has come for us to stop being passive, and to take control of our own destiny, one person at a time.
The way of peace is love in action.
People are ready to follow the way of peace, if only they can learn what it is.
If you demonstrate that peace is more satisfying than war, the collective consciousness will shift.
It’s time for society to take a direction that conforms to what the individual wants.
The more people who join us, the faster war will come to and end. Instead of wishing that others would stop killing, you can become a force for peace, and in so doing make the ultimate contribution.

Chapter 2: The way of Peace

…you will know you are living the way of peace when three things are present:
Seva: Your actions harm no one and benefit everyone
Simran: You remember your true nature and your purpose for being here.
Satsang: You belong in the community of peace and wisdom.
They describe the ideal life of any spiritual person.
…be a steward…
The rest of the human family is part of you.
The secret strength of peace is precisely that it isn’t materialistic.
Be assured, consciousness is on the move.
The major difference between the tow worlds I’ve pictured is consciousness. Fear and greed emanate from a lower level of consciousness, a level we all participate in. Love and sharing emanate from a higher level of consciousness.

How to Birth A World

Seven Building Blocks of Reality:
Thought and Belief
Emotions
Intentions
Relationships
Turning points and Breakthroughs
Environment
Vision
In some region of consciousness an old link had broken, and everything that war offered to older generations—adventure, romance, a testing ground for machismo, a stage for the drama of good versus evil—no longer mattered.
The key words that will define the new hierarchy are:
Conscious evolution
Self-determination
Nonmilitary
Nonsectarian
Global Sharing
Sustainable Economics
Healed Environments
The real answer to why we don’t see a new world yet is that it isn’t ready to be born. It won’t be ready until the building blocks become stronger.

Realizing Our Power

Thinking about peace is a powerful means to make it happen if that thought comes from a deep level.
To feel the anguish of war and compassion for its victims is a force that wants to create change.
…an intention clears the way for its own fulfillment.
We must envision an entirely new order based on peace, and then unseen forces will start to gestate that reality.
You can’t bring about a peaceful world except by relating peacefully. Relationships are the crucible of reality.
Breakthroughs happen because the earlier building blocks have done their job.
The principle to keep in mind is that consciousness wants to evolve.
The peace movement must take a further step, not just hoping to engage ordinary people but also knowing how that is done.
…the reins of change lie in our hands.
The best thing you can do for peace today is encourage the evolutionary impulse in yourself. Developing peace consciousness is a practical project, and the more of us who engage in it every day, the more momentum we add to the future.
The peace movement will succeed as long as people can grasp small achievements every day. To that end, here is a program for peace you can implement here and now.
The program for peace asks you to become a peacemaker by following a specific practice every day, each centered on the theme of making peace real, one step at a time, in your personal life.
…get back your center.
All you are asked to do is to go within and dedicate yourself to peace.
…your duty and mine is to bring about change by personal transformation.

Chapter 3: The Spectre of Them

The way of peace teaches that no one is your enemy. Since this is such a radical change from the way we were taught to feel, it must happen by degrees.
Dehumanizing the other side isn’t a modern invention.
…to exploit fear is an act of cruelty.
The way of peace calls for each person to abolish the logic of us-versus-them and to end one’s allegiance to its rules. Each rule loses its grip on the mind when it is seen as false and unnecessary.
If you accept the way of peace, your goal is always to heal, never to oppose.
…someone to attack instead of seeing the enemy within yourself.
We are all in this together.

They believe in a false God

…assuming that God likes war enough to choose sides
Unlike violence, the way of peace doesn’t need God to justify it; it is justified by its own merits as a way to improve life for every person.

They are crazy

…if you are killing people for their own good, the burden of irrationality may be falling more on your side than theirs.

They hate us and probably always will

…the only process that will end violence: looking inward to discover one’s own darker side.
Finally, if I am thoroughly honest, I get to the deepest level. If I catch myself talking for the sake of my ego, I stop. This is more difficult, because the only alternative to self-importance is humility. The ego hates humility. There is softness in being humble. One feels unguarded, vulnerable.
So it takes a lot of negotiation with the self for this stage to progress.
…the basic, undeniable fact that common life is pursued the same everywhere.
…the mentality of us versus them is always an expression of the root problem, which is dualism. Dualism is the belief that there are no final of absolute values, but only the play of opposites. In a dualistic world humans are separate from the source of creation.
The solution, as I understand it, is to find a practical way to escape the divisions that duality imposes.
The way of peace leads beyond duality. There is no other road to take for someone who wants to end war and violence.

Chapter 4: Beyond Toxic Nationalism

The double face of America as the world’s beast friend and worst enemy was starkly revealed to me.
One road to the future will turn the U.S. into a fortress, isolated…
The other road to the future leads to globalization.
…our brand of nationalism would have to stop being toxic and begin to be healing.
If the future is fortress America , peace has no real change. For once, the tangled hierarchy leads to a clear choice. To keep going in the direction of toxic nationalism is a recipe for disaster.
… America must reach out and become part of the globe in a positive way.
…question the whole notion that a good country is one that turns to armed violence and intimidation as an automatic reflex.
…a lack of awareness has caused good, loving people to believe in half-truths and falsehoods…
Which country do you think poses the greatest danger in the world?
…eighty-five percent picked the United States .
…nationalism is a false way to view reality, and breaking through its illusions is crucial to the way of peace.

Ending an Illusion

The reality is that every nation struggles with inner conflicts.
God has never expressed an opinion about any nation, and never will.
…we live in an open world where boundaries mean less and less.
…finding out who you are requires self-searching and self-knowledge.
…consciousness to grow by facing reality.
…nationalism today is a form of oppression known as militarism. To live in a society dominated by the military is the opposite of being free.
No society emerges from war intact.
…the current peace movement is beginning to find a way to befriend all nations by addressing the global need to end violence…
…the chief obstacle is that you believe you can’t.
If someone can explain how the technology of world peace works, that too will be allowed to exist as a reality. I think the impossibility of peace lies only in our heads, and once we begin to accept the impossible, a rapid shift will occur.

Chapter 5: The myth of Security

…we have to adapt to a new way of being in the world if we expect to ever feel secure again.
As with any monster, you must find its most vulnerable spot to defeat it. The hierarchy of weapons depends on three core beliefs.
Money brings happiness.
Technology brings well-being
Military Strength brings security.

Money and Happiness

…the way of peace has to face the current dominance of greed.
If you live as though money brings only happiness, clearly something has gone wrong. You have neglected the entire world of spirit, with the implication that the surface of life is enough.
Even though we seem to have wandered far from the issue of war and violence, we are actually at the crux, because when people settle for the surface of life they miss the only level that can bring war to an end, which lies beneath the surface.
I must accuse riches of being a terrible distraction.
Our real purpose on earth is very different, as every spiritual tradition recognizes.
We are here to evolve and grow.
We are here to discover who we are.
We are here to transform our surroundings in keeping with who we really are.
Great spiritual teachers have said that we are ultimately here to transcend matter, to worship our maker, to appreciate the infinite creation and learn humility before it.
The way of peace would be to use your money to further the real reason you are here. Having provided for basic comforts and needs, apply your money to serve the hierarchy of values to which you owe your allegiance. Peace values, as we have seen, are love, evolution, personal growth, discovery, wisdom, harmony, connectedness, and peace itself.
As a peacemaker you will have more power than technology, however, and despair is therefore false.
A superpower, for all its armaments, is as vulnerable to these threats as any nation. The truth is that the safest city in the world is the one where you can walk down the street and need no police officer. The way of peace is our only hope of security.
…several things have actually become clear:
The process of globalization isn’t going to halt.
Other cultures will only accept change at their own pace.
Traditional cultures will change at the slowest pace.
Every nation has a right to self-determination, even if America disagrees with the direction it takes.
Americanism is not a replacement for human values.
The gifts of Americanization are not necessarily good just because they benefit America .
How can military power force anyone to be Western against their will? How can a war force anyone to accept what someone else thinks is good for him or her?
…both sides are engaged in utter futility. The war on terror is just another permutation of violence versus violence.
…the end result is blindness to reality. By setting your awareness against these illusions, you are bringing change at the level where it has real power, that level where your soul knows the truth and will do everything it can to end blindness and unreality.

Chapter 6: Diabolical Creativity

What makes modern suffering so sinister is that most people have passively accepted living in an atmosphere of fear.
Why do we sit still and watch?
The spiritual malaise we have fallen into is well known. It’s called alienation, or separation from that which makes a person human. The way of peace brings an end to alienation by restoring the responses that have been lost to numbness. Most people, if they look closely at their lives know that something has gone seriously wrong.
…the huge obstacle…nothing less than a change in world view.
…to fall short of your spiritual potential is the most basic sign of alienation. You and I are walking around in a state that isn’t fully human. To be fully human means being grounded in the infinite creative potential of life. When you are ungrounded, you forget who you are. Outside forces toss you around. You retreat into various distractions that feebly compensate for the immense power and authority you have lost.
“I became pure consciousness, free of all human ties to family and friends, free of emotion including love and compassion, free of all things but pure awareness. In this way I was in complete peace.”
…experience the degree of pure awareness…regain a bit of it. These steps aren’t complicated. In fact there is only one. Going deeper every day into the potential for change that underlies your life.
…ripples of awareness that move outward from a center.
Are we causing earth changes? The spiritual answer is, of course we are…
Natural disasters are not a message from God but a message from ourselves.
“You create your own reality.”
Here are some of the accepted principles, all part of our current world view, that block spiritual evolution
Our great enemy isn’t irrationality, its imbalance.
Peace will be achieved when we mesh our minds with an outbreak of violence and say, with total confidence, I can heal that.
…the laws of consciousness, and eventually they will be mastered. These include:
-the law that physical reality is a product of consciousness
-the law that power is greater as one gets closer to the ground state of being
-the law that mass events are images in collective consciousness
-the law that physical reality offers up miracles only when consciousness allows them to emerge
This is the laboratory of spirit, and the hypothesis you are trying to prove is your own soul.

Chapter 7: The Politics of the Soul

The way of peace is a soul journey to acquire the ability to change reality.
The Fundamentals of Consciousness
Awareness has depth
The deeper you go, the more reality will change
Reality is dependent upon your state of consciousness
As your awareness goes deeper, it acquires more power
This power can change the world, both inside and out.
There are no facts that cannot be influenced by awareness
Ultimately your awareness creates everything you experience.
…pay attention to messages that came from some place deeper…
…if you pay attention to the impulses of the soul, you will be drawn deeper and deeper into the heart of reality.
…each moment of existence is a point that contains everything.

Chapter 8: (Still) Mad as Hell

The issue of long-held grievances is crucial to most wars.

The Chemistry of Anger

Humiliation…revenge, stubbornness, self-pity, and loss of control
Unresolved feelings…losses, unwanted change, forced decisions, regrets, unfulfilled desires.
…the way of peace offers the mind a new picture that will satisfy it. Its key words are:
connection
mature love
love of self
inner strength
fulfilled desires
achievement
giving
inspiration
vision
Orwellian logic can’t last forever.
…a majority of Americans cannot form a picture of war in their minds and live comfortably with it. This is one of the symptoms of a major shift in worldview.
…once we understand more about such basic operations as memory, will, intelligence, and intention, world peace will be closer at hand.

The Chemistry of Change

The difference between a haunting memory and one that loses its charge over time is this: if a memory becomes part of your identity, forgetting it is extremely difficult. However, if a memory doesn’t shape your sense of who you are, you can forget it fairly easily.

Finding new ways to be Happy

Look directly at what hurts you
Communicate your desire to be free of this hurt
Ask for inner guidance to show you what to do
Listen to what you feel, but don’t give in to it
Know for certain that you can remove old hurts
Be patient, since you will have to return to your old hurts many times
The process I’ve just described works for angry nations and for angry people.

Learning to forgive

You can forgive anyone who has hurt you by taking the following actions:
Choose the intent to forgive, even though your feelings are still hurt
Have the intention to let new feelings come in
Encourage even the slightest hints of new feeling
Experience the old hurt and anger, but always say, This isn’t me. This is now what I want anymore.
Keep challenging the old hurt with reasons why it should be replaced
Be patient and let yourself experience both the old and the new feelings until the old one begins to fade.
The way of peace asks you to make a fine distinction. Be aware of your hurt and pay attention to it. But do not fixate on it.
…if you have a healing intention, two things will happen: you will feel more peaceful after your anger has been released, and you will feel like an old, fixated belief in enemies and injustice has started to move.

No longer depending on others

…the first law of healing, which is that it must occur within yourself.
If your vision keeps you on the move, then it’s a true vision. For me, the way of peace is true because I find my self with change every day.
A vision that makes you choose fixed sides isn’t a vision.
It’s not the truth of what you look at, it’s the truth of how you look. The secret lies in the act of perceiving.
The habits of the old self must give way to the habits of the new
…the most natural and painless way of transformation.
Nature let you be who you are
It didn’t burden you with projecting prematurely into the future
It didn’t hold you back in the past
It gave you new desires
These new desires led you in the right direction
…the way of peace isn’t so demanding. Its discipline simply means constancy, patience, and renewed trust in what is real as opposed to self-delusion.
The reality is that you can be a beacon of consciousness.
The prevailing problem for each person is separation and nothing else. So any path that wants you to change yourself must keep in mind that there is no self to change. There are only masks that we wear for a moment and then discard. If you can cherish yourself even as you discard your current favorite mask, you are living perfectly in the way of peace.

Chapter 9: Why does God want War?

Consider what religion has done to every person liker her. It has convinced her that authority is always right, that a common person’s duty is to fall into line without questions or doubts. It has taught her that people who protest authority are bad and wrong.
It has taught her that God is on the side of a good war…
And what didn’t it teach her? Religion didn’t teach her about how to confront the darkest side of human nature so that it can be transformed. It didn’t teach her to think for herself in spiritual matters. It didn’t teach her to forgive and tolerate potential enemies. Most of all, it didn’t teach her the true nature of God, for religion grossly betrays the truth when it portrays God as a rigid authority with military instincts and a liking for bloodshed.
For me to solve my personal anguish over war, I must transform my consciousness until violence is no longer an option.
Religion must place the responsibility for violence squarely where it belongs, in the mind of every person.
It must stop judging others outside the faith as sinners condemned by God.
It must stop defending war in any way.
It must stop claiming to be the one and only path to God.
It must give up its arrogance and claim to authority.
It must renounce its covert greed and desire for power.
It must discover how to return love to its true place of primacy.
…the views that dominate our current understanding of human nature have rendered religion irrelevant.
An adult who leaves morality to a parental God has abdicated his responsibility to be an active agent for good.
Urge religion to evolve so that it gains the kind of relevance that science cannot defeat.
God is only sustainable, however, if your awareness has shifted to support it. This is one of the laws that govern spirituality. As you evolve, so will the divine. The way of peace depends on bringing that truth to life, step by step.
…for most people confronting their inner demons isn’t peaceful.
The subtle body is wisdom itself, and when a person begins to access it, a flow of insight begins to emerge.
Spirituality becomes much more workable in stage four because for the first time you are willing to let life run itself. The desperate craving to be in control has loosened its grip. Because you are a witness, you no longer have a mortal stake in everyday affairs. Gain and loss are not opposed; they play their part in a larger design.

Chapter 10: The Metaphysics of Terror

…the way of peace tells us that the physical evidence is misleading. Power can be found at deeper levels than the physical.
The light is a healing light; its work is to bring every person into a more evolved state.
How does a good mind warp? Oppression by the existing powers plays a part. Sympathy for a creed that the state wants to repress, and for the poor people who mostly comprise fundamentalist followers, is also a key ingredient. Poverty and politics are an explosive combination.
…the real enemy of peace isn’t evil but chaos. In a state of chaos such as terrorism wants to create, society breaks down.
Chaos is irrational.
Besides chaos, then, the next greatest enemy of peace is ideology, because in its grip even civilized people argue themselves out of their humanity.
Ideology is especially treacherous because it offers the opposite of what it promises.
…the precise attitude that pairs Christian and Islamic fundamentalism: both see the current war on terrorism as otherworldly, a battle for souls.
The undercurrent of ideology is particularly disturbing because fanaticism has learned to wear a business suit and hire smooth speech writers. However, the underlying intolerance is just as bald.
Empathy is its own reward. If you can see yourself in the same context as those who threaten you, you will open a way for reason, and the steady decrease of fear.
This one man’s life exemplifies many of the forces we’ve talked about: economic and social chaos disrupted his life. An ideology attracted his allegiance and blinded him to reality. He fell under the sway of otherworldly apocalyptic thinking that promised a utopia through violence. Other potent factors also contributed (and are prevalent today), such as the rise of a charismatic leader, hatred of a common enemy, the appeal to racial unity, and the humiliation of a masculine pride.
Millgram
…the line between a normal person and a monster is thinner than we imagine.
Stanford
“It’s not that we put bad apples in a good barrel. We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything it touches.” Consciousness is undoubtedly malleable. It can be made to conform to unreality, untruth, and to every variety of inhumane conditions.
There is still a cause for hope, however, because the forces that turn a person into a terrorist are not mundane. If you want someone to cross the line from normal to monster, you must supply the following conditions:
Give him permission to disregard morality.
Put an authority close by to reinforce the cruelty, making it a duty.
Arrange a hierarchy so that lower ranks must obey upper ranks.
Create an atmosphere of fear.
Apply group pressure by showing that everyone else is going along.
Release the evil deed from any threat of being punished.
Do everything behind closed doors.
These are specific conditions that can be reversed before great evil arises.
Love is stronger than terror because ultimately every impulse can be traced back to our deep need for love.
The conditions that turn consciousness toward love are simple:
Giving love to others and receiving it back.
Sitting alone in your own silence
Immersing yourself in naturally beauty.
Making art and appreciating art in all its forms.
Telling the truth, whatever the consequences.
Laughing, dancing, playing with a child.
Having any outlet for joy.
Communing with deep emotions.
Acting out of kindness and compassion.
Bonding, feeling at one with a group whose goals are positive.
Offering yourself in service.
…the force of love will work patiently but irresistibly to create change.
…it’s certain that we are all attracted to feeling safe, worthy, at peace with ourselves, sexually gratified, and loved.

Chapter 11: The Body at Peace

The way of peace needs to replace the current style of negotiation, which has obviously proved futile
“Diplomacy is just lying gracefully.”
When two warring nations get together to talk peace, their diplomats have to lie about what is actually going on. What is actually going on is irrational, confused, brutal, and full of anger, because that is the nature of war.
We cannot pretend to be friends across the table and remain enemies in our hearts.
Diplomacy is an extension of war.
Peace has powerful means to bring people out of their distorted sense that violence is their only choice.

How to negotiate conflicts through peace

Show respect for your opponent
Recognize perceived injustice
Believe in forgiveness
Bond at the emotional level
Desist in belligerent actions
Recognize values that are opposed to yours
Don’t pass judgment and make your opponent wrong
Don’t talk in terms of ideology
Confront the underlying factor of fear

Why do we need to be told to respect our enemies? Because we feel insulted when they don’t respect us. No one can negotiate with an opponent who is disdainful and contemptuous.
The mistake here is to replace respect with force. The warrior’s argument is always that a country wins respect by pummeling the enemy and beating respect into him.
…apparently insurmountable obstacles melt away once each opponent really believes that his side is being treated equally. This is a basic tenet in the way of peace…
The mistake here is to believe that only you have been injured. Every dispute revolves around that perception. Both parties always perceive that they are owed something. If you feel that injustice has been done to you, however, you must concede the same feelings to the other side.
The way of peace cannot proceed until each side acknowledges what it has done.
When it is genuine, forgiveness has tremendous power to heal.
The truth is, they deserve an apology as well. The simple human act of giving one hasn’t occurred to either side. The way of peace says that it must.
It can be frustrating to realize that wars begin because people don’t like each other.
Emotions are directly linked to a subverbal part of the old brain. When we feel that we can trust someone, that counts much more than if we merely think we can.
The way of peace tells us that emotional bonding—the feeling that trust and friendship are possible—must be present.
In conventional negotiations a country only wins when it holds a position of strength.
The main reason we still believe that fighting brings the other side to the peace table is that wars almost always end with one side being crushed. Real peace talks would be those that began with the cessation of attack.
No gesture speaks more sincerely to the desire for peace than if one side ends belligerent action.
Conventional wisdom has it that when two parties negotiate, they try to find common ground and reasons to compromise. In reality his rarely works…the outcome is a compromise, but it isn’t peaceful.
Negotiations must begin with a recognition that your opponent has values very different from yours.
Forced compromise is futile.
“If only we had known the enemy.” …almost no knowledge of the beliefs and grievances…knew little about why they were fighting or how much resolve they actually had. This ignorance played a huge part in war’s folly and its tragic outcome. The way of peace tells us that we have to know the values of our opponents, because otherwise we will never know what is negotiable and what isn’t.
Most wars are started because both sides think they are in the right.
The weight of judgment against them didn’t cause beneficial change. Instead it forced a defensive posture and a refusal to negotiate. The way of peace tells us that we can not hope to end any conflict as long as one side forces the other into defending its values.
…wars grow much worse when they turn into a battle of belief systems.
…beliefs are the way we justify our whole way of life.
Ideology makes mere facts irrelevant. Fundamentalists…live in a world of self-justified beliefs. Their fervent hope is that reality will conform to their ideology…and when it doesn’t, they fight back.
…the ideal slowly turned into a lie. The way of peace is wise enough to tell us that all ideology must be removed from negotiations if they are to reach a realistic basis for going forward.
Wars seem to be about anger but they are actually about fear. This is a hard fact for combatants to face. In the name of toughness and invulnerability, warring countries never admit how afraid they are of each other. It would help if they did, because mutual fear can be addressed. You only have to stop doing what frightens the other side.
Both sides have known forever that fear can be ratcheted up. Somehow we ignore that knowledge. The way of peace brings it to the forefront. To live in fear has no justification.
By facing the factor of fear, nations could return to the real reason for life itself, which is to pursue happiness and spiritual truth. If promoting fear became inexcusable, wars would dissolve. All of them are in the service of fear, whatever ideology or morality might say to the contrary.
If the way of peace offers such clear solutions to conflict, why have we moved in the opposite direction for so long?
…if we go deeper into the biology of war and peace, we find that it is just as innate in us to be the opposite of aggressive over sexuality and territory.
Interdependence is crucial in a balanced ecosystem.
…people broke through biology, therefore it’s not possible to claim that biology determines behavior.
The way of peace doesn’t deny biology. It is unarguable that violence is part of our nature.
…violence pollutes the emotional body…
…the body at peace is not the same as the body at war. When we operate from our war bodies, the world is not the same as when we operate from a body at peace. In the former case we find there is danger and threat everywhere.
The body at war is most damaged whenever three conditions are in force:
-The surrounding violence is inescapable.
-Bursts of violence come at random.
-One has no control over violence.
…fear that can be used indiscriminately by the power-hungry.
…the body at peace is stronger than the body at war. When you can free yourself of the random, uncontrollable stress that is always present, your body will start to be at peace.
Love…has the power to change our bodies as much as violence, but in a positive direction. People who feel loved live longer; have fewer colds, lower blood pressure, and lower cancer rates; and have fewer heart attacks.

Putting the Body at Peace

Don’t dwell on stressful events
Avoid becoming addicted to bad news
Put fear in perspective (There is nothing to fear but fear itself—BS)
Realize that positive outcomes are possible
Discuss how you feel with others; work together to change the stress
Be in control where you can. Don’t let chaos dominate
Stay centered, and whenever you are thrown off center, take time to return there
Find an outlet for your anger and anxiety

In a time of crisis, putting your body at peace can seem like a full-time job.
…like anyone else I have to fight the darkness.
“…my only advantage over most people is that I know that I can’t let darkness win, and my spiritual vision tells me that it wont.”
Spiritual life is all about finding a center and holding on to it. Negativity can fell like your center.
…got sucked into war hysteria reversed the process…no value in keeping up with daily negative developments…went back to asking how he really wanted to feel…stopped participating in the war mentally.
You have to put your own body at peace, and then, in the absence of turmoil, you can find out what you want to hold on to. Spirituality without a core of peace is very limited.
…the body at peace…can serve as the vehicle for bringing the world back to sanity. The bedrock argument here is that the body at peace is normal. Whereas the body at war is not.

Chapter 12: Our Best Hope

What do you do in a hopeless situation? How can hope come to your aid once again? The way of peace has to answer these questions. Hope is emotionally necessary in a crisis. It’s one of the chief ways our minds protect us.
…other emotions, including those opposed to hope, such as despair, fear, anger, and vengeance.
…hope…is a spiritual force.
The person is without fear
There is belief in an extraordinary outcome.
To rekindle hope, one must find a path to the extraordinary. This requires a shift in oneself…
Simply to hope that (violence) will get better, we now know, is a way of enabling (violence)
Violence especially needs to be treated with hope because at bottom a violent person is hopeless.
…the hopeless among us belong to a subculture, and the behavior of that subculture has a life on its own.
The trick here is not to despair…
…by going deeper into the spiritual value of hope… “The only prerequisite for enlightenment is complete disillusion.” Illusion keeps us in the grip of denial…spirit doesn’t need hope once it can have reality instead.

Hope is a false friend

When it is a mask for denial
When it is the same as apathy
When it papers over conflicts
When it coerces people to suffer in silence
When it enables victimhood
When it prevents realization

…emerge with real hope, the kind founded on self-knowledge.
The best hope in any situation follows certain principles.

The best hope

Unmasks denial
Inspires an end to apathy
Faces up to conflict
Brings an end to silent suffering
Changes the situation of victims
Brings about realization

Unmasking denial

Denial is the general belief that things will improve if one does nothing.
Its denial to say that your side of the dispute is always right and the other side always wrong
Its denial to pretend that you are fearless
Its denial to claim that you are willing to pay any price…to get what you want
Its denial to act as if the other side doesn’t exist and has no right to speak
Its denial to say that you have nothing in common with your enemy
War persists because nations hide behind these denials
We have to feel for each other and see if our differences can be settled.
A truism in therapy is that what you don’t acknowledge can’t be understood, and what you don’t understand can’t be healed.
…the argument that violence must be met every step of the way with more violence has proved disastrous throughout history.
What you resist persists; what you feel, you can heal.

Inspiring an end to apathy

Apathy has been seen as a moral failing of a refusal to do your duty
Most often…apathy is a symptom of being overwhelmed.
Apathy, in the form of emotional numbness, must be healed…
…conflict is present in everyone.
Most violence in this world isn’t committed by bad people. It is committed by people who are expressing what’s inside themselves, and if what is inside is rage and fear, the very effort to keep these feelings down will eventually be the cause of their eruption. I’ve said that all wars are eruptions from the unconscious. The conflict that gets all the headlines is international war, but the inner war inside each individual is actually more important. It is the seed from which all other conflicts grow.
Of course, our leaders refuse to admit any of this.

Bringing an end to silent suffering

…see violence for what it is: a form of suffering. This is a difficult shift for many people.
Does it take a saint to make the shift from moral outrage to compassion?
Turning points arrive when we can make a choice not to suffer in silence. We then strike a soul bargain that is fearful but necessary. The bargain is that redemption is possible through love. The absence of love is absolutely the problem, and love is absolutely the solution.
The work is much more like working on clogged plumbing than it is like imitating a saint.
…in our souls each of us harbors the knowledge that only love is going to bring violence to an end…our spiritual lives must remain devoted to that vision.

Changing the situation of victims

…anger is the result of the conviction of injustice.
People walk around every day harboring a set of beliefs that keep them stuck in their status as victims:

What you have to face before you can recover

I’m completely innocent, I don’t deserve this.
There was nothing I cold do about it
Someone else is to blame
People are just cruel sometimes
Life is unfair
I want to get back in control, but its hard
I have to be on guard all the time now
It could happen again, but I won’t let it
There’s almost nothing I can do about this fear
…we must live every day as if death is stalking us constantly, for in fact that is true.
The simplest definition of a victim is this: someone who can’t stop being hurt.
In truth life is neither fair nor unfair. The world is a reflection of who we are inside.
If you can stop relating to the world through your trauma, there is hope that you can begin to relate through your soul. Here is how the process needs to go.
This wound is the problem
It always takes time to recover from
If you are not vigilant, it turns into part your identity, and then the danger of relating to the world through this wound becomes sharper.
Yes, you are innocent. The attack against your sense of self has no justification. But only a stronger sense of self is going to rescue you.
…realizing that reality is tangled serves you in your healing, because you can stop yourself from pursuing the false hope that everything will one day be revealed and straightened out.
…there is a deeper truth, which is that the soul has a clear vision of the way out. You have to know this in advance to take advantage of it.
That something is absolute consciousness, the pure state of being. Its essence is your essence. Its intelligence is your intelligence. Its clarity and ability to organize life are yours, also.
…hope is the assurance that your connection to pure Being can never be lost; the worst trauma in the world can’t harm Being by a single scratch.

Bringing about realization

…suddenly know that you are the author of your own life
Spiritual realization is very much like control by the host. At some level we all know everything, because we are nothing except pure consciousness.
We know that there is equality among human beings, that there is a reality beyond the physical, that nothing happens by chance. Those shining moments that get labeled as epiphanies happen when we permit ourselves to know what we already know.
In the blazing Aha! of realization life becomes more real, not so much because it changed but because we decided to relate to it differently.
…certain powers are only unveiled when you give yourself permission to tap into them.
Vedanta means…looking beyond goodness.
…what will make it a reality?
Realizing that only spiritual solutions will work
These solutions only come about with a change in consciousness
A change in consciousness happens one person at a time
There is a spiritual law which states that we must celebrate our losses, for only the unreal can be lost, and once it is gone, the real remains
…the way to enlightenment is through total disillusion.
…you will no longer be an ego driven personality.

Epilogue:

Compassion
War won’t end from any other cure.
The real work for peace is proceeding one person at a time and eventually tipping the balance in the world.
…now is the time to use the secret hidden inside. You and I are nothing compared to the huge machinery of mechanized death that has overwhelmed us. But we know that our hidden secret is real, and we should celebrate: ours is the one weapon that will surely blow up the monster.

Appendix:

How to end war one person at a time
The new idea is to bring peace one person at a time until the world reaches a critical mass of peacemakers instead of warmakers.

Why ending war hasn’t worked

Peace movements have tried three ways for bringing war to an end:
Activism, the approach of putting political pressure on governments that wage war. Activism involves protests and public demonstrations, lobbying and political commitment. Almost every war creates some kind of peace movement opposed to it.
Why has it failed?
Because the protesters are not heard.
Because they are worn down by frustration and resistance.
Because they are far outnumbered by the war interests in society.
Because their idealism turns to anger and violence.
Activism has left us with the ironic picture of outraged peacemakers who wind up contributing to the total sum of violence in the world.
The second approach is humanitarianism, the approach of helping the victims of war. Bringing relief to victims is an act of kindness and compassion
…this effort is ongoing and attracts thousands of volunteers worldwide. Every nation on earth approves of humanitarianism.
Why has it failed?
Because the humanitarians are wildly outnumbered by soldiers and warmakers
Because of finances…a tiny fractions of military budgets around the world.
Because the same countries that wage war also conduct humanitarian efforts, keeping the two activities separate
Because humanitarians show up on the scene after the war has already begun.
The third approach is personal transformation, the approach of ending war one person at a time. The prevailing idea is that war begins in each human heart and can only end there.
Most people have actually never heard of this approach.
Why has it failed?
Because nobody has really tried it
“…be the change that you wish to se in the world.”—Mahatma Gandhi

Why war ends with you

The approach of personal transformation is the idea of the future for ending war. It depends on the only advantage that people of peace have over warmakers: sheer numbers. If enough people in the world transformed themselves into peacemakers, war could end. The leading idea here is critical mass.
When the time is right and enough people participate, critical mass can change the world.
“When a person is established in nonviolence, those in his vicinity cease to feel hostility.”—Patanjali, ancient Indian sage

The best reason to become a peacemaker

If you transform yourself into a peacemaker, you won’t become an activist marching in the streets. You will not be anti anything. No money is required. All you are asked to do is to go within and dedicate yourself to peace.
Right now there are 21.3 million soldiers serving in armies around the world. Can’t we recruit a peace brigade ten times larger?
A hundred times larger?
The effort begins now, with you.

Notes:

The way of peace is about more than deep reflection. Yet the path begins there…

What can I do?

…sharing your consciousness with other people.
…join a global community of peace cells.
www.peaceisthewayglobalcommunity.org
…the whole point of a peace movement is to participate according to your ideal. Peace is a vision, and visions must grow on their own, following one’s inner desires. Right now the vision is a spark, but somewhere, sometime, the spark will catch flame. I can’t say when that moment will be—it could be with you. I hope so, because I know with certainty that there is no stronger community than the invisible one created by people inspired by their own higher purpose.