Let's Make Peace!

"What can you do to promote world peace? Go home and love your family."

Mother Teresa



If there is to be peace in the world,
There must be peace in the nations.
If there is to be peace in the nations,
There must be peace in the cities.
If there is to be peace in the cities,
There must be peace between neighbors.
If there is to be peace between neighbors,
There must be peace in the home.
If there is to be peace in the home,
There must be peace in the heart.

Lao Tzu - born 604 BC

What can you do to help bring peace to our world?

It can start with you.

You can't be at peace with others if you are not at peace with yourself. You need to first find happiness and peace within yourself in order to share it with others. Most of us have something that we could change to make our little world happier and more peaceful. It can be a simple thing like deciding to smile more. Or changing a job, relationship or situation. It may be difficult to imagine at first but any change is possible if we really want it and believe it can happen.

You will be pleasantly surprised at how your world starts to become a more peaceful place when you start believing that it is!

Imagine looking at a jar filled with water and sand that has been shaken. In the center of the jar is a tiny light, but it is difficult to see because of all the swirling sand. If you try shaking the jar the swirling sand just gets worse and the light totally disappears. But what if you just let the jar sit quietly for a while and rest? After a little while the sand starts to settle down and you start to see a faint glimmer of light. A little longer and all the sand has settled to the bottom and you can see the light shining brightly!

The sand is all the things we have to deal with in our lives, work, family, commitments. They seem to swirl around us endlessly. The light is our soul, true self or whatever else you want to call it. It is who we really are and what we truly want in our lives. Unfortunately the sand is constantly blurring our vision of what that is. In order to see that light burning inside all of us we need to find a way to make the sand settle down so that we can see clearly again.

How can you make the sand stop swirling? You need to find a way to stop the constant chatter in your brain and activity in your life so that you can focus on the peace that exists inside of you.

You have probably heard that meditation is a way to achieve a feeling of tranquillity and peace, but thought it was not for you. Many people think that you have to become a Buddhist monk to meditate. That's not true.

Meditation is just a way for your mind to finally have that much deserved rest. It is the process of stopping all the noise in your mind and allowing you to focus on that quiet peaceful soul that is within you.

Try it and see...what have you got to lose?

So you lets say you have managed to find some sense of peace within yourself. Now you need to share that peace with others! Who do we share this with? For most of us it is our family or friends who we already have a relationship with. We need to share our peace and understanding with them in order to learn to share it with the rest of the world! They are our Guinea pigs on the road to peace! If we can perfect our skills of love, respect and understanding with them, we can use those skills with others on this planet! And then others may learn from us and spread the idea of peace through their own acts of love, understanding and respect.

Many of us have children in our lives, our own, nephews, nieces, cousins or those of friends. If you spend time with a child you soon realize how our opinions on life color their views of life. If you say you hate carrots and make an issue of it soon they will often adopt the same dislike for carrots. This often works the same for other opinions we have on many things including politics, religion, race and anything else a young mind is exposed to.

Children learn hate through us. They learn intolerance from us. But just as they learn these things that lead to war and injustice, so they can learn to love, respect and understand others.

That too can come from us. It is up to us to create within ourselves the peaceful world we would like our children to live in. They will then become the peacemakers of the future.

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"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr