Inner Peace

World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not just mere absence of violence. Peace is, I think, the manifestation of human compassion.

-    H. H. The Dalai Lama

We all long for peace.  Even the most violent among us are simply acting out inner pain and seeking relief, however so unknowingly.  On the deepest level we are all seeking to return to our Source, to unity, to love.  On the surface, however, it may not seem like this at all.  The bottom line, though, is that we all want to love and be loved. 

As we look at the world through our senses, through the electronic media and through the filters of our own mental conditioning, we might get a different picture. Violent crime is the substance of the nightly news.  It might be hard to realize but all that we see “out there” in the world is really a projection of what is inside of us.  Please pause and take a breath before you react to this.  That is a start.  When we start to take responsibility for our own consciousness, we can start to change the world.

In A Gift of Change Marianne Williamson writes, “Who we ourselves become, how we grow and change and face the challenges of our own lives, is intimately and causally connected to how the world will change over the next few years.  For the world is a projection of our individual psyches, collected on a global screen; it is hurt or healed by every thought we think.”  When we buy into a belief system, or BS, based in fear, separation, jealousy, greed, lust, etc. we separate ourselves from our true selves, from love.

I used to enjoy attending meditation retreats with Chagdud Tulku Rimpoche, a teacher in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.  He would often reiterate that we have to change inwardly before we can fix the world.  He would say that trying to develop peace in the world, before looking into yourself, is like looking into a mirror and trying to wipe the dirt off your face by wiping the mirror.  Sometimes we end up in a state where we think that if everybody else would just change things would get better.  I’ve been there – over and over.  Change, however, begins within each of us.

Meditation is the key to inner transformation, the key to inner peace.  Peace, joy and love are our own true nature.  When we can relinquish all of our BS and rest in our own Self-nature we have found a way beyond pain and suffering.  We have found a way out of our BS.