Giving peace a chance

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it. — Eleanor Roosevelt

We’re tired of fighting” was The Philippine STAR’s Oct. 17 headline. It bannered the sentiments of the members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) as they look forward to a peaceful life following the signing of the Bangsamoro framework agreement at Malacañang, which will pave the way toward the signing of the final peace agreement between the government and the MILF.

The event heralded the auspicious start of a 15-step process to the creation of the Bangsamoro, and with it, normalcy and peace in Mindanao.

This development requires a lot from the parties involved: setting aside worries and doubts, accepting hopefulness and belief in each other, putting behind gripes and beginning the healing process, laying down arms and linking up with others to start the work of reconstruction and restoration, putting aside uncertainty and suspicion and marching forward to realize the dream.

Last week’s major news called to mind AJ Muste’s insight, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way,” an appropriate theme that summarized Deepak Chopra’s book Peace Is The Way, which made a great argument for peace from the inside out. As Chopra said, “It must begin inside each individual until a large enough number believes and makes a global change in awareness happen.” The tome called for an end to wars, as it analyzed why war is so prevalent and why people resort to violence. Peace Is The Way discussed about war being an entrenched behavior or tradition, and propped up the typical example of “good fighting evil.”

The problem, Chopra enthused, is that “Good tends to be defined by on which side you are standing at the time.” He also pointed out that the advantages (if any) you enjoy today are mostly the result of war and hostility, making it challenging to advocate for peace. Having said that, Chopra pushed for the following points and processes if you want elusive peace to reign supreme. They can work for angry nations, angry groups, angry people, and the angry you.

• Stop being passive and take control of your own destiny. The way of peace is love in action. You are ready to follow it if only you can learn what it is. If you show that peace is more satisfying than war, other people’s collective consciousness will shift. The more people who join the peace movement, the faster war will come to an end. Instead of wishing that others would stop killing, make the ultimate contribution by becoming a force for peace.

• You will know you are living the way of peace when three things are present: Your actions hurt no one and benefit everyone; you also remember your authentic character and your purpose for being; and you belong to a community of peace and wisdom. The peace movement will succeed as long as people can understand tiny triumphs every day. To that end, design a program for peace you can implement here and now. Follow a specific practice every day, and each practice is centered on the theme of making peace real, one step at a time. All you are asked to do is to go inside you and dedicate yourself to peace. Your and other people’s responsibility is to bring about change by personal transformation.

• The way of peace teaches that no one is your enemy. Since this is such a radical change from the way you were taught to feel, it must happen by degrees. 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. If you accept the way of peace, your goal is always to heal and not to oppose. Unlike violence, the way of peace doesn’t need a higher being to justify it; it is justified by its own merits as a way to improve life for every person.

• 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 or absolute values, but only the play of opposites. In a dualistic world, humans are separate from the source of creation. The solution 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 if you want to end war and violence.

• You have to adapt to a new way of being in the world if you 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; and military strength brings security. When enough of you and your family and friends focus on peace as the answer, the world will be transformed. You aren’t asked to be a saint, or to give up any belief. You are only asked to stop reacting out of fear, to change your allegiance from violence to peace.

• The way of peace has to face the current dominance of greed. If you live as though money and power are the only means to happiness, clearly something has gone wrong.  Riches and influences indeed can be terrible distractions. They go against your real purpose to evolve and grow, to discover who you are, and to transform your surroundings in keeping with who you really are. And having provided for your basic comforts and needs, apply your money and power to serve the hierarchy of values to which you owe your loyalty — love, progress, personal growth, discovery, wisdom, harmony, connectedness, and peace itself.

• The way of peace is your only hope of security. 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. But is there really such a city?

• Awareness means power. The way of peace is a journey of the soul to acquire the ability to change reality. As your awareness becomes unfathomable, you acquire more control that 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 — the messages that come from some place deeper and the impulses of the soul that will profoundly dig into the heart of reality.

• Find 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.

• Learn 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 hurting; 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 not 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 ones begin to fade.

• Religion must place the responsibility for violence squarely where it belongs, in the mind of every person. Religion must stop judging others outside the faith as sinners condemned by God. It must stop defending war in any way.

• The real enemy of peace isn’t evil but chaos. But chaos can be turned into love by giving love to others and receiving it back; sitting alone in your own silence; immersing yourself in natural beauty; telling the truth, whatever the consequences; having any outlet for joy; communing with deep emotions; acting out of kindness and compassion; bonding; feeling as one with a group whose goals are positive, and offering yourself in service.

• Peace has the power to bring people out of their distorted sense that violence is their only choice. Here’s how you 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; avoid passing judgment and making your opponent wrong; don’t talk in terms of ideology, and confront the underlying factor of fear. The way of peace acknowledges what it has done. When it is genuine, forgiveness has tremendous power to heal.

• 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 you know that your hidden secret is real, and you should celebrate: yours is the one weapon that will surely blow up the monster.

“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,” Chopra enthused. Right now there are large numbers of soldiers serving in armies deployed in conflict areas. Can’t we turn them from combatants into peace brigades? Hope springs eternal. Give peace a chance. The effort begins now with you. 



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