If you are reading this article, I can assume that you long for world peace. Spiritually inclined individuals usually hate wars and violent conflicts of all kinds, and pray sincerely for an end to this seemingly endless form of human suffering. But we still tend to define peace as simply a period of relative calm and stability between episodes of conflict. So, for example, we refer to the period between World Wars 1 & II as a time of peace. We also strive to be peaceful in our personal day-to-day lives, but then some ‘idiot’ comes along and really upsets us, and our personal peace flies out of the window.
If our peace can come and go at the whim of external circumstances, it cannot be real peace. True, permanent peace actually lies beyond this physical world, and so, if we really want to find lasting peace, we all need to take a lot of time out from our busy daily routines to find this peace deep within our own being. But I have to warn you that you will need decades, if not lifetimes, of serious spiritual practice before you can dwell constantly in divine, or unchanging, peace regardless of any storms that may be raging all around you.
Please try to understand that you will find no way out of this world’s endless wars and conflicts, and indeed your own personal conflicts, until you begin to awake and see the craziness of all human separation, differences and hatreds. If you really want to transcend this fearful, warring world, you need to follow some kind of genuine spiritual path that will guide you to look within and to see clearly all the conflict in your own mind, so that you can find a lasting solution to it.
Most people in this world cannot dwell in a peaceful state for long, because they are at the whim of the moodiness of their minds. Whenever we feel irritated or anxious, love and peace have to disappear for a while. Next time you are angry about something or someone, try to feel peaceful and loving at the same time, and you will see what I mean. We all say that we really want peace and love, but if we observe ourselves for even a short space of time, we will begin to notice how often we seem to choose anger instead of peace, and fear and attack instead of love.
Most of us are not just seeking peace for ourselves and others, we are also looking for lasting love and think that if we found it our lives would be more fulfilling and less frustrating. But in our society, we tend to grow up to believe that love is some kind of romantic feeling, or even a sexual longing, and this type of love is actually exciting rather than peaceful. Romantic love can be blissful for a while, but the bliss of romantic love soon fades because it is not real love. I can tell you now that love without peace is not truelove, and that peace without love is not true peace!
One of the most important steps we can take, if we sincerely want to find true, lasting peace and love, is to begin to accept that the external world that we perceive to be so real and threatening is simply a reflection of what is in our own minds. If you hold fearful thoughts in your mind, you will inevitably perceive a fearful world all around you. If you hold attack thoughts in your mind, this attacking energy will extend outwards into your world, and then you will inevitably attract external attacks into your life.
This is a natural law: like attracts like, and any fearful or angry energy that we hold within us will, sooner or later, attract fearful or aggressive people or events into our lives. However, it can take us a very long time to really accept and put into practice this fundamental natural law. Perhaps the only really effective way to begin to accept this very challenging way of looking at the world is to adopt some kind of genuine spiritual practice or path that will lead us to experience the absolute truth beyond this physical reality that seems to be endlessly full of conflict and aggression.
If you want to be a true peace-bringer in this world, I strongly urge you to dedicate your day, everyday of your life, to your spiritual awakening and healing. The true spiritual path is always pointing towards the light, and when we connect to this ‘out of this world’ spiritual light, we will inevitably experience true peace. This spiritual light is always there, waiting with infinite patience for us to connect to it, but whenever we are attacking others, or even when we are attacking ourselves, we will not be aware of its eternal presence.
Until each and every one of us experiences the true peace of a genuine spiritual awakening to the light, this world will sadly continue to be a very unpeaceful realm of existence. You cannot just tell other people to lay down their weapons and give up all their attack thoughts. It will not work. You cannot give ancient enemies a book to read on practising peace. After 30, 50 or even hundreds of years of fighting and hating each other, individuals, groups and nations have so many reasons to continue to attack ‘the enemy’.
What this weary, warring world urgently needs are tools that each and every one of us can use to experience a state of inner peace, light and pure love. This is why I now dedicate my life to teaching Infinite Tai Chi and Infinite Meditation to as many individuals as I can.
When I show individuals how to meditate effectively, or how to practise tai chi in a slow, gentle, mindful way, I notice that time after time they begin to experience more inner peace and light. Then, as their inner peace and connection to the light grows stronger and stronger, they naturally begin to lay down their weapons of attack. Of course, they still get angry when someone seems to attack them, but they recover their inner peace and equilibrium so much quicker than in the past.
Eventually, as their inner peace and radiance grows ever stronger and more consistent, my students inevitably yearn to go out into the world and to share their inner peace, love and joy with others. They create their own ‘circles of light’ dedicated to giving others the tools to find their own unshakeable inner peace. In this way, we aim to spread true light and love further and further across the globe until one day – maybe, I have to admit, a long, long time from now- everyone on the planet will know how to find and keep real peace within their own hearts and souls.
Jason Chan is a Tai Chi master and spiritual teacher based in the UK and Ireland. He is the author of The Radiant Warrior (Hay House 2009) He is co-founder of the Light Foundation for World Peace and Harmony. For more information about Jason Chan and his work please visit his website, www.lightfoundation.com
Comments (0)
The may me a short delay before your comment appers on the site; please don't re-post.