What if Peace Prevailed in the US Senate for example?
I am reminded of when I first cultivated a place for peace in my belly. Ridiculously enough it was when I danced with a vacuum cleaner in a house cleaning practice that grew as a front for spreading light and peace while removing chaos, disorganization and dirt.
I would ask myself:
“What is peace?” while doing aikido moves with a vacuum cleaner.
I won’t bore you with all the logical common-sense notions of peace that my recycled thoughts regurgitated into my overly crowded brain. Instead I will try to describe the feelings of peace that arose after my mind made-up the mundane answers for it. After all I was cultivating a place for peace in my belly, but what does this really mean?
I guess you could say that I was looking to find a personal meaning for peace without using words to describe it. And I was dancing with my vacuum cleaner which could be an obscure hint that my belly was merely a metaphorical place for the cultivation of peace. Before I completely lose you and go woo-woo, I was cultivating peace in my chi or 2nd chakra — the brain or center of the physical body or moving center.
Peace that doesn’t move stagnates and dies. I can’t tell you what feelings arose in me about peace in my belly / chi / brain of my physical body/ moving center because there were never any words to for these personal emotive sensations.
Years later a boss of mine said that peace is the positive flip-side of boredom. Imagine it. Imagine thousands of bored people, maybe slightly depressed who are nanoseconds away from the elation of peace. Like flipping a switch.
So, then, what is peace? But if one more person tells me that peace is the absence of war, well then, I might have to revert to sarcasm. Of course, it’s easier to describe war and conflict than it is to describe peace. War is a violent conflict where people use weapons to kill each other. Conflict is a disagreement. Peace arises from a kind of creative inactivity that is not observable from outward obvious phenomena.
Outward conflict may arise between two or more people that voice disagreement based on different perceptual stances. Conflict intensifies when the battle between “yes” and “no” is personalized, anger and rage become evident, rules may be broken, twisted, bent or narrowed to insist on an outcome favorable for an oppressor who currently holds more sway. In an intractable conflict between “yes” and “no” there is no middle ground — no peace.
This morning during a meditation while making a space within and feeling peace enter I thought of all those poor United States Senators in that impeachment trial in Washington DC. What if they had an opportunity to feel peaceful in that space of contentiousness? I decided to project myself to sit by one GOP Senator and emanate the peace that had been cultivated within me. I made an offering of peace to eight GOP Senators in total. Then I made an offer of the feelings of peace engendered in me to the entire body of Senators and others in the Senate chamber.
Could the spaciousness of peace provide relief in the midst of all that bipartisan contentiousness? When peace is allowed to enter into one’s consciousness, not by force but by choice, then options for resolution of conflict could more easily present themselves.
If you find it in your heart and feel peaceful please send your over-flowing peace consciousness as a gift to share with others in conflict. Will they accept the gift of peace and dwell in that peace a while? It’s a choice that I might make surrounded by Senators in conflict.
Unconditional peace — it feels like...
