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Engaging the Things that Steal Your Peace
PeaceOptions Feed - Thu, 02/02/2012 - 15:32
Okay. So now you're steeped in peace. Nothing can disturb your reverie, right?
Wanna bet?
No matter how much at peace you think you are, there's always more. There's always a deeper peace waiting.
Finding your state of inner calm is important. In fact, it's going to be essential for you to begin the next step of our journey together -- actually dealing with the things that steal your peace.
Perhaps nothing in your life does. You are like a saint, living with such equilibrium that it doesn't matter to you if your world is collapsing around you.
Creating a Space for Peace
PeaceOptions Feed - Wed, 01/25/2012 - 18:50
Traveling the way of peace doesn't mean withdrawing from the world and all of the situations that steal our peace. The deepest levels of peace are attained only by engaging the reality that life serves up and doing the best we can to find and keep it.
Too often, though, we don't, instead content to "work on ourselves" and pretend the rest of the world has nothing to do with us, much less the peace we seek. Wrapped in a protective blanket of denial, isolation, and avoidance, we find an uneasy peace that is all-too-easily disturbed.
While such actions may allow us a relative calm amidst the outer storms, sooner or later the search for lasting peace will demand we deal with them.
For rarely do these things go away on their own. Instead, they keep growing in number and volume until they become like the squeaky wheel that will give us no peace until we fix it.
We all know what happens by then. The problems often escalate in scope and complexity, and demand much more of our time, effort and resources to deal with.
That's where our world is today.
Situations that have been cooking for years are bubbling up all over, now getting to a point where we're forced to do something about it. Their threats are so great that many of us are throwing open our windows and screaming, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more."
So how are we to find peace in times like these, when the world around us is falling apart and screaming for our attention to fix it before it's too late?
The Pain and the Promise
PeaceOptions Feed - Mon, 01/16/2012 - 15:50
For a long time you've experienced the pain of dealing with a world that makes life hard, that requires conflict and struggle as the tools of daily existence.
You've had to make many difficult choices just to get by and carve out a life that has worked for you, albeit not always as you would have liked.
Along the way, it's exacted a heavy toll. Perhaps on your health. Or finances. Or relationships. Or maybe just on your peace and happiness.
Yet, something within you has changed. The pain is no longer the focus on your attention, though it demands it from time to time in an ever-constant reminder that world is still there, with all the challenges it brings just to survive within it.
How Can We Find Peace In the Face of So Much Corporate Abuse?
PeaceOptions Feed - Thu, 01/12/2012 - 05:13
Happy New Year. I think. Because it promises to be a real test for those of us who are seeking to create peace in our lives and world.
We're all familiar with the Occupy Wall Street protests, and the arrogance and abuse of power that infests our financial system, its incestuous relationship with government and their disregard for the needs of the many.
Well, it appears that disregard is endemic in a whole lot of other areas as well, not the least of which is the production of two of the energy resources that supply our nation's power – coal and natural gas. Two movies I saw over the holidays drove home that point: The Last Mountain and Gasland.
Give Yourself the Gift of Peace
PeaceOptions Feed - Tue, 12/13/2011 - 16:21
This is the season for bringing light into dark places. So why not shine it into your own innermost recesses, where the seeds of conflict sprout and grow?
What are those seeds? Fear and desire are big ones, but less in their own right than for how they affect how we live our lives and trigger responses to the world around us. Misperceptions. Misunderstandings. Confusion. False images. Faulty communication. Expectations. Judgment. Unclear or conflicting intentions. The list is long and far beyond our ability to cover in a few paragraphs.
Perhaps the most insidious, however, are the set of characteristics that make up our personalities and the awareness with which we direct our attention. For together they determine what we will focus upon and how we will interact with that aspect of reality presented for our consumption in any particular moment.
Turning Toward What You Want
PeaceOptions Feed - Thu, 12/01/2011 - 23:37
Transparency is probably a good thing, since it allows light to shine into dark places to bring needed change. But it sure makes living in these times a challenge.
For that light reveals aspects of our systems, institutions, practices, beliefs, attitudes, and human interactions that don't serve us very well.
Storm Clouds Are Gathering
PeaceOptions Feed - Mon, 11/28/2011 - 16:37
Our world is rushing headlong toward a precipice.
Not only is the American economy struggling to recover from the shock of the recent banking crisis. That was simply the tip of a great iceberg that we've done little to address, where runaway debt and the pursuit of profit at all costs have revealed the cracks within a system that doesn't serve many very well.
An Open Letter to the Top 1% - We've Got Your Back
PeaceOptions Feed - Tue, 11/08/2011 - 10:33
You're taking a lot of flack these days. For some in your ranks, it's probably well-deserved. For most, though, it's a bad rap.
Sure, you've got a lot of money. But that doesn't make you a bad person, much less insensitive to the plight of those who don't.
It just means you're blessed not to have to worry where your next buck is coming from. Or whether you're going to be able to keep your house or job, put food on the table, or somehow put the kids through school without saddling them with a crushing debt that could follow them for a lifetime.
Stupid Is As Stupid Does
PeaceOptions Feed - Thu, 11/03/2011 - 10:18
Somewhere along the line I made a wrong turn. I got so caught up in the big picture that I lost sight of the little one -- that changing the world starts with changing the one.
And the one who most needs to change is me.
Lao Tsu said a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step. Well, I took that first step a long time ago. Then another, and another, and another, each leading me closer to here.
The funny thing is, where I am today isn't where I was headed when I set out.
Individuality is Under Attack
PeaceOptions Feed - Mon, 10/31/2011 - 14:46
In case you haven't noticed, individuality and the freedom to be yourself are confusing concepts these days.
On the one hand, the excess of individuality is decried as evil, with Wall Street protesters attacking corporate profiteering as greedy insensitivity to others' struggles that keeps them from diverting those profits to some nebulous greater good.
On the other, big government and big business tag team us to take ever-more of our money, privacy and freedoms while forcing us into neat little packages that better fit their needs to control our behavior and get us to go along with their vision of how we should be.
Yet despite it all, a growing movement is taking shape that encourages us to "find ourselves," to live in joy and passion even when it doesn't bring the same idea of prosperity we once knew (or tried to), and to work to build a better world even when the one around us is swirling, seemingly ready to be flushed down the drain.
What's a Self to do?
Beating Up On the Bad Guys
PeaceOptions Feed - Tue, 10/25/2011 - 13:00
Who says baseball's our favorite pastime? Sure, the World Series is in full swing, and the Fall Classic will soon serve us up a new champ to hail. But even there, something's missing without the Damn Yankees to hate.
Without them or someone similar to raise our ire, it's just not the same. It sucks all the fun out of it. After all, it's not just about rooting for your guys. It's just as much about pulling to see the ones you hate do badly.
Tell us How YOU Would Solve our Nation's Problems at PeaceOptions' Dinner Thursday at Lester's Diner
PeaceOptions Feed - Fri, 10/21/2011 - 14:24
We had an energetic discussion last month on the Occupy Wall Street protests, notably on the perception held by some that corporate greed is behind the lost jobs and other ills that are befalling so many.
Their pain is palpable, and it is fueling a growing anger and outrage that such abuses must stop, and the only way to do it is to force them to act more responsibly toward those whose lives they impact, and the world in which they operate.
Perhaps they are right. Perhaps not.
Are You Thinking of Jumping into the Battle, Too?
PeaceOptions Feed - Thu, 10/20/2011 - 15:28
In case you haven't noticed, there's a battle brewing, and the pot is beginning to boil.
People are feeling enough is enough on a whole range of issues involving government, social responsibility, and the influence of money and power over the conduct and course of our common affairs.
