“My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”
– Michel de Montaigne
How can the world reach a state of peace?
In February, the guides said to me: “You are in the illusion of war and the illusion of peace.” I instantly understood the meaning of the statement. War and peace are the duality of each other. And in fact, there is duality in every moment – in every breath. Inhale and exhale
Duality can be unbalanced – one side being stronger than the other, or duality can be at a point of balance.
I see my life’s decisions as having created peace or war within myself. The “illusion of peace” are times when I tell myself or others that I’m doing fine when inside I’m scared as shit or I’m caught in a mental spiral – my mind going 120MPH. Even though I’m giving off the “illusion of peace” for everyone else to see, I’m actually at war within myself.
The “illusion of war” are times when, for example, I agree with someone about being angry about something just to appease them. A friend may feel hatred toward someone or something and I’ll agree with them, but I myself feel no hatred. In this case, my friend receives my words of shared anger but really, my words and my true inner feelings are not congruent with one another. When we say one thing but do the opposite, then we create an illusion about ourselves.
So how can we create peace in the world? I believe it begins with oneself and how we create a congruent or aligned inner self.
Peace and Inner Self through Meditation Practice
“As above, so below… as inside myself, so outside of myself.”
In order to reach a space of oneness within myself, I begin with a grounding meditation as taught to me by the guides in late 2020.
I begin by focusing on every area within and on the outside my body. For example, I start with my left big toe: breathing into the toe, the shape and muscle. Here I am sensing, feeling, and seeing the toe in minds-eye until I feel the full connection to it; as if every breath I take, I can feel my big toe breathing in and out with me.
I repeat this for each of my toes, balls of my feet, arches, top of my feet, heels, Achilles Heel, all the way up my entire body: the shins, calves, kneecaps, knees, thighs, and hips going from left and then right. I make sure to breathe into each body part, sensing, feeling, and seeing it all in minds-eye until I feel the connection fully. After each body part, I would say “Feet,” “Legs,” “Arms,” and so forth.
Finally, I focus on my skeleton, bone marrow, red blood cells, white blood cells, DNA, skin, and hair. By then I can feel my whole body breathing with each breath of my lungs – in and out. I next breathe in my aura. Within this space I feel a calming peace and connection to my whole soul body and being. ONE.
I invite you to try this meditation to ground into yourself.
Once I am in this space of ONENESS, I start my dialogue of questions by just talking to the guides.
On the subject of peace, here is some of my dialogue with the guides:
How can the world be at peace or even get to peace? Well, it starts with looking at yourself first. Right now do I feel peace within myself? Hmmm… good question to ask myself. Well do I?
Can I take full deep breaths naturally? Hmmm, why is how I breathe important to peace?
Can I hold space for friends, family, coworkers, strangers for how each of those people are living their life in this moment? What would the space look like and feel? Does this space require a lot of energy on my part? Can I let go of the past to focus more on the present and some in the future?
In this instance I contemplated how everything is fluid, flexible and changing. Looking out my window, I saw trees. I noted how trees will sway in various winds. The tree flows with what moves it, bending as required but staying rooted. A tree is a beautiful example of this idea, “as above, so below” in that the roots of the tree mirror the shape of its branches and leaves – taking in nutrients on either side of itself. I always use nature as my guidepost on how to handle “life” and the lessons nature can teach us.
As I reflected more deeply on the questions that came up through my meditation, I thought about how to begin reaching a state of peace within myself. I think one area many people struggle with is feelings of regret about the past. This can be a powerful disruptor to reaching a state of peace. For me, I believe there are no mistakes in life, instead there are opportunities for growth and learning.
Peace and Inner Self through Reflection and Understanding
It was Winston Churchill who said, “When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”
I believe understanding this idea is deeply important for creating a state of peace for oneself. We tend to get ourselves tangled up in knots mentally and emotionally. Creating a sense of peace within oneself requires an awareness of our own minds.
In 2005, the National Science Foundation published an article summarizing research on human thoughts per day. It found that the average person has about 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day. Of those thousands of thoughts, 80% were negative, and 95% were exactly the same repetitive thoughts as the day before.
How long have you been having the same argument with someone in your head when that event happened weeks – maybe even YEARS – ago?! and you see that one of the tendencies of the mind is to focus on the negative and “play the same songs” over and over again? By realizing these patterns, we are better able to disrupt them instead of getting pulled back into the same things.
There was an interesting study that found 85% of what a person worries about never happens. Secondly with the 15% of the worries that did happen, 79% of the subjects discovered that either they could handle the difficulty better than expected, or that the difficulty taught them a lesson worth learning (Dr. Leahy, 2005). The conclusion was that 97% of our worries are baseless and result from an unfounded pessimistic perception. (See more on this in the book called, The Worry Cure.)
On top of this, there is also the phenomenon known as belief bias. This is when we believe something to be true – regardless of what the facts show – and our beliefs determine the outcome of a certain choice. In this way, we are simply creating the results we already believe in (sort of like self-fulfilling prophecy).
If you’re curious to read more on these ideas, see here:
- “Mental processing is continuous, not like a computer” Mental processing is continuous, not like a computer | Cornell Chronicle
- “Discovery of ‘thought worms’ opens window to the mind” https://www.queensu.ca/gazette/stories/discovery-thought-worms-opens-window-mind
- Belief Bias: the Reason Why Some People Don’t Take COVID-19 Seriously (businessinsider.com)
- Selective Perception: They Saw A Game by Albert H. Hastorf & Hadley Cantril (all-about-psychology.com) and Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government | Behavioral Public Policy | Cambridge Core
- This article summarizes these ideas well: How politics makes us stupid – Vox)
We must ask ourselves how our thoughts are being projected into the world. This is crucial now more than ever. Are we creating an illusion of war (conflict that is not actually there)? Or an illusion of peace (the image of peace when actually things are conflicted)?
I am getting better at catching myself in these illusions and I invite you to reflect on these ideas to better catch your own illusions, too.