Only Inner Peace

Making peace in a violent world

The world is currently at war with itself. People are killing people. The suffering that all this killing creates touches us all. We all find ourselves taking sides with the killers and the killed, and we stew in hate, anger, fear, and grief. You would think that with our big brains, meta awareness, and basic morality, we would come up with a way to stop all the killing, but we’re not there yet. Even in these violent circumstances, each of us has the ability to create inner peace. By working on our inner peace, we can help our big brains deal with those violent and painful feelings that leave them so confused.

Our complex brains operate in a state of general confusion, which makes it possible to trick them into being at peace. Just as our confusion can make us believe that everything is horrible, it can also make us believe that everything is wonderful. In our confusion, whichever feels more true becomes the truth to us. When we feel horrible, things seem horrible and when we feel okay, things seem good. When we are able to relax and feel peaceful, we can find hope in the midst of an awful situation.

Tricking ourselves into a moment of peace, does not require doing anything mystical. We do it all the time. We behave politely in public around strangers. We hug people we know. We buy ourselves things we want and eat food we like. All of those little pleasures we enjoy bring us moments of peace. In those peaceful moments, we stop focusing on what is awful about the world and enjoy some of the nicer parts. The outer world remains the same, but inner peace emerges here and there.

Our natural habit is to fool ourselves into moments of peace with material things and circumstances, but we can get there with things just as they are by breathing intentionally, compassionately. That is not a mystical thing to do either, but mystics do it. An effective way to relax, in any moment, is to take a few deep breaths. The deep breaths send a signal to our big brains that everything is manageable. It seems like a trick, because we may not actually believe that everything is manageable, but our confused brains fall for it every time. As we breathe and relax, the laser focus of our anger, fear and grief, diffuses and our awareness opens to new possibilities.

When we are in the heat of the moment, it is not easy, and sometimes impossible, to find our inner peace, but despite our outer situation, the more often we try, the better we become at peacemaking. The better we get at making peace with our own anger, fear and grief, the better we are able to deal with other people who are suffering and in need of peace. Whenever we are able to cultivate and share our inner peace, the world becomes a more peaceful place.

Life will always have challenging and truly horrible circumstances to deal with. When peace is scarce around us, inner peace is all we have. Even when things seem peaceful around us, that is because of our inner peace. Our desire and need for peace and our ability to generate it is humanity's great hope. The way things are going though, it is unlikely that humanity as a whole will figure out peace in our lifetimes, so we can’t afford to wait for outer peace. If we want to enjoy peace in our lifetime, we need to make inner peace, now, so that we can live to stop fighting another day.