The spiritual practice of peace as connection is a great example that spiritual practice can be more than meditation.
For me peace does not mean the end of conflict. For me peace is the ability to connect. I do not want a world where we all single-mindedly agree on each topic. How boring!
For me peace comes in knowing that when conflict arises, we can talk with the person we are in conflict with and work toward understanding the other’s point of view.
This means that peace is not agreement as much as it is a willingness to seek understanding and look at all with openness and compassion.
Judgment and fear make it easy to create the artificial environment of “Us vs. Them.”
Us is always right and Them is always wrong.
Setting up your world in this manner creates separation and maintains disconnection.
Power dominates over all, as Us and Them operate from the false assumption that each side is right and therefore superior to the other – and that is just the way the world is and will be forever more with out any hope of change or reconciliation.
In making your personal choice to approach the world through connection, you create peace on earth.
Choosing connection, feeling connection, defining your life through the power of connection makes it impossible for Us and Them to exist in your life.
When you make the practice of connection part of your daily life, you transform yourself within the power of WE.
We are all here together, learning to live our lives.
When we disagree, we seek understanding because it is always possible to ask and explore through the connections we acknowledge and lovingly maintain as WE.
In this world where so much that we hear is about divisiveness, give peace a chance by feeling your connection with each and every being on the planet.
When you claim your connection, you choose peace.
Imagine your friends and your family and feel your connection with them.
Imagine the writer of the book you are reading, the people who grew tonight’s dinner, your postal carrier, and your child’s teacher. You are connected to each and every one.
And most importantly, and probably most challenging of all, imagine the person who cuts you off in traffic, the person who stole your belongings, the detestable politician, and all the people you claim you hate and who hate you.
Gently direct your heart toward your connection with each of them.
They are all part of your WE.
There is no distinction, only the remainders of your judgment and your fear attempting to maintain a divisive illusion.
Give peace a chance: find peace on Earth by choosing connection with all beings.
The Practice of Connection
- Take a deep breath and release any expectations you may have about the outcome either for yourself or for others.
- Think of a person, known or unknown, with whom you want to choose connection and hold an image of this person in your mind’s eye.
- In your heart feel joy, love and the exuberance of life well up within, warming your heart and every part of your body.
- Now feel this warmth, this love expand beyond you like a cloud of love, a web of joy, or a channel through which all love and life pours. Send your channel, your web, your cloud towards this person, feeling them receive in their hearts this wave of love and life.
- Feel the channel open to include you both in the ebb and flow of the universe, giving and receiving each other, connected to all, to every expression of infinite potential, to all that was, is and will be. So be it.
- Repeat often! Remember that the point of this practice is not about controlling the other person’s response to you. This is a practice about opening your heart and feeling the infinite ebb and flow which exists between you and all beings.
