where peace begins - a piece of peace
'let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.'
sy miller, jill jackson
...a noble thought - a way of being worthy of aspiration - a knowing of good-ness within oneself - an insatiable curiosity - absence of fear - the way to one of the natural longings we all have - to be in life as we choose.
within the living of life, there is availability for sharing, caring, loving, grace, being, joy, abundance and other tranquilities known to us at times through our journey here. the catalyst for all of them, the reason they exist at all, is so that we may know / be peace. it is ours, exclusively as a species, to cultivate the tranquilities in our consciousness, to do the only work we are come here to do - to become vigilant about how/what we choose -- for what we choose is who/what we become ... ergo, that we choose is vital.
i learned recently (e.tolle) that 'abundance is fundamentally a feeling of abundance. to sense within yourself the source of all abundance - to be connected within self with the source of abundance.'
this teaching opened me to a number of wonderful ideas, the most poignant of which is that the tranquilities are - all - the feeling most closely identified with satiety - with knowing ourselves in one-ness (at-one-ment) with all that is, that we all are.
in a recent conversation having to do with racism, a friend and i were speaking about where a person must be willing to go within themselves to let go of that particular way of being. i was struck with a most remarkable knowing : that as a person points a finger (sends a certain energy) at another, with venom or with hatred or accusation, they point the same energy back at themselves - at 3 times the power. should the person at the receiving end of the pointing finger reject the energy being sent their way, it is returned to the originator, who is then gifted the energy of their own hurtful negativity - 4 times over. if one sends this vile concoction enough, they will surely spread some negativity toward another or others, but they will also gift themselves solidly a way of being, born of their own intravenous injection, a deadly poison to their own soul.
the poison (negativity) manifests it's ugly effects in ways the originator could never have imagined - there comes unrest, resistance, irritability, illness, uncooperativeness, anger, resentfulness : a general sense of unhappiness within their hearts and minds; eventually within their very bodies. it is well known that all of life is energy, and that the energy that one chooses to give is (by irrevocable, universal law) returned to the giver - lawbreakers do not (can not) exist in this arena. there is no place to go, no escaping the bind of, call it karma. no evidence goes undiscovered, no malfeasance goes unanswered.
the very interesting thing is that as routine send-out of poison becomes a way of being, the originator becomes dependent on it, much like an addiction - much like a drug, and creates within themselves a way of thought that circles around getting the 'high' of mean-ness and malice. more and more thought is trained with laser precision toward irritability, dissatisfaction, suffering, victim-dom, worry, dread - and hatred. there is less and less tolerance for the 'high' of inner peace and/or peaceful thoughts, as they become passe' and unnecessary. all of life is energy, and energy literally feeds upon itself - in whatever form the giver chooses to dine upon.
within grace - within our inherent capacity at birth to manifest what we choose - lies our ability to heal.
