Killing Our Way to Peace

We must have learned that killing our way to peace does not work.

Last century, 170 million people were killed in wars alone, but now we are more frightened than ever. Governments cannot create peace; peace could come only from change in the collective consciousness since government truly is merely the product of collective consciousness. What is it that governs the collective consciousness? It turns out to be individuals.

What did you radiate into the atmosphere today? Did you contribute to the atmosphere of fear, neediness, and desperation? Did you put into the world the idea that your fulfilment is going to come from outside you, or that your fulfilment is blocked by others? Did you ‘water the weeds’ in the garden of your mind? To the extent we do that, then we contribute to a weak and needy collective social fabric, and government simply will reflect that to us. If we cannot adapt to change, if we require others to be adaptable in our stead, then we are robbing the collective of its much-needed capacity to interact with change.

Every meditator contributes greater adaptability to the collective on a daily basis by being super-creative and super-adaptable. When dealing with people who just oppose everything, who appear to favour negativity, it’s best to be indifferent. People behave exactly according to their personal state of consciousness, anyway; nothing else. Our own state of consciousness is our responsibility—not the behaviour of others—we improve their state by expanding our own potential.

In India, an elephant enters a village and all the dogs, dozens of them, come barking from everywhere. The elephant doesn’t mind—she’s just happy that some dogs are enjoying barking. She just keeps moving gracefully through the village. The elephant is in no rush. Her huge foot could even hang mid-air with a dog barking underneath it—that showing off kind of barking, to impress the other dogs—but the elephant waits patiently until the dog, having made his point, scurries away. Then she continues on her own way, comfortably treading the road to her destination.

We can afford to enjoy the elephant’s royal pace, because as meditators our awareness becomes attuned twice daily to that elephantine cosmic consciousness that bestows infinite organising power. We know how to Be one with That, so everything is O.K.—there is nothing to worry about. We can’t stop anyone from behaving according to her level of consciousness, anyway. What we can do is raise our consciousness and thereby raise the consciousness of all those around us. Have our attention on our own evolution; de-excite to create order. Don’t give too much importance to the behaviour of others—just keep moving at our royal pace—in that evolutionary direction. Nature knows best how to organise.