In the aftermath of last week’s peace initiative, I’m certainly feeling more peaceful myself and I know others around me are as well.
And so peace becomes the next thing to subject to the scrutiny of awareness and experiment with.
One of the most dramatic things I noticed about peace today, as I went about my errands, was to see how it isn’t what I say that raises other people’s hackles but how I say it.
Gosh, these things sound so trite, but they’re so important.
I said the same words to a grocery clerk that I always say and which have me be regarded as at least abrupt, (1) but there wasn’t the slightest spin or hook in what I was saying. And the grocery clerk didn’t bat an eye.
As inconsequential as it sounds, that was a great revelation to me. The first revelation of the day.
Sanat on the pre-record of AHWAA Tuesday said that we can have a huge impact on things simply by the way we’re being.
I was conscious, as I walked down the aisles of the grocery store, that the way I was walking, the way I was being was different … and that it showed. It was at least peaceful, but it was almost regal.
Immediately noticing that, I toned it down. But I was walking … well, as a man at peace would because I was at peace.
I don’t think it can be faked or, if it can, the fakery cannot be maintained for long. It’d be seen as a strategy by a constructed self, a cultivated pattern of behavior, an act.
I bought myself a few new things I’d never ordinarily buy. I forgot to get several things and it didn’t matter. Just a good excuse to get out tomorrow in this lovely sunny weather.
Now here I am at Starbucks (I couldn’t wait to get home to write this article) and again I’m radiating peace.
Continuing on, I lost my peacefulness at the drugstore checkout line. I went into agreement with the man ahead of me who was impatient instead of enrolling him in my peacefulness.
Bang! Peace gone.
Then I emptied my mind outside the store and found that peacefulness was always there, waiting for me to release into it again.
When I reached home, having finished listening to AHWAA and listening now to music on my iPhone, (2) I began dancing around the apartment (this is definitely not me). I danced and danced, almost blissfully (noticing: first peace; then bliss).
This is a day in a peaceful life. And it opened up a whole new field of noticing and experimenting.
Last thing?
I’ve looked deeply into myself in the last few days and I’m coming to see that, at a very deep level, I know that I know God (what I mean by that is that I’ve had the knowledge of God in other lifetimes). I saw that I do know peace as well.
I saw that a combination of a pre-birth agreement, the non-transmitting nature of this dense physical body and probably some counter-productive ways of being (habits) prevent that knowledge from rising to the surface. But I know I know, even if I don’t have access to it. (3)
I can’t really explain matters better than that. It was an intuitive knowing and seeing it caused certainty, confidence and courage to arise. That for me is proof of the probability of the assertion.
Two-dollars and that knowledge will buy you a cup of coffee. Any takers? No?
Well, never mind because I’m left in life’s default of peace, which is worth everything. It leads to all other rewards and, beside it, everything else pales.
Footnotes
(1) I also recognized the pattern today as one I picked up from my father, who’d often be abrupt. I had picked it up unquestioningly and now ran it unquestioningly.
(2) No, I don’t go through life hooked up to my iPhone, but it was enjoyable today.
(3) That doesn’t mean anything. It neither qualifies me to be a spiritual teacher nor motivates me to want to be one. I’m just a happy writer.