Month: December 2015

Where to find peace?

In today’s world, one is hard pressed to find a stable and peaceful place. Christians preparing for Christmas may be longing for peace and wondering, but people of all faith and origins aspire to a peaceful place they can call home, where their heart can expand and embrace others. Nature may be one of the very few places left where we can experience peace. Maybe the world is increasingly denying us places to find serenity so that we search elsewhere, looking inward rather than outward. For those of us who always seek a peaceful environment to find our balance, or those who devoted their careers to work towards peace in the world, the time has come to plant the seed of peace within ourselves.

Cultivating peace within, devoting time and attention to grow a state of mental calm and serenity will become increasingly important to face the troubled world around us, and to generate the kind of peace that will make a difference internationally. The anxiety created by environmental challenges, terrorist attacks, and human suffering all around will only be effectively addressed by individual attempts to cultivate serenity within. We rarely allow ourselves to feel the anxiety and acknowledge that we have the possibility to set aside our worries and centre ourselves to experience calm and peace inside, to cultivate within the beauty of nature and what we have sought from the world. It is time to give.

What we have to give the world lies in our positive thinking and creative powers. Thinking positively certainly has the power to change our circumstances and achieve our desires. It turns challenges into opportunities, intentions into reality, and it is contagious. It is not ignoring difficulties and obstacles but it is transformative – beyond the negative. Not only is it able to generate results, but it also creates a positive environment, a good mood, and harmonious relations. Positive thinking will project outward the calm and serenity found within. It has to become the predominant mind set for each and every one of us to change the way we look at the world collectively and ultimately transform the world itself.

This is a time to birth anew.

The world belongs to surfers

The world is in turmoil, making waves up high, crashing bottom low. Riding the waves is the name of the game: alert, standing in the present with our eyes cast on the next wave, going with the flow, offering no resistance. The flow may take us to a place in the world where we would rather not be. Fear would affect our balance and prevent us from negotiating the next move. Resistance may be tempting given the direction and size of the wave we see the world taking, but there is only one way—forward.

There is also time for stillness, being alert, centred, and awake to the next move with full intent.

The world is dynamic and fast changing, and resisting will get us bounced, pulled under by its weight. In resisting we lose control over our destiny. Staying still, in the balance, riding the low point with no fear of reaching low bottom is the only way to ride and catch the next wave with its full energy. Waste no effort in resisting the flow; we need the energy to move forward.

A new wave of terrorism is taking us to a place in the world where we would rather not be. It is very tempting to react in opposition to recent attacks, given their magnitude and the direction this is taking. However, practicing stillness rather than resisting the wave may be the best way to act—standing still to leap forward, staying above water to ultimately catch the next move, trusting life flow to take us where we need to go.

Trusting life flow is not about inaction. It is about seizing the right moment to move forward with minimal effort, carried by the energy of the wave. We have a hard time being in stillness given the history of mankind, essentially embedded in struggle, control, instead of trust and collaboration with the universe.

To be sure, struggle and control of our environment has served humanity well by protecting ourselves and allowing us to survive and grow as a civilization. There is, however, a limit always to how much we can control. To create anew we need to align with the universe and let go of the old rather than resist. This requires trust. It is not the blind trust that everything will be fine. It comes from the full awareness that it can go well, but it can also go badly. This trust stems from the understanding that we cannot take the next wave alone, needing the energy of the next wave – the guiding hand of the universe – to carry us forward. This is a creative partnership with the universe whereby we rely on its force to propel us forward, while it responds to our thoughts and intentions.