From Inner to Outer Peace
Inner peace can flow into peace between people and peoples.
Peace is more than the absence of something.
It’s a constructive striving for a better world ― knowing that things can quickly deteriorate without this striving.
Therefore, to be really durable, there needs to be profound motivation. Surface-level motivation may come and go with the wind, generating tensions that add to other negative tensions. Therefore, durable peace thrives on what comes from the inside out. More than about the absence of outer tensions, it is about a flow from within.
This is a flow of inner peace.
Inner peace is also a religious direction.
Different religions incorporate this in different ways. In religious connotation, depth is naturally essential. Eventually, one is spiritual as a total being. One also knows inner peace as a total being. No wonder ‘whole,’ ‘healing,’ and ‘holy’ have the same etymological root.
This is the inner peace we can talk about and long for as transforming the world in a good sense, however remote we still are from realizing that. The world seems to turn around it, not going toward it.
The subconceptual level
Inner peace is about the mutual congruence of mental-neuronal patterns.
Contrary to this, too much tension between them can translate into inner anxiety and aggression, which can translate into bodily symptoms and/or outer aggression one way or another. The latter translation is aided by finding the same in many others one feels related to. The ‘us’ forms an outer flow ― then, a torrent against ‘them’ where a likewise torrent may go the other way.
Thus, inner peace in individuals is also crucial from a sociocultural standpoint ― including how people are healed when their inner peace gets shaky.
Inner peace is the space in which people can deeply listen to each other.
This is challenging to many — even those saying they already do (listen deeply). Unfortunately, one’s being convinced of already doing so (listening deeply) may precisely be the reason for not attaining it or even trying.
By living in this space and deeply listening to others (the potential or actual ‘enemy’), one can bring outer peace closer. Eventually, it’s the only way.
Outer peace is achieved through inner peace.
This should be valued much more in diplomacy.
Any failure in diplomacy is a failure in achieving inner peace. Deep, transformative diplomacy is oriented explicitly toward this.
In this, one can already be talking about peace versus war.
Building inner peace – day after day – is so much better.
Related Posts
Responsibility of Humanism in Modern Times
This responsibility has always been huge ― perhaps even more so in modern times with many essential changes happening, and probably even more (and more essential) to come in the near future. Humanism: the striving to put the total human being at the first place of importance, therefore not a god or religion, nor some Read the full article…
Monogamy?
You might not like this. Please bear with me until the end. I will repeat that this idea is not unconditionally applicable. About ‘mono’ in monogamy Is it merely about a one-on-one relationship at a superficial level? As in “Thy Shall not Covet Thy Neighbor’s Consort”? Or is it primarily about a deeper level, as Read the full article…
Far-Away Matters, in Time and Place
Compassion is concerned with all sentient beings ― not only those of the immediate environment but also on the other side of the world, the universe, and the future: any sentience that can be causally influenced. Effective altruism This is a philosophy, a movement, and also a concrete organization. To be optimally effective, altruism should Read the full article…