fighting for peace

HOW CAN PEACE SEEKERS STAND AGAINST EVIL WILL???

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Permalink Reply by Seamus Ennis on November 7, 2008 at 8:58pm

I believe that we have to clean up our own house, our own soul, our own minds before we can call on evil out there in the world.

Jesus said to take the beam out of our own eye, before we can deal with the splinter in someone else's. Muhammed (pbuh) said that there are two types of jihad, the one in the world and the one within and that the greatest jihad is within.

I know from my own personal work that I, as a human being, am capable of the full range of human emotion and human actions, from total love to abject hate, from compassion to murder, but I CHOOSE love and compassion based on my awareness that this is greater. I choose good over evil, because good lasts, because good has the energy of Source/Spirit/God behind it.

I choose good over evil because everything that I do comes back to me multiplied. If I do evil, I receive evil. If I do good, then the Law returns good to me.

I also know that evil is ignorance of that Divine Law. We humans tend to blame others for the evil that comes to us, but we have to take responsiblity for our own actions and see where we have created disharmony and inhumanity and change that within ourselves.

Evil is ignorace of our unity. I know that if I harm someone, I am doing harm to myself. If I lift someone else up, then I am uplifted.

When we do the inner work, we become the peace that we seek in the world, and that naturally and divinely multiplies with every action that we take.

This does not mean that we stand idly by when evil is committed. It means that we respond to it with Truth, with compassion and with ONLY the Highest Good in mind and never from a place of revenge or retribution. Then we work to remove the underlying cause of evil, which is poverty, prejudice and ignorance.

Salaam, Shalom, Shanti, Peace

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Permalink Reply by G Alexander McDonell on December 14, 2008 at 12:40pm

from the study of aikido (the martial art of peace) i have seen that violence and aggression (evil) is much weaker than peace and harmony (good). When a skilled practitioner of the art of peace faces aggression the violence is quickly and gently neutralised.

How is it done? By finding a harmonious response to everything that happens. It is like a dance - you move with the music and with the other people. If someone tries to fight they just find themselves dancing with you. It is not enough to have peace inside - it must be expressed in each action, in each movement. Not just my own peace, but a harmony that includes all others.

This is difficult to do - it takes study, and practice. And slowly we learn to achieve peace in one area of life, and then in another situation, and then another. Eventually we will be able to live peacefully in any situation that we are put in.

So we take one situation and we find a harmonious response to it, and then we take the next.

I am focussing on war and the military - on martial arts for peace - on demonstrating how to fight peacefully so that violence can be ended. But the same principles need to be applied to every aspect of life and society.