Peace Skill # 1
Envision Peace
Chapter #41
from "Love Skills for Personal & Global Transformation"
by Scott & Shannon Peck
The first step of a Love Master
in conflict resolution is to
envision peace
To reach peace, we first need to envision peace. This
is the starting place for a Love Master dedicated to creating peace
where there is conflict.
Conflict creates separation. Peace creates unity.
There is so much suffering due to conflict. Some
people will do anything to avoid conflict. Others get immediately
inflamed and jump into battle.
What can you do to create peace where there is
conflict?
The giant first step is to immediately go inward –
before you act or say anything – and envision the highest possibilities
for peace. This takes courage, awareness, detachment, and a big
commitment to peace.
Conflicts so often seem impossible to solve. Many
conflicts have gone on for so long that it’s hard to imagine an end to
hurt, anger, and hate. Most of us have experienced relationships that
try (or fry) our nerves so much that all we can envision is escape or
retribution.
It is exactly at this point of "impossibility" that
you make the internal decision to create peace. As a Love Master, you
know that Love is ultimately the only force that can create true peace
so you set in motion a process to get there. This process begins within
yourself as you first let go of your own anger, frustration, judgment,
and sorrow and begin to ask, "What is the highest possibility of peace
that I can envision?"
Asking this question causes you to immediately begin
transcending the conflict and see it through higher insight.
It takes courage and strength to refrain from getting
engaged in a conflict, to take time to tune in to Love, or Higher Power,
and to envision peace from this higher consciousness. Since peace is a
higher state of living than conflict, it requires a higher way of
thinking.
For example, can you envision an end to a
long-standing personal conflict in your life? Can you then go even
higher and envision genuine peace? Peace is not just the absence of
conflict. Peace is the presence of harmony, understanding, forgiveness,
and solutions that are fair and just for all parties. Can you envision
this?
That’s how a Love Master thinks when presented with
conflicts – and it’s not pie-in-the-sky hoping. It’s a wise, calm,
dynamic commitment to a process of creating true peace – no matter how
long it takes. Envisioning is the starting place for creating peace.
After all, how can people in conflict ever get to a place of genuine
peace that cannot even be imagined? Someone needs to envision peace.
Peacemaking requires courage and strength because you
are willing to step outside and above the conflict when no one else
seems either willing or able. You are willing to envision genuine peace
even when it seems like a far-off dream.
This is your beginning stance as a Love Master determined to create
peace where there is conflict.
Copyright (c) 2006-2010 by Scott & Shannon Peck
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