Some years ago in a blog post I wrote, “Recognize how your creativity is effortlessly rooted in you already.”
And then it occurred to me a few days later, “Peace is effortlessly rooted in you, too.”
Yes, it’s already there.
Within us.
It is not conditional.
It requires us to get vulnerable.
Sometimes this means being afraid, but not drowning in that fear.
Sometimes this means being anguished, but allowing the tears to flow until they
naturally ebb (like the tide).
Sometimes this means feeling angry, but doing nothing…until the small glimpse
of a compassionate action comes to us, unbidden.
Peace is not always tidy. It does not have to entail agreement with all things and beings.
Peace might ask of us acceptance of things that we’d prefer were not, though: that cold, sharp rock that lodges in our solar plexus. (And acceptance is not synonymous with agreement, satisfaction, or passivity.)
The journey of peace, toward the growing of peace, asks us to look deeply within. And to do so with a creative, open heart. It asks us to not pin a feeling of serenity on what is outside of us but, rather, to rely on what is waiting for us there already.
What does peace feel like within you… the brand of peace that naturally resides without circumstances to grow or diminish it? What texture, scent, sound, or taste does it have?
Being a creator of peace is not unlike the creative process: making something of beauty, by hand, out of the upwelling of your imagination.
(Excerpted from a post in Jan. 2017)
