Courage for Peace: Daring to Create Harmony in Ourselves and the World: Creating Harmony in Ourselves and the World - Softcover

Louise Diamond

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1573241652 ISBN 13: 9781573241656

Publisher: Conari Press,U.S., 2000

Synopsis

Diamond has traveled the world on her quest to promote peace and end the violence that tears families, towns, and nations apart. Based on her life's work and that of other peace builders, Diamond has uncovered four spiritual principles that create the essential foundation for peace. A fascinating and thoughtful expose, The Courage for Peace deals with peace on every level and takes us from the room of a little boy who sleeps with a toy rifle to the unrest in the Balkans, and finally to the devastating increase of violence in our communities and what we must do about it now. With information on scores of peacemaking organizations, this book is truly a call to save the world, one action at a time. From schoolyards to war zones, the issue of peace has never been more crucial. We are bombarded daily with headlines and televised imagery reminding us that people all over the world are suffering in many different ways, not only in Kosovo and Kashmir.

About this title

About the Author

<div> <p>Louise Diamond is an educator and consultant whose life is devoted to helping people live in peace. She is the cofounder and president of the Institute for MultiTrack Diplomacy, which works in places of ethnic conflict around the world. Diamond has published, with Ambassador John McDonald, <i>MultiTrack Diplomacy: A Systems Approach to Peace</i> (used as a textbook at twenty universities in five countries), produced a film on the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, and written numerous articles for professional and community journals. A frequent presenter at international conferences, she lives in Lincoln, Vermont.</p> </div><br><div> <p>Gerry Clow, a former arts critic for the Boston Globe, is also an active speaker.</p> </div>

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Courage for Peace

Creating Harmony in Ourselves and the World

By Louise Diamond

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2013 Louise Diamond
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-165-6

Contents

Foreword by Neale Donald Walsch
OVERTURE Releasing the Spirit of Peace
ONE Tapping the Source of Peace
TWO Awakening the Mind of Peace
THREE Opening the Heart of Peace
FOUR Unleashing the Power of Peace
FINALE Finding the Courage for Peace in the Twenty-First Century
Call to Action: Peace Resource Guide
Acknowledgments

CHAPTER 1

Come, let us go homeWhere one peace warms us allat the same fire.

Tapping the Source of Peace

It's in the Blood

SOME OF US need a strong wake-up call before we can give our attention to theSpirit of Peace. I am one of those sluggards. I needed to be vigorously shakenout of my complacency not once, but twice, with a direct confrontation withdeath, before I recognized the call.

My journey as a peace builder began with the flowing of my own blood. In 1973, atage twenty-eight, I had my first mastectomy for breast cancer. Newly divorced, asingle mother with an energetic toddler, I faced my mortality for the firsttime. Nine months later, a tumor in the other breast led to a near-deathexperience during my second mastectomy operation. My medical chances ofsurviving these two rounds of cancer were, I discovered later, in the 0 percentrange.

I remember when the hysteria set in. Shortly after I returned from the hospitalafter the second operation, I received a birth announcement in the mail. Myinstinctive reaction was, "It's not fair! How can my friends be celebrating newlife when I'm preparing for death?"

Then the memories started, and the weeping. I began to relive my near-deathexperience of the week before, when I had bled to the very point of death on theoperating table. Though I had been anesthetized for the operation, my cellularmemory was keen.

I thought I was going crazy, as the hours passed and I remained hysterical. Inow know the meaning of the expression, "bouncing off the walls." I literallythrew myself from one corner to the next, wailing and screaming. I was notdealing with conscious thoughts; I was not crying "about" anything. I was re-experiencingthe bloody passing of my life force as I howled, over and overagain, "The blood! The blood!"

After two days of this, with little food or rest, I finally exhausted myself. Myfriends, frightened that I was in fact losing my mind, loaded my limp body intoa car and drove me to a therapist. Their timing couldn't have been better. I wasdrained, I was empty; I was ready to fill again.

In a later interview, the therapist acknowledged to me his profound fear in thatmoment. He, like everyone else around me, assumed I was dying. He had no ideawhat to say to me; in fact, he was concerned that whatever he said could makethings worse. He abandoned, therefore, his need to "do the right thing" andsimply spoke the words that came through. He said later that the words surprisedhim as much as they did me.

His unexpected words provided a pivot in my life, and opened the door to theSpirit of Peace. He said, "So you're going to die. So what? Everyone is going todie. Maybe you have a better idea of how and when than most of us. Maybe not.You could outlive us all. Or you could leave this office and be hit by a car.

"If you want to feel sorry for yourself, I'm sure you have many friends who willjoin you with their pity. But there is another way to think about this. Imaginethat Death, which is present for all of us, is just over your shoulder. Don'task if you're going to die, or when; ask yourself how you want to be when Deathcomes for you. That's all. Now get out of here."

In that moment, the shape of my entire world shifted. I realized, "How I want tobe when Death comes for me is full of joy, full of love, full of peace, full oflife. Since I don't know the moment that Death will come, I will have to livethis way in every moment, no matter how many moments I have in this life. Ichoose to do this." It was that simple and that revolutionary. I left the officephysically and emotionally numb, but spiritually humming.

As that seed germinated during the next days and months, I realized that, havingset the intention for living fully in each moment, I had neither the experienceto do so, nor any role models to follow. Finding no human teachers who, in myview, had mastered the art of living this passionately, I turned to the naturalworld for lessons about the nature and mysteries of life.

During the next four years, I spent as much time as possible in nature. In theforests, fields, and mountains of Vermont, I rediscovered the original miracleof life. By the rivers, ponds, and beaches of New England, I was reborn andbaptized into true joy. In the canyons, deserts, and mesas of the southwest, Ifound stillness and deep inner peace. My elemental soul was revealed to me bythe sun and the rocks, through cloud and wind, in the soil and mud of the Earthherself. I found love among the bees and hummingbirds of the orchards, the frogsand the skimmers of the marsh, the deer and the snakes of the woodlands.

During this outer discovery, I was also looking deep within. All the patterns inmy life not aligned with my new intention came to the surface to be transformed.Thus I had the opportunity to reexamine all my relationships, starting with myrelationship with myself. How I felt about my body, my sexuality, my sense ofworth and lovableness; beliefs about my competence; questions about the purposeof my life; how I dealt with my emotions—these were the threads of the oldtapestry I was beginning to unravel.

My relationships with others—with parents, family, lovers, friends—also came upfor scrutiny. Relationships to work, to action, to community life went under themicroscope. Ultimately, the critical issue was about my relationship to God, toSpirit, to my own divine and sacred Self.

While these questions exist along the entirety of my life path, they wereparticularly intense for me during that period. I experienced this time as aspiritual Roto-Rooter, in which all the gunk built up in my heart flow and mindstream over the years was scoured out by the driving commitment I had made, andneeded to reaffirm daily, to live a better way.

Through this unfolding, I realized that I am indeed one with all that is; thatevery aspect of creation is my relative, and that my thoughts, feelings, andactions affect the entire web of life. In other words, I grew up, and tookresponsibility for what and how I am creating with every breath. Theimplications of these lessons led inexorably to one conclusion: I live inservice to the whole.

That vow began my peace ministry, and answered the question of why, at the pointof death, I was sent back from the Light by a voice that said, "It's not timeyet; you have much to do."

My own case was extreme. I had to face death, and my fear of it, before I couldclaim life fearlessly. Now, in retrospect, I can see that what I am calling theSpirit of Peace was there in the blood all the time, waiting to be liberated.For me, that meant a literal flowing and cleansing of the life force, so that amore vital stream could course through me.

Not everyone has such a dramatic turning point. But everyone does have momentsin their lives when conditions are ripe for choosing to do things differently.In those moments, the door is open to tap into the Source of our inner wisdomand to find a new level of inner peace, a new availability to love and joy.Perhaps the secret of peace is to be able to recognize, and take advantage of,those precious moments.

Spiritual Lesson 1: The One That We Are Is Simply Divine!

Western culture teaches us that we are separate from the rest of creation, thatwe stand alone in a mostly hostile, occasionally friendly world. In the UnitedStates, some of our strongest national myths are expressions of this belief: wehonor the rugged individual, the lonesome cowboy, the Lone Ranger. We speak ofthe struggle of man against nature. We celebrate our conquest of space and ofthe Wild West.

Conflict simply heightens this view. When we are in a dispute with someone, wesee that person as "other" than us. We notice and experience the differences,and polarize these as "right" and "wrong," or "better" and "worse." (We, ofcourse are right and better; the "other" is wrong and worse.) The last thing wewant, in the middle of a "good" fight, is to think about our shared essence. Yetthat shared essence, our oneness, is the unremembered truth of our being.

Our natural and physical sciences, major faith traditions, and renownedphilosophers, poets, and shamans have described this phenomenon of oneness invarious ways. We might understand that we are all part of the same Creation. Wemight believe in one God, one Source, a single spiritual force or power thatgoes by many names. Or we might describe our unity as the interdependence of alllife on this planet, or in the universe.

Some have experienced the oneness as a mystical union with the divine, as asexual union with our beloved, as a financial union of the global marketplace,or as a communications union in cyberspace. Certainly the now-famous photographof the Earth from space is a bright reminder that our political and religiousdifferences are arbitrary and unnecessary divisions on this single lovely planetthat we all inhabit together.

We experience oneness when we realize that all human beings have the sameemotions and aspirations; that no one wants to suffer; that all want to livehappily, in peace and freedom. Or we can experience that oneness when we look atone another and see a brother or sister in the single family of life, regardlessof nationality, race, lifestyle, or creed.

However we come to it, the basic spiritual truth of our existence is that we areone. There are, it seems to me, several aspects of this oneness that areimportant: We share the same essence; that essence is divine; we are part of thelarger whole of creation, naturally connected to all the other parts; and wecarry the seed or potential of that whole within us, like an acorn carries thepotential of the oak.

The Judeo-Christian heritage says that we are created in the image of God.Buddhism says all beings are inherently endowed with basic Buddha nature. NativeAmerican spirituality posits the sacredness and interconnectedness of all life.Many spiritual paths speak of the one Light, understanding light as the basicmedium of our divine nature.

From whatever tradition we choose, the message is the same: Though our outwardappearances are vastly different, we are each, at our core, a manifestation ofthe same sacred spark of life. We are unique, but our being transcends ouruniqueness. We are each an integral and necessary part of something larger,higher, than our individual selves.

Modern science teaches us that the part contains the whole. Our universe is aholographic set of nested systems. That is, whether we focus on a single cell, asocial group, or a star system, we are really looking at the whole of creation.The microcosm and macrocosm are one. From subatomic particle to huge families ofwhirling galaxies, we are dealing with the same patterns and principles ofenergy in motion, the same inherent mystery, the same holy essence.

In alchemical terms, this truth is expressed in the phrase, "As above, sobelow." If we each contain the whole of creation, then we contain all theinherent potential of its sacred completeness. All the qualities that we ascribeto the Godhead, however we understand that, are also in us. Our true nature andthe true nature of the cosmos are the same. Just because we may not be aware,through our limited senses of perception, of the more subtle and invisibleelements of this wholeness, does not mean they do not exist, or are notavailable to us through other doorways, like prayer and meditation.

New physics teaches us that all phenomena are both a particle and a wavesimultaneously; that is, we are both individual and part of a larger flow, likebeing a single drop of water and at the same time an indistinguishable part ofthe vast and endless ocean. The problem arises when we think of ourselves onlyas one or the other.

If we look to ourselves as particles, or individuals, we fail to see our unitywith the whole, and we fall prey to all the ills of separation—loneliness,grasping, aggressiveness, pride. If we look to ourselves as only the wave, orgroup, we fail to notice the uniqueness of our differences, and the specialgifts that each one brings to the whole. In this case, we fall prey to all theills of overgeneralization—arrogance, totalitarianism, extremism, intolerance.We are called to honor our individuality and diversity within the context of theOneness.

This unity runs like an underground stream beneath our feet. We may not alwaysbe aware of it, but when we are thirsty and find a fresh spring bubbling up fromthe Earth, we are grateful to drink. Just as we thirst for water, so our soulsthirst to remember the bottomless pool of our true and holy nature, the infiniteocean of our inherent wisdom.

There are countless ways to recall this connection. Music, poetry, dance,drumming, communing with nature, making love, deep relaxation, finding the"zone" in sports, prayer, and meditation are common avenues. Some of us havelearned to invoke our higher power, to call forth our inner wisdom, to listen tothe "still small voice within."

The methods are varied; the result is the same. When we connect to this place—whetherwe call it God, Allah, the Life Force, Light, Great Spirit, GreatMother, Divine Mystery, Yah, Pure Energy, Holy Spirit, or whatever—we feelempowered, safe, vital, loved, and loving. When we tap into that energy, we haveaccess to vision, intuition, creativity, synergy, and the power of miracles—resourcesof mind, body, and spirit far beyond our day-to-day awareness. When werest there, we are at home; we have found inner peace.

The Spirit of Peace arises from this place. Our work, when confronted with oursmall-minded sense of separation, our lack of harmony, our experience ofconflict, is to center home, to return to this place of peace and power, and tolet that remembrance awaken what we need to carry us to a new level of thoughtand action.

What Is Peace?

Peace is like a river, running silent and deep, or like the moon's reflection onthe water in a sparkling path of light. For some, peace is a sense that all'swell with the world. For others, it is the image of a circle of joined hands,people of all colors standing together for love and justice.

In the field of Peace Studies, the conventional wisdom is that we mustdistinguish between negative peace and positive peace. Negative peace is theabsence of war, the cessation of violent hostilities. This is not negative inthe sense of "bad," but rather as a photographic negative—the necessary firststep to the production of the final image. Positive peace presupposes thiscease-fire status, and implies a more active pursuit of a dynamic state ofsocial and economic justice, environmental integrity, human rights, andempowered processes of governance and development for the benefit of all, notmerely a privileged few.

Many people associate the word peace with weakness. Peace means surrender orbeing a wimp, a collapse into some amorphous "feel good" place. Others allowhistorical and political connotations to cloud their associations with peace.Someone once told me that peace was a dirty word for him, because, while he andhis generation had fought honorably and courageously against tyranny in WorldWar II, his sons and others in the next generation, by opposing the Vietnam War,had defiled the concept of the noble soldier who serves the cause of peace.

Everyone naturally brings their own experiences to their understanding of peace.For me, peace is literally a powerhouse of strength. I experience peace as aspecific vibration or dynamic state of being, which, like a song, radiates frommy heart and soul.

Synonyms of the word peace in my thesaurus point in three directions: one havingto do with order, harmony, and unity; one having to do with calm, tranquility,and equanimity; and one having to do with agreement, accord, and rapport. Wemight call these the "metaphysical" stream, the "serenity" stream, and the"relationship" stream of peace.

I make sense of these three streams by thinking of the metaphysical element asthe ground from which the other two arise. That is, the order, harmony, andunity of all creation is the basis for the highest order of peace, thewellspring or Source from which we can draw to know true peace. From that placearises the opportunity for both inner and outer peace, that is, serenity withinourselves and the ability to be in right relationship with others.

The Spirit of Peace reminds us that the three work together. One without theothers is incomplete. Inner peace is based on awareness of that essential,universal wholeness. Peace in our relationships is sustained by our ability totap into, and move from, that place of inner peace. Our spiritual progress ashuman beings, individually and collectively, is to bring that natural order intoconcrete form and action in our lives, "on earth as it is in heaven."

Motivation Matters

When people come to me to talk about creating peace in their lives, they want tochange. But change is not always easy. We human beings are creatures of habit.We generate patterns of thought and action, and then we reproduce those patternsuntil, like a river moving in a streambed through rock, we feel trapped in anarrow valley, rushing heedlessly along a course that seems both inevitable andunstoppable.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Courage for Peace by Louise Diamond. Copyright © 2013 Louise Diamond. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Conari Press,U.S.
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573241652
• ISBN 13: 9781573241656
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320