There has never been a greater need for peace in the world than right NOW. Mother Teresa was right on. Watch the news or observe conversations and human interactions around you, and you’ll experience the frustration, judgments, and conflicts that permeate our lives. We have a curable dis-ease; we focus on our perceived lack and individual differences rather than our abundance and our similarities. Our small ego self rears its combative head and sees competition, challenge, and threats everywhere. We then choose to isolate from those who may seem different and then fear grows.
Our emotional heart, on the other hand, wants to unite us. The heart desires peace and love. Imagine a world where we looked at all the peoples of the world as brothers and sisters. What if we were in touch with our abundance and similarities? After all, isn’t the world a collection of human beings with families, hopes, fears, loves, and sorrows just like ours. Imagine a world where the family circle that Mother Teresa refers to is expanded. A world where everyone is loved as family.
It is not only possible to have this enlightened vision of life, it comes naturally if we allow it. We need only to surrender to our heart’s nature – choose peace. You may ask, how do we do that?
Choosing Peace
I feel blessed to have discovered meditation 40+ years ago. At the time, I was not looking it. I didn’t do a Google search, there was no Google; there were no personal computers. One evening, a good friend invited me to a meditation introduction class. Having nothing else to do, I went.
The teacher conducting the class surprised me with a comment that still resonates in my mind; he said “there’s something missing in most people’s lives. The missing element is inside, not out there in the world.” By nurturing our inner life with meditation, he said, every aspect of our life would improve beyond what we thought was possible. Much to my delight, he was correct.
During Effortless Meditation™ my mind quiets down EFFORTLESSLY. And let me assure you, if I can do it you can too. The mind at its quietest is completely still – there are no thoughts. At those moments, our body rests more deeply than in sleep while simultaneously our mind is awake. This is deep restful awareness. In this experience, our ego drops away and our heart expands. These are moments when we are truly at peace. This stillness is our Higher Self from which joy, inspiration, love and positive energy come.
The glory of our meditation practice is that the peace of our higher self comes with us after meditation ends. In the same way that we always leave a swimming pool wet. There’s always water sticking to our body. Choosing peace becomes easy and natural once we begin to meditate every day.
A Mother Learns
I’m reminded of a young mother who said to me that she was amazed by a comment from her 10-year old son just three days after she learned and began the practice of Effortless Meditation. He said, “Mommy this meditation must really work.” When she asked him to explain what he meant, he said, “You didn’t yell at me tonight when I made mistakes playing my violin.”
This mother loved her son dearly, and he made mistakes as all of us do. She expressed sadness that she was often critical of his violin playing, and said she realized she wanted him to be perfect. However after meditating, when her nervous system was saturated with deep rest and peace, her stressed ego stepped aside. She now saw things more clearly, and compassion and love dominated her awareness. Her son was trying his best just as she was. They were very much alike. It was now effortless for her to be patient, kind, and tender in her thoughts and behavior.
There’s an old saying, the world is as we are. Regular meditation practice makes choosing peace and harmony easy. We become peaceful. True lasting peace comes from a foundation of peace inside. Would you agree that this is an important and urgent prescription for what ails our world?
Greg Schweitzer
Stress Reduction Resources, director
