Your world at peace

Peace. Do you have it or do you want it? And who are you asking for it? Because by asking someone else for it, you are already breaking it.

Perhaps the violence you see reveals the violence you carry, the violence you show when you oppose the violence you see. Perhaps you must first have peace before you have the right to ask for it. Although, if you had it, why would you ask?

To be a warrior of peace, you say. But sometimes feeling like a warrior is more appealing than actually reaching peace. The war for peace is inward. Or do you think the world would be at war if individuals were at peace? The war for peace is also constant. For you may feel peace one day, but the next, it will be gone. And, also, the war for peace is not war. It is simply being present.

This splendid eternity that is always here. What more do you need? You, in all your glory. What more are you asking for? Fish in the ocean kill each other for water. You, forgetful of yourself, remember that you are nothing, and in that water you drown.

Peace, make peace! And you, at odds with that world that won't make peace, hide behind the trenches a wound that, in the deepest depths of your shallowness, feels victimized because the world had no time to spread a blanket of affection over you when you cried for it.

So you pray to God for peace, while the very God of armies is busy restoring balance to the world without stopping for anyone. God does not see that you are begging for peace, only that you are begging. And the ferocity of the fire and the winds that dwell in this world has no mercy on pleas.

So, then, the world belongs to warriors. If they are not at peace, that's their conflict. If you don't raise your sword, that's your conflict. If, when you raise your sword, you raise it against them, it's all the more your conflict. The sword can only be drawn to reach peace. And war only brings war, have you noticed?

The only answer, then, would be to leave it all behind. Everyone in the world wants to get off the world. But you can only do that if you let go of that very wish. You, at your center, have everything. You don't need the world.

And the world answers your fullness, answers your peace. Not because the world answers, but because the world is you. And whatever tone you speak in, that same voice is the one you hear. There isn't even an echo; in all the reality you could ever conceive, there is only you.

To be peace yourself. Anything else, even if it turns toward peace, is not peace. And you don't even have to try to be peace, for if it belongs to your being, you already are. Maybe you just forgot.

Peace. Do you still want it?