Peace and Justice

 

 

 

“…conscious ongoing use of tools, techniques, and traditions that connect us back to our source and core essence, to our motivation, to each other, to the world, and to our deepest purpose for our work and being on the planet. Inner work practice is the “work” we do within ourselves and within our in our organizations, movements, networks, boardrooms, meeting rooms, community centers, spiritual centers, and offices to embody ways of being that align with and generate the world we long for. These practices help us ground and anchor so deeply in our core being (including purpose, commitments, values and other areas), that the deeper our practice becomes, the less likely it is possible for us to be shaken out of it, no matter the outer conditions or” – Non-profit Quarterly

Let us say, for a minute, that Peace is possible externally.  But, without Inner Peace, can there ever be any other peace?  We say we highly value Peace.  We joust ideals of Peace yet we want justice.  When we think of Peace, we weigh it against war.  Yet we forget about the gray space between white and black; calm versus violence.  We want harmony but at what cost?  We want Inner Tranquility, but, can we sustain it when we also want things to be just?  Every culture will see and define peace in different terms.  Every religion has its own concept(s) of Peace.  Peace is symbiotic to justice, to equality, to power, to class, to a fairness that we define individually and apply to every concept from our own perspective.

Before human conflicts, what was peace?  Our earliest ancestors knew much conflict of different kinds, mostly, Man versus Nature; Man versus Animals; Hunger versus Feast.  First Man, First Woman; whatever story happens to be the basis of your beliefs, had it easier, perhaps, than when another was introduced.  Now you have relationship problems, right away, as each tried to assert their dominion, their wants, their needs, their boundaries. 

Great men and woman, throughout history, have tried to become peacemakers.  They focused their lives towards being warriors for peace.  But, their could not be Inner Peace while doing so, for they suffered at the hands of those who sought to destroy the concept of social peace.  So, they worked towards, sacrificed for, a type of Peace while exposing themselves to outer chaos, sometimes violence. 

Inner Peace is something that inhabits The Within, the serenity and harmony that brings peace and contentment with Self.  It may be a moral code.  It may be a religious one.  It may be just a sense of calmness.  Experiencing it once, means that you long forever for it for always, which cannot happen as we live down here on a hard earth.  But it helps us cope, inspires us, has us seeking such for the rest of our lives.  It helps us know that we must forgive in order to feel inner peace.  It helps us be more compassionate.  It gives us a sense of justice.  It is something spiritual, not of body, nor mind, nor heart.  It is what drives us to find positivity in body, mind, and heart.  For some, who find misbegotten ways to calmness, etc., may turn to drugs and alcohol to numb the negative feelings rather than work through them, and the negativity piles up until they get lost in all the negativity and it becomes difficult to allow themselves feel the positive.

Inner peace is a sense our character and how we built it.   It is how we behave because it becomes the centerpiece of our very foundation, if we have cultivated it, if we have nourished it, if we have fed it more and more opportunities to be felt.  It is definitely spending time in reflection and introspection to discover positive ways to feel Inner Peace.  Inner Peace truly depends on how we live our life so that those opportunities to sense Inner Peace has a chance to be felt.  I truly think that Inner Peace has a whole lot to do with spiritual contentment (note:  not religious contentment) 

Inner Peace and a sense of Justice are one, I believe.  If we have a sense of the world being an unfair place, we will never feel Inner Peace.  If we can accept that we cannot control everything and that some conflicts are meant not to be solved ( an acceptance of such) and that all we can do is be fair and just ourselves, then we have a chance at feeling Inner Peace that is more sustaining. 

I seek this Inner Peace and sense of Justice, within.  I am cultivating it, nourishing it and am beginning to reap the rewards.  I wish you this.

©Carol Desjarlais 8.30.20

 

Snow White and the Mirror

 

 

 

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who is the fairest of them all?”

“You, my queen is fair it’s true. But little Snow White is fairer than you.”

We all heard the story and related to poor Snow White with the evil step-mother.  We were happy about the dwarves and thrilled by the Prince who gave her The Kiss that saved her.  Ugh!  No wonder we kept looking for some male to save us.  The fairytales all had him and we wanted him too.  Then, of course, there was the mirror who sided with the evil stepmother and told her she was fairest in the land until she wasn’t.  Then all hell broke loose.  Is that when we got fascinated with our mirrors and images? Why didn’t we learn that mirrors can lie and one day they tell us the truth?  And why did we, little girls, want to be prettier than any other?  Shouldn’t we have learned about how jealous others could be?  Couldn’t we have learned that being too pretty would make us targets for others, and, in the end, even some of our ‘Princes’?  How many of us, once we found our ‘Prince(s)’ worried about begin pregnant and, omg, fat?

I have a sense of growing up with a ‘mirror’.  My adoptive parents adopted me after the loss of their new baby girl.  I had to compete with an angel.  Angels are perfect.  I could not compete.  I grew up with an inferiority complex because I simply could not be good enough.  I never spoke the thoughts out loud, but I felt inferior and my mother would have been broken-hearted had she known I felt this.  I was a throw-away baby and was saved but could not appreciate the wealth in my life because I had been taken by them.  Lord knows, as an adult and when my maternal birth family found me, I learned enough to know I could not have survived if I had not been given away.  I spent the majority of my life angry, anxious, feeling worthless, fearful and frustrated and I do not expect anyone who has not been a throw-away baby to understand that this goes bone deep.   I had said it many times in my life, that I was lucky to be taken in by the awesome parents I had.  But I never felt more than a disappointment and my adoptive parents did not live long enough to see me really fly.  My mother lived long enough to say how proud she was of me.  It mattered that she said it many times.  But she could never know just how really high I could go.

We all have a Mirror.  It is our alter Ego.  We have a story we allow our mirror to tell us.  We see what we want to see.  Sometimes, and especially as we age, it begins to tell the truth.  I have always hated having my photograph taken.  I refuse to see myself aging, in a way, in that as I look in the mirror, it is not permanent.  In photos, it is.  Photos tell only the truth.   Mirrors we have a choice as to what we see.  Little by little, the truth sinks in, though, as I check each morning to see that I have even brushed my hair.  As I continue to accept my body changes, I work harder on my mind, heart and soul.  It is only that that I might have some control over.  I may, yet, cover all my mirrors with black cloth of mourning…lol… or accept what I see for real.

©Carol Desjarlais 8.29.20

 

Happiness is an Enigma

 

 

 

We say “Happiness” like it had one meaning, one connotation, but it is not.  Happiness is a loaded concept.  Behind the word is confusion, desire, expectation, desire and hope.  Happiness is a word that is comparative and judged and defined by one’s deepest longings.  I might mean ease, or well-being, or comfort, to one person.  To another, it might mean contentment, peace.  It might mean an inner sense or feeling.  It might mean an outer experience.  How do we recognize it when our meaning changes according to person, place, or thing?  Is it macro or micro?  No one else can tell us what our “Happiness” is. 

For optimists, happiness is a thing to get, to have, to look forward to in the future.  For a pessimist, ait is unreachable.  For some it has to do with body.  For some, intellectual.  For some, emotional, for some it is a spiritual thing.  For some it is fleeting.  For some, it is loaded with fear for if we find it, it might get taken away by person, place or thing.  For some, it is moments of awe.  For some it is all about receiving.  For some, it is giving.  For some, it is their main focus.  For some, it is something sustaining. 

“I am happy”, is totally a unique phrase that can only be defined by the one who says such.  It can be something we desperately search for, while missing the small joys and moments of awe because we are looking for something to give it to us, or someone, or something.  For me, it is an inner feeling that is transitory and ebbs and flows.  When I think about happiness, it usually means I am not, that I need something, someone, somewhere that fills me with comfort and succor.  For me, Happiness is momentary and ecstatic, in some way, because it does not come that often.  Usually I am just putting one foot in front of another – not uncomfortably so, simply just ‘being’.  When it strikes, it is notable. 

What does Happiness mean to you?

©Carol Desjarlais 8.28.20