Become a Conduit for Peace

The following text is channeled material. The author, my guide, has the name Ophir. This text was channeled on August 22, 2014 onboard the California Zephyr in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This was Ophir's advice to me about how to help create peace in the world.

Most people who have loving and good intentions wish for peace. When you see instances of war and fighting, instances of violence—anywhere in the world, whether in a foreign country or closer to home, you may be filled with an urge to do something to heal the conflict, to stop the violence, to bring peace. 

You might feel that there’s nothing you can do. But there are powerful acts you can perform that will have an impact, that will heal conflict, stop violence, and bring peace. 

Kindness is an antidote to violent aggression. Just as hate, anger and fear can lead to brutality; the opposite emotions lead to healing and calm. In the same way that people can unite through fear or anger to create war, so too can people unite in love, forgiveness and gentleness to create peace.  

You can help make this happen in the world by learning how to transform anger, fear and aggression in your own life. Every time you are able to replace fear with love, or replace anger with forgiveness, or replace aggression with gentleness, you will be able to produce an impact on the entire human experience. Earth life is a school where lessons are learned and passed like a spark from person to person. 

Each time you perform an act of love, or practice forgiveness, or act with kindness, you have modeled that behavior and broadcast it to the rest of the world. Each time you respond to roughness with gentleness, you have taught that ability by example. Whenever you are yielding, you have demonstrated to others how to be giving. Whenever you respond to the unlikeable qualities in others with acceptance, you have shown them how to accept and love themselves. By doing any of these things, you pass your mastery of these powerful acts to the rest of humanity, not only to those who are the direct recipients, but also to everyone who is seeking growth. 

In order to bring peace to the world, practice peace in your own life. Peacefulness is something you can master. But like all skills it requires practice. The skills of peace may not come easily in every moment. Peace will come more easily when you desire it intensely. If you make the practice of peacefulness one of the main goals of your life, you will receive wonderful rewards. There are few things in earth life that provide as much joy and happiness as acts of kindness.

You can begin this practice on any ordinary day. Whenever you encounter a situation in which you feel the stirring of anger, or impatience, or aggression, or irritability, you can transform the situation by choosing to respond with patience, with forgiveness, with love, and with kindness. Each time you overcome your own anger or impatience; each time you conquer your own irritability, you accomplish a transformation so powerful that it sends out a wave of peace. That wave causes peace to flow into the world. You become a conduit for peace. 

You can begin by changing how you respond to ordinary impersonal irritations. For example, if a driver cuts you off on the road, or if a stranger is rude to you in any way, you can choose to send that person love, how ever abnormal it might feel to do so. 

Whenever you feel irritation or annoyance or anger, you are feeling impersonal energy. It is impersonal because whoever has been rude is immersed in his or her private experience. But most of the time that person’s private experience does not have anything to do with you. It might feel personal, but it is not. Instead it reflects the other person’s emotions and desires. Unkind acts often originate from people who are seeking love, but don’t know how to obtain it.

You may worry that to yield to rudeness in others only encourages them. You may worry that if you were to respond to rude behavior with kindness you would deprive others of the moral consequences of their actions. But the opposite is true. Even if the other person does not seem to notice your kindness, everyone eventually learns the lesson of kindness. The most likely way for anyone to learn kindness is by experiencing it. In time, the cumulative experience of the kindness of others will awaken kindness in every human.

As you learn to respond with kindness to impersonal irritations, you can also practice responding with kindness to anger expressed by friends and family. Your kind reactions will be soothing to all. Many wars are fought between countries that share a common background. Small differences can lead to fierce conflicts, which is why your mastery of kindness within groups of family and friends who share the same culture and experience is so important as a force of peace.

Love and kindness expressed in your personal life will do more to cultivate peace in the world than any other act.

--Ophir

Erik Reckard with woodblock print Fine Wind, Clear Morning by Hokusai Katsushika - 1830-1832
Black and white photograph by David Greene - 1975