Reposted from Peaceful Earth.

Wanting Peace

Lisa Hepner

I was at the public Library the other day to look up some media contacts for a publicity campaign and also to check out a biography of Woodrow Wilson.

When I left the library, I found myself walking directly behind a man who had a dark complexion and was wearing a turban. Two young kids on bikes (ages 16 or so) sped by him giving him the finger and yelling profanities, along with other things like, “how’d you get out of Iraq, go back to where you came from.”

The man held his head high and walked to his car and got in. I so wanted to apologize to him for the behavior of the kids, and say that we all didn’t feel that way, but I didn’t.
I now can only send my prayers to this man whom I will most likely never see again. I hope that he knows that most of us don’t feel that way toward other human beings. I want him to know that most of us don’t see differences.

Eckhart Tolle in the Power of Now, talks about being “transparent.” Although he uses this term to say that instead of allowing someone’s comments to hurt us, that we are to become transparent, and let them go right through us and not affect us. In a way, I guess that’s what this man wearing the turban had to do as he walked to his car.

But, what if we saw everyone as being “transparent?” Meaning that we overlooked their outer appearance and just peered directly into their soul? What if we didn’t see colors or differences? What if we looked at everyone as extensions of ourselves?

There “appears” to be a lot of differences going on in the outer world. There “appears” to be a lot of separation. There “appears” to be two sides; one for peace, and one for war. Being an observer to all of this “taking sides,” I was reminded of a quote that I had read years ago in a book about public speaking by Dale Carnegie titled, The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking by Woodrow Wilson who said, “If you come to me and say, ‘Let us sit down and take counsel together, and if we differ from one another, understand why it is that we differ from one another, just what the points at issue are,’ we will presently find that we are not so far apart after all, that the points on which we differ are few and the points on which we agree are many, and that if we only have the patience and the candor and the desire to get together, we will get together.”

At the same time that this quote was floating around in my head, I was flipping through a Philosophy text book that mentioned that even the “war-mongers” or the people who “want to go to war,” want PEACE. They want the Peace that will result after the war. They want the safety that they think will be attained after the war. Think about that now for a moment. Those who are Pro-Peace and Pro-War really both desire Peace, safety and security.

I am reminded from a Course in Miracles, that “everything is love, or a call for love.”

©2003 Lisa Hepner

More by Timothy Wilken: 1) A Synergic Future 2) Protecting Humanity 3) Beyond War

Read Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s: 1) Aggression and Violence 2) Evolution of Weaponry  3) Psychological Effects of Combat.