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Peace Recipe Exclusive to STR March 12, 2007 On
September 12 of 2001, my college instructor said she needed to take a
moment to say how bad she felt about the previous day’s terrorist
attack. She asked if anyone
else in the class had anything they needed to say about the I
was afraid of the response I might get, but I knew I wouldn’t be happy
with myself if I let the opportunity pass without making some attempt to
speak the truth as I saw it. I
put my hand up into the air. (You
may as well put it up high--in for a penny, in for a pound!)
I felt compelled to say that I believed we were not attacked
because of our freedoms, godlessness, wealth or for any reason other
than our interventionist foreign policy.
Many of those other, previously silent people behind me suddenly
came alive with "Yeah!" and "That's right!!"
I could hardly believe what I was hearing.
The
instructor said she didn't want it to denigrate into a political
argument, but no one was arguing. She
had made a political statement and if I had remained silent, it would
have been interpreted as acquiescence.
What she had said was also opinion rather than a given fact.
I think she was afraid too, but she had courageously opened the
topic anyway. I know I had
been afraid of getting beaten up after class that day.
(After all, this was in metro No
one else had raised a hand that day.
Eventually that courageous, openhearted teacher became my friend
and started to open her eyes to the truth, certainly not enough to
declare herself an anarchist, but enough to indicate that she had begun
to question the status quo, and nothing changes without an opening of
the mind and heart. People
want someone to blame. They
don't generally want to accept that their own actions contribute to a
problem in any way. It’s
our victim culture. It’s
why politicians survive as a species; they agree that we’re all
victims of one kind or another and they are here to save us from every
ill, including the ones we bring on ourselves.
(Most Americans are indeed victimized by the most destructive
criminal class of them all – government.) Begin
With One Open Heart Being
vigilant about liberty to me means living consciously, including staying
sober, so that I can use serendipitous opportunities for building
bridges, for opening other people's eyes, not with force but with the
simple truth. I cannot open
someone else’s mind when my own is closed.
But when I approach others with a peaceful, open heart, it is
irresistible. When I begin
from a place of peace, it’s as if everyone recognizes, on some level,
this thing for which they have been searching but couldn’t even name.
Like responding in class that day, we’re all just too afraid to be the
first to offer it. Others
must be given room to change, and a peaceful heart gives others the
space to change their stance. As
anarchists, we believe in the non-initiation of force principle.
I find that I need to take it one step further and not only avoid
the temptation to initiate force, psychological or otherwise, but also
refuse to push back when someone else is attempting to use psychological
force against me. It’s a
choice that reaps amazing results when done skillfully and
intentionally. As
a demonstration, you’ll need another warm body.
Got one? Good.
Now try standing face to face with this person.
Each of you make a fist with an opposing hand, one with his
right, the other with the left. Now
touch your fist together with the other person’s.
If you push your fist into theirs, automatically the other person
will push back to the exact same degree of force that you are using
against them to maintain their position. Now,
in the same position, again with fists touching, try not pushing, just
hold your fist there, against theirs.
If you ask the other person why they aren’t pushing, invariably
they’ll tell you it’s because you’re not pushing them.
Now ask them to push your fist.
If you just let them push without offering any resistance, they
spontaneously stop pushing. They
just drop it. I’ve never
seen it fail. This is a
genuine demonstration of the skillful and intentional use of peace.
Don’t be deceived by its simplicity. You
can use this same principle psychologically.
I've emotionally disarmed lots of people by not meeting their
force but allowing it to spend itself without a result or reaction from
me, as if it is falling into a black hole.
The key is not to take other people personally.
It is so rare to encounter someone who refuses to push back that
it gets people's attention. I’ve
used it to create peace in my own home and many situations.
It is very powerful medicine for this sick world in which we
live. A
friend told me a story once, about how a black neighborhood takes
everything in to itself. It
just absorbs everyone and everything.
I try to be like a black neighborhood; take everything in and
check it out. The more I do
so, the more I realize that my potential for bearing life as it is is
unlimited. All that’s
required is some patience, courage and trust in the process of peace. Recently,
in an airport, I approached a checkpoint with my driver’s license, my
open heart and a warm smile, the kind of smile that comes from one’s
eyes. I’ve had my share of
unpleasant interactions with bureaucrats, and I’d heard plenty of
horror stories, so I couldn’t have been more surprised to be greeted
with the same degree of warmth. By
no means am I endorsing the Department of Homeland Security.
It is the latest installment of the Washington Waste Machine.
They’re the Keystone Cops, except their guns shoot real
bullets, and there’s nothing funny about it.
What I am saying is that with enough skill, you can extricate the
seed of human decency from beneath any wrapper because it is within us
all. It’s what makes us
alive, so it has to be under there somewhere.
We
could try more invasions, bombing and torture; we probably will.
We can call soldiers “Peacekeepers,” shoot rubber bullets and
“support the troops” all we want, but it won’t change the nature
of our actions. Liberals
think things would improve if we but used the ill-gotten gains of
government to finance free food, rent and health care instead of war.
This can never work because it is based on the initiation of
force. My Dad used to say
that you can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear no matter what you
say or how hard you try. What
we’ve been doing hasn’t worked yet.
Will more of the same do the job?
We need to try something new.
Anything would be better than what we’ve been doing.
I happen to know that love works.
If a stubborn soul like me can learn to love an abusive parent or
a ridiculous bureaucrat, anyone can do it. We’re
all just people, no matter how hard we may pretend otherwise.
I wasn’t even asked to remove my shoes that day in the airport.
Sometimes I am able to present myself as an ego-less being.
I had no pretense to try to protect, presented nothing to push
against, provided nowhere to “hang a hat,” so to speak.
If they had wanted to, they could have thrown me down and hauled
me away. They could have
planted drugs in my bag and no one would have been able to rescue me.
They were certainly empowered to have given me a free ride
through the bizarro “justice” system our nation teeters upon. Love
is the Yeast We’re
all human and all want the same things: peace, security, freedom, love
and happiness. Sometimes it
is difficult to recognize that same desire in other people because their
inner light has become so obscured for one reason or another – abuse,
greed, fear, what have you. They’ve
strayed so far from love that they can’t find their way back.
Most people spend their whole life searching for love, forgetting
that it lies within and is always available.
You can sense it now, can’t you? Violence
is not a useful guide, succor is. I
remember a story that demonstrates it beautifully.
It is a true story and I regret that I have no idea who first
recorded it. There was a
tribal woman out foraging while her toddler was busy investigating the
world at her feet. Because
she was concentrating on her work, she didn’t realize that he had
quietly wandered quite a distance, as children are wont to do when
curious. She saw too late
that her baby had reached the edge of a precipice.
Everyone knows that if you tell a two-year-old to stop, they will
not only keep going, they will run.
The woman wisely said nothing other than the child’s name and
deftly exposed a breast. The
child turned and immediately came back to its mother and her invitation
of nurture. Everyone
gets upset sometimes. If I
can just allow others to be upset, even if they want to blame me, the
emotions eventually become spent. When
I recognize this, I can resist the temptation to take their feelings
personally. If I don’t
react or move from my centeredness of peace, it’s like not pushing
back, and the other person eventually drops their force.
It’s what Jesus meant when he said, “resist no evil.”
Peace and receptivity is the means by which we can have an
intelligent dialogue and find solutions. One
time my home-schooled daughter wanted to “opt in” to art and gym
class at the local school. I
won’t even begin to delineate the bureaucracy we endured to simply get
her inside the building that first day and in and out each subsequent
day. I just want to give you
an example of telling the truth and making peace.
I will admit that at times it takes a lot of patience, but if we
are not good guides, these lost souls may never find their way. On
her first day, the gym teacher was giving a written test on the rules of
tennis. Sis had never
touched a tennis racket. She
wrote her name on the paper and then wrote across the page “I will not
take this test.” It was
obvious her experiment of “opting in” would be brief.
I knew we needed to expand our home school studies to include
diplomacy, but I was proud of her. Even
though she couldn’t articulate any further than “no,” she
recognized ridiculousness when she saw it and had no trouble saying so. When
I picked her up, she informed me that the gym teacher wanted to talk.
He emerged shortly to inform me that he had reported the
“incident” to the principal. I
gently explained to him that tests only create stress for children; that
they only show how good you are at test taking, rather than how good you
are at tennis. If he
couldn’t tell by watching her play if she understood the rules of the
game, he could just talk to her for a few minutes and she could tell
him; maybe ask any questions she had about it.
(I had not anticipated that her first lesson in diplomacy would
begin so soon.) At
this point, the poor stressed out fellow exploded.
“I have 600 students! I
can’t take ten minutes with each to find out what they know!
This is the I
knew that I couldn’t take his insult to home schooling personally, and
I let it go. I told him, “Tere
is only one world and we’re all in it.”
I gave him my best, warm, mother smile.
Basically I was showing him the breast, reminding him of love and
succor, with which he immediately identified.
I told him, “I know you’re very busy, but I think my
daughter is the only one requesting a few minutes of your time?” His
shoulders drooped. “Yes,”
he quietly admitted. “Sis
is a natural athlete, so I think you’ll like having her in gym.
She wants to be here.” I
could see his emotions were spent. He
seemed relieved not to have a war on his hands.
This probably wasn’t his dream job, a concept to which anyone
can relate. He looked
down and surprisingly admitted, “I guess I shouldn’t have given her
a test on her first day.” I
had made it easy for him to tell the truth. “Ok, so there’s no
problem. Just call me
anytime you want to discuss something.”
When he encountered peace and love, he recognized it immediately.
He had earned himself one more warm, mother smile from me. Truly,
no one knows better the utter deception behind the illusion of
government as harbinger of order, justice or security than a bureaucrat.
If you play along with their delusion of being a representative
of the state rather than a living, breathing human being, you’ve
already lost. The apparatus
of the state is a machine designed to place an artificial barrier
between human beings, thereby enhancing the need for more government.
When we refuse to participate in the pretense, the machine
stalls. It has no fuel to
run on if humans refuse to be grist for its mill.
It’s like Toto pulling back the Wizard’s curtain to reveal
the frail, ignorant, old guy who doesn’t know how to get home, either. If,
however, you remain centered in your humanity, you have stopped agreeing
with the illusion and the justification of the use of force.
You expose the fraud of the system that bureaucrats pretend to
honor. By standing true, you
expose their individual nakedness. Mahatma
Gandhi understood this profound truth and used it to extricate his
country from the grip of colonial I
read an amazing story about individual heart cells.
When they are removed, separated and treated properly, they each
continue to beat with a pulse. Sometimes
those beats can get out of sync while they are separated, but if the
individual cells are reunited, they immediately return to beating in
sync again. This
is a microcosm of humanity. All
people everywhere are actually 99.9% exactly the same.
We’re all made up of a few simple elements, which, Deepak
Chopra tells us, could be had at a hardware store. We all came from a
mother, from the same earth and elements, breathing the same air.
Some particles of our world become the cells of some of us, and
some become the cells of others, it’s that simple.
When we start to think that we are truly different, we are
deceived. We look for ways
to divide life and naturally, we must be not only different, but better
than some “other.” Must
we wait until we die and return to the cosmic soup to re-recognize our
one-ness? Jesus
knew the truth. He knew that
we are all brothers, and that love is the whole point.
He didn’t take anyone’s deceptions personally, not even when
they were foisted upon him. He
resisted no evil. He
practiced what he preached. In
order to successfully provide our own peaceful response, we must come
from a deep knowing of the truth about peace, love, who we really are
and what it is that we’re about. It’s
a powerful place, but not forceful.
This is where peace begins, not in the halls of Congress or
“over there” somewhere where the Decider declares hollow victory. Take
Stock “Take
a look at yourself and you can look at others differently*,” as the
song goes. So the way to
begin this vital work is through self-examination.
Get the log out of your own eye before attempting to help your
brother with the speck in his, says Jesus.
Here’s a fast, fun and easy way to do this.
Ready for another exercise? Write
at the top of a piece of paper the name of an irritating person in your
life. Then list all the
things you dislike most about him or her.
This part doesn’t take long.
Didn’t I tell you it was fast, fun and easy?!
It’s also terribly useful.
Don’t read ahead. Finished?
Now cross off the name at the top of the page and write your own
name in its place, because this is a list of things you must work on in
yourself. I know what
you’re thinking--how handy to have them listed right there at your
fingertips! You can paste
the list on the refrigerator; your family will be happy to help you
address your defects of character, trust me! What
this exercise teaches us is that underneath we are all the same.
You’ll know when you’ve made progress correcting your own
flaws when the things you listed about the other person no longer
irritate you. They only
irritated you to begin with because they are your own “buttons.”
It’s not easy to recognize them in yourself unless it is your
intention. Once you do,
however, you are then free to meet the world in all its horrors because
you have met the horror within yourself and no longer have need to react
to it. Only then are we
truly of any use to others. When
I am able to meet the deception of bureaucracy and the dependent mindset
that is prevalent today without any hostility or force, others often
just drop their push like magic. It’s
hard to believe how well this works until you try it yourself.
When you can meet people where they are rather than where you’d
like them to be or where you think they should be, well, then you have a
place to begin a real dialogue. I
believe an open hearted dialogue is the only way we can hope to stop the
killing in this world. If
you can learn to drop resistance and force on every level, you’ll be
modeling peacemaking, and modeled behavior is the primary way we humans
learn. Our
capacity is only limited by our own thinking.
“I can’t handle this,” is an example of deceptive thinking.
When someone says this, they’re already handling it, because
whatever “it” is is already here!
You only think you can’t handle it.
You may not want to handle it, it may not feel good to be
handling it, you may not want to handle it again at some point in the
future, but the fact is that you’re already handling it right now.
In actuality, our capacity for meeting life as it is is
unlimited. The
truth is, the worst things that happen in life, the things we think that
we can’t handle, create in us the most profound changes in the way we
live and in the way we see things if we but allow it.
Surely, no one signs on for painful experiences, but people who
survive them appreciate life more and love easier and more thoughtfully
than people who bumble along in mediocrity. Try
making some peace today. Don’t
talk about how badly the warmongers are behaving in *
“Put Your Hand in the Hand” Anne Murray Retta Fontana is an atheist, anarchist, baker, potter, parenting teacher and a student of forex.
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