Glimpses of Peace Amidst Glimpses of Peace: A Meditation on Conflict Avoidance

Take a deep breath… and as you exhale… please pause.

Notice where your shoulders are.  Take your shoulders down to where they fall naturally.

Feel your breath enter and leave your body, feel your belly rise and fall.

Notice your thoughts.  Listen to the ticker-tape chatter, the Monkey Mind, the galloping Idea Horse.

Smile as you exhale.

Now, bring into your mind the person with whom you have the most conflict.

He or she may be someone you know, someone in the news.

That person may be you.

Bring a recent conflict, one that feels too familiar, too repetitive, into your mind.  Notice yourself hating it, or them, or that part of you.

Allow the hatred, the anger, the irritation to rise to its climax, breathing evenly as you notice the feelings rise.

Notice the kinder part of your mind, the grounded, Jizo-nature within you, holding the vulnerable, conflicted part, safely.

Let this sense of safety fill your lungs.

Picture this sense of safety as a color, a soothing color.  Let it flow through your head and down to your fingers.

Watch it flow down to your toes as you rest in the safety of this part of your mind.

Let the sense of safety fill your legs and allow you to feel strong.  Let the sense of safety bathe your face in light.

Now, feel the shame of someone saying “You are wrong” or “You are not good enough” or notice the shame you put upon yourself when you are harsh toward your own failings.

Notice the anger you may feel toward the failings of others.

Imagine these states of being as television stations and that your higher Self has a remote control.  Change the channel from shame to peace.  From peace to anger.  From anger to vulnerability.  From vulnerability to serenity.  Match any feeling with it’s counterpoint until the opposites heat up and coalesce into wholeness.  We are everything.

We are everything.

We are everything.  It’s all just us-ness.  Nothing to be ashamed of.  Nothing not loveable.

There.  And now change the channel again and again until you are used to the various states of your being.  And practice again, later.  Without expectation of perfect peace …only glimpses of peace among the glimpses of peace.