The Role of Inner Peace in Peacemaking

“To practice peace, to make peace alive in us, is to actively cultivate understanding, love, and compassion, even in the face of misperception and conflict.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh

We live in an unprecedented time with so much change and uncertainty. Almost everyone I know is feeling some level of stress and anxiety and is yearning for more inner peace and the ability to have a positive impact in the world.

Over the weekend, I co-facilitated a workshop exploring the role of inner peace in peacemaking to provide the community with more tools for cultivating inner peace and a space to dialog about their experiences and their understanding of the role of inner peace in peacemaking.

I was so inspired by the variety of people who attended this workshop on a Sunday afternoon and their openness to try new and different inner peace tools like breath work, mantra, looking at how our resistance increases our stress, affirmations, the arrival technique, gratitude practice, a group peace meditation and other self-nurturing practices. I love meditating in community as it amplifies the experience for everyone and is a wonderful way for people to begin and/or nurture their meditation practice.

I led the group through my favorite mindfulness tool, the arrival technique and then shared the importance of cultivating a self-nurturing practice to fuel our ability to respond. I often start my mindfulness workshops with the quote from Viktor Frankl, “Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

That quote has inspired my understanding of the role of inner peace in peacemaking and my deep commitment to cultivating the space needed in my life to respond instead of reacting. When we create space around us, we can become aware of when we are being triggered and choose to nurture ourselves in that moment with self-compassion and kindness instead of lashing out. Having space to choose our response empowers us to embody peace in our interactions rather than fueling the dissent and conflict in the world.

Most of the participants shared that they felt calmer, more relaxed and peaceful after the inner peace practices. There was also a consensus that inner peace has a critical role in peacemaking and yet most participants acknowledged how challenging it is to maintain inner peace during times of great stress and fear. In our dialog sessions we also explored how our resistance often shuts down our ability to listen, fueling our reactive behavior, more fear and anxiety and being stuck in negative thinking and stress.

But we also acknowledged that it does not have to be that way. The key is practicing these inner peace strategies each and every day and developing an inner peace and joy reserve. There is no more important time to commit to our self-nurturing practices than at this extraordinary time in our history when every empowered peacemaker is needed to stand up for equality, peace and justice.

I found a quote from Shane Claiborne yesterday that perfectly sums up my belief about peacemaking and its importance in this time,

“Peacemaking doesn’t mean passivity. It is the act of interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, the act of disarming evil without destroying the the evildoer, the act of finding a third way that is neither fight nor flight but careful, arduous pursuit of reconciliation and justice. It is about a revolution of love that is big enough to set both the oppressed and oppressors free.”

So will you join me in this revolution of love that will set us all free? Let’s start by actively cultivating our inner peace skills and spreading more love, compassion and kindness in the world. May we all commit to being peacemakers and nurturing peace in the world from the inside out!

Please share your thoughts below to inspire and encourage others.