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An Invitation to Peace (I Know It’s Possible)

Sunday, September 14, 2014 16:21

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(Before It's News)

By Lissa Rankin MD

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

I just returned from two weeks in Peru, where my friend Dennis and I trekked up to 16,000 feet in the Andes and stayed in a small village with the people of the Q’eros as part of my research for an upcoming book, Sacred Medicine. What I gleaned from the trip was not what I expected. I didn’t come home with a “10 Things I Learned From the Shamans of Peru” list, though perhaps that will come in time. What I gained was something far more profound and much more difficult to translate into words.

I found it almost laughably ironic that I am about to teach a free teleclass with my friend and mentor, Martha Beck, called “An Invitation To Peace”. (Register here to receive a copy of the recording.) This idea was born of a conversation between Martha and I, when we were sensing the busyness and frenetic energy of modern life, noting the social isolation, reading the collective feelings of disconnection, anxiety and depression that plague our culture, and dreaming of a mass awakening of consciousness and infusion of healing peace.

An invitation to peace (I know it's possible)

Martha and I could sense that, on some other plane, in some cosmic dimension, this collective peace had already been achieved, and we wanted to help people remember what already belongs to us - the peace we can experience when we return to the true home of our spiritual essence. This was our intention, and when Martha and I felt the meditative peace we wanted to create on this teleclass, we both dropped into a sort of trance that felt very deep and connected and effortless and yummy.

And then I went to visit Q’eros, and I recognized instantly that the sense of peace Martha and I were dreaming into being is alreadyright there in this village in the Andes. I could feel it the minute I stepped off the horse that deposited me into the center of the quiet village. What was it I was sensing? Where did this vibration of pure peace originate from? And why did it feel simultaneously so familiar and so foreign? What could we learn from them, and how could we implement it in a way that might bring this kind of peace to the people of our culture?

I just kept thinking of the movie When Harry Met Sally, when filmmaker Rob Reiner’s mother looks at Sally having a fake orgasm in the restaurant and says, “I’ll have what she’s having”. Whatever these people of the Q’eros were having, I wanted more . . .

What Robs Us of Peace?

I found myself musing about what takes us away from our natural state of peace. Surely, peace is how we’re meant to live. It’s not supposed to be something we only access during our daily twenty minutes of meditation. It’s meant to be a steady state of stillness, ease, intimacy with others, alignment with our Inner Pilot Light, and spiritual connection with Nature and the Divine. And yet, why is inner (and outer) peace so rare in our culture? What robs us of this peace?

Is it our busyness? Is it our constant quest for more and more stimulation? More realization of our many burning desires? More possessions, fame, power, money, sex, love, adventure, fun and ambition? Is it our attachment to getting what we want and avoiding what we don’t want? If so, how might we change our world-view so that our constant striving for what we desire and resistance to what we fear doesn’t rob us of our natural peace?

Maybe it’s not our striving and resistance that separates us from peace. Maybe it’s a mental health issue. When I asked the Q’eros people if anyone in their village struggled with depression or anxiety, they didn’t quite understand what I was asking. So I gave them an example.