peace (as posted below):

by panta rhei

Posted to Poetry and Politics on 2003-12-19 02:28:00

Parent message is 565284
peace, to my understanding, must mean the total absence of fear, because there’d be nothing left to fear, for loss wasn’t possible anymore…. all was one, nothing could get lost (and this may sound quite ‘esoteric’ in this condensed form, but if i’d go into detail, i’d rant on and on, and i really need to get in gear right now and get (real life) things DONE!!).

and, yes, i think you are right in saying that peace, like love, like spirit, cannot be defined universally, for it is an ideal state and therefore beyond our ability to be expressed with words.

we can understand peace in so many different ways – as a political goal, as an inner state of being, as a social achievement, as a personal emotion (even though i think that peace is more than an emotion).

to me, it must be the absence of fear… take all negative feelings, like anger, hate, greed, betrayal, and so on, and try to root them down… in the end, you’ll always find fear, fear of loss.
the loss of food, of shelter, of life, of love, of freedom, of self-respect, of individuality, personality, of goods and friends,health and respect, power and wealth. these are the things we fight for. these are the things we try to protect by creating nations, religions, political systems, belief systems. morals, ethics and so on, and those creations then become substitutes for what we wanted to protect in the first place.
but it all roots in the fear of loss.

yet, we can only lose when we feel separated – for if we’d be whole and one with the world and ourselves, how could we lose anything? and what would be left to fear if loss wasn’t possible anymore?

this is our challenge, our hope, our spiritual evolution…. our shared re-(e)volution.