Back in 1986, Dar­bella and I went on the arche­typ­i­cal Euro­pean Hol­i­day. We ended up spend­ing a good deal of time in Scot­land, tour­ing about, los­ing golf balls on dif­fi­cult courses, and vis­it­ing famous sites.

One of the more inter­est­ing side trips was up to the north of Scot­land, to the Find­horn Com­mu­nity. Odd place. You drive along one road, and there is a rail­road cross­ing. The arms came down, we stopped, and we were amazed to see a Har­rier jet cross in front of us. Seems the Royal Air Force has a base up there, and the land­ing path crosses the road. Glad we stopped.

Find­horn was one of those 60s places where a bunch of hip­pies set­tled, and in their words, com­muned with the earth spir­its. Soon, their gar­dens over­flowed with huge cab­bages and other crops, this on land that was mostly sand. They’ve been teach­ing courses and hold­ing retreats ever since.

A Course in Mir­a­cles and a New Approach

None, of this really has any rel­e­vance to our topic, other than that the title of this piece is a para­phrase of one of the key points in a book, A Course in Mir­a­cles (ACIM). I found the book in the Find­horn Book­store. Thus, Find­horn really has noth­ing to do with the rest of the story, other than to pro­vide a good intro.

Any­way, I would have to say that ACIM was the book that first opened my eyes to another way of look­ing at what we call real­ity. Sup­pos­edly chan­neled to an athe­ist from Christ, the book presents a view of how the world works that became the basis for many of my later understandings.

Noth­ing in the rather large book is rad­i­cally new, and there are some points I dis­agree with. (For exam­ple, the book states that if one thinks some­thing is evil, one sim­ply mis­un­der­stands the sit­u­a­tion. The book has noth­ing to say regard­ing the Holo­caust, which, it seems to me, was not a mis­un­der­stand­ing, but rather evil incarnate.)

I’ve never been one to throw the baby out with the bath water, and I found that ¾ of the book made per­fect sense.

ACIM makes it clear that all emo­tional dis­tress is self–cre­ated, as opposed to other–cre­ated.
You might say that the mes­sage is: “if you don’t like the way some­thing is, change your view of the situation.”

Which pretty much matches our under­stand­ing of things. To go back to the Holo­caust, we see this prin­ci­ple in oper­a­tion. The sit­u­a­tion was hor­rific, and yet Vic­tor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Mean­ing in Auschwitz. He thus took a uni­ver­sally hor­ri­ble sit­u­a­tion and (for­give the pun) made it mean­ing­ful. The sit­u­a­tion does not ever dic­tate the result for the indi­vid­ual con­fronting it. Any­thing can come from anything.

The Goal of Bring­ing Peace

Sim­i­larly, our present idea (taken from ACIM) is that there is always the oppor­tu­nity to bring peace to any sit­u­a­tion. Sit­u­a­tions are as they are, at what might be described as the objec­tive, or ‘data’ level. What is hap­pen­ing is what is hap­pen­ing. The place where things go ‘south’ as at the sub­jec­tive level of inter­pre­ta­tion.

Of course, we want to believe that events have intrin­sic meanings—that these mean­ings are obvious—and that the mean­ing I ascribe to a sit­u­a­tion is also the ‘true mean­ing.’ We get right indig­nant when oth­ers dis­agree with us as to this sub­jec­tive meaning.

All of us have been caught up in the drama of try­ing to get oth­ers to change their minds and/or their mean­ings. We get so caught up in defen­sive­ness and argu­ment that we for­get that the sub­jec­tive is, by def­i­n­i­tion, also the personal.

How I view my real­ity is solely and com­pletely a result of my upbring­ing, expe­ri­ences, and his­tory. The only authen­tic ques­tion is—is the way I am inter­pret­ing my real­ity help­ing or hurt­ing me? If my inter­pre­ta­tion is hurt-filled, I can con­tinue to try to force the world to see it my way, or I can bring peace.

Bring­ing peace is not giv­ing up, sur­ren­der­ing, admit­ting fault, or wimp­ing out. Let me toss out a few names: Gandhi, Mar­tin Luther King, Mother Theresa. Not exactly wimps. Peo­ple with strong opin­ions, goals, aims. Yet, their method was sim­i­lar. Into extra­or­di­nar­ily dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions, they brought peace. Not com­pro­mise. Just a firm con­vic­tion that one could be peace­ful while at the same time chang­ing the course of history.

Our per­sonal lives are pre­cisely as torment-filled as we tor­ment ourselves.

Dar and I are lis­ten­ing to Steven King’s Lisey’s Story. At one point, a char­ac­ter says some­thing like: “90% of the things peo­ple think about are none of their smuck­ing busi­ness.” The point is that we spend inor­di­nate time in our heads mak­ing trou­ble for our­selves over things we can either do noth­ing about, or which are not our busi­ness in the first place.

Peace, on the other hand, begins with allow­ing sit­u­a­tions to be sit­u­a­tions, and allow­ing oth­ers to hold their beliefs with­out the demand that they change.
Rather, I sim­ply engage in what I can control—my inter­pre­ta­tions, and espe­cially my actions.

It does me no good to demand that oth­ers com­mu­ni­cate ele­gantly and truth­fully. All I can do is to com­mu­ni­cate ele­gantly and truth­fully. It does me no good to preach non-violence, and then yell at oth­ers, or, heaven for­bid, use phys­i­cal force unnec­es­sar­ily. I remem­ber once walk­ing through a mall. A mother was shak­ing her eight-year-old, scream­ing at him, “How many times have I told you not to yell at and hit your sis­ter?” I can’t for the life of me, fig­ure out where he learned to do that…

Excuses, Excuses…

Many are the excuses. “I was abused as a child.”
“I speak directly and hon­estly. I only lose it when he’s being a jerk.”
“My dad had a bad tem­per.”
“I can’t let peo­ple walk all over me.”

Instead of excuses, bring peace. Speak clearly and act in a dis­ci­plined way. Tell your truth with­out demand­ing that oth­ers agree with you. Act so that your words match with your actions, and move for­ward so that you sense your own integrity.

This is not back­ing down. This is claim­ing your story, your truth, and your path as your own, and sim­ply and peace­fully walk­ing it.

Notice how you block your­self from walk­ing your own peace­ful, impact­ful path—by blam­ing, fight­ing, demand­ing. Open your­self to the pos­si­bil­ity of liv­ing your life free of the need to force oth­ers, manip­u­late oth­ers, or seek the per­mis­sion of oth­ers. Find and walk your path, in peace and with integrity. In the end, it is all any of us can do.