I was again able to trek through glorious Swiss mountains near our home yesterday. Vivid colors dotted the landscape, wildflowers! And since I had to walk very carefully amongst the steep rocks, I was continually enchanted by the bright patches below my feet. Dotted landscapes of exquisite design, both the gentle and the strong in all their splendor, true glory!

Such moments are good for my soul, good for my health, good for my mind. I then observe through newsreels a world of nations reeling in escalating violence. Fear, anger, and distress cover the people’s faces. It certainly causes me to reflect on war and peace.

I want peace for myself, my friends and family, and for you. There is much to discover in the mind, body, and soul, using our chance in this human form to enrich the life-force in us and around us in quality and quantity. Realizing we are more than the body, more than an animal bound to survival mechanisms, we let life live itself, heal our inner and outer injuries, and discover ourselves to be something like energetic pulsing rhythms that transform and thrive through interaction with other living things. We are at our best when we feel ourselves in a higher vibration, as a higher vibration. Even when deep awareness fades, a confidence in the flow of life remains. Grace!

When we are confronted with the outer world, we enjoy its happy moments, but also try to avoid the things we see in the news: conflict, alarm, anger, hatred. Thoughts of protection and retribution bring us down. We see our world as a heavy place. We are afraid to ignore threatening images, knowing that the physical health and continued happiness of ourselves and others we care about could be at stake. We abhor suffering loss. Battle becomes an option in our heads too.

But many of us are aware enough to know that hate and anger, revenge and retribution have never worked very well if one’s goal is inner freedom. As rationally as we can explain it to ourselves, violence is a dreadful compromise. Win or lose, the trauma of hurting and killing others causes conflict that keeps us divided from other good people and busy in our souls for a long time. Many are aware that more United States soldiers committed suicide after their experience in the second Iraq War than actually died in battle.

I often have strong feelings when it comes to the United States of America. Many fantastic things have happened in the U.S.A. and there are millions of fantastic people there. But clearly, an attitude of arrogance, fear, and readiness to use violence exists. I wonder if I can see these old patterns in myself. If not, how can I ever be free of them?

My answer and my resolution: Observe my reluctance to change.

The I Ching, The Book of Change, is a very important source of insight that has been highly respected for thousands of years in China and has influenced important Western thinkers such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Carl Jung. The book’s description of ‘Peace’ is intriguing.

Peace, in the I Ching, comes about when strong yang energy is below and soft yin energy is above. In our bodies, we might know this state when we wander into Nature and feel its power and its blessings. Our strong energy (qi) has awakened through movement and soothes our pounding mind. We sense heavy thoughts and feelings weaken and even dissolve. We sense ourselves as intimately connected to the universe. Our active mind and muscles are infused with the subtle forces of breath within and without and are aware of beauty within and without. We feel a flowing harmony in ourselves which we recognize also pervades all life. Connected to the universe, profound gratitude arises. Virtues of humility and generosity naturally manifest. We feel like sharing.

In collective social and political units, this ‘peace’ means that leaders are yielding and willing to merge their will with the will of the people below. “Their powers unite in deep harmony… the good are in control, and evil influences come under their influence and change for the better.” School teachers, baseball coaches, good bosses, and spiritual masters have helped me in my life tremendously. Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, and Gorbachev remind us that this can happen on the bigger stage of politics as well.

When peace’s opposite arises, when the strong yang energy above continues its rise and the yielding yin energy sinks without being supported from below, lack of progress occurs. In the I Ching, the opposite of ‘Peace’ is ‘Stagnation’. This state of inertia arises when ‘the creative powers are not in relation. It is a time of standstill and decline.”

We know this stuck feeling in our bodies and minds. The inner sun pulls away, the weight of our thoughts and feelings sinks down, and we feel ourselves to be the desert in between. We try to function well, but if this stress goes on too long, we experience burn-out. Frustrated, our brain can produce negative, destructive thoughts.

But, if we are attentive to our mind-states, our trust in life infuses us with light and hope that things will change soon enough. Healing power is there for the body and it usually guides us back to health. It also gives us information for how to proceed. We need our intuition to understand it and our courage to carry it through.

When it comes to stagnation, to prolonged conflict in society, the principle is the same. We enable support when we rest our fears, hateful thoughts, and aggression, and use our natural wisdom to attract and encourage innate corrective qualities. Something good will evolve out of stagnation if we allow it to move along. It might not look so good at first, because it is not the change we expected. We keep looking, and perhaps we are the ones who are part of stagnation evolving into truly peaceful action.

If we can’t move on from an illness, a traumatic reaction, a feeling of superiority, fear, or hate, and give no space for it to change to a virtuous attitude that engenders peace, we shape the world around us in conflict and those old patterns dominate the world our children grow up in. If we force our idea of change out of an emotional reaction, it also doesn’t work well. We see a world that continues to lack peace.

Today, I feel soothed and invigorated by my walk. And, I have strong hope for a world that will know peace and will endure well times of stagnation and conflict. The mountains and the wildflowers affirm!