“My resolution is that all being come to know itself as one being, and make peace. Peace within oneself, within the family, the larger community, nationally, internationally, and however else it may manifest. The smallest peace to the biggest. Love of peace is what brings us here.”

When you are called home, when you are somehow struck by the absolutely mysterious and irrevocable desire to know the truth of who you are, then you must be willing to put aside every story of separation, and choose peace. Choosing peace does not exclude taking a stand in a disagreement, or saying “No” when no is required. Choosing peace means being at peace with yourself in this moment.

You don’t have to create peace. It is war that has to be created. Wars are very complicated, with all their strategies, sides, alliances, betrayals, and propaganda. Peace is utterly simple.

In this moment, regardless of what the next moment might bring, you can choose peace. You can fall back into the peace that is your being. Let it have the past, the present, and the future. Give up any imagination that you can ever leave it. This is the peace that is beyond understanding, even closer than understanding. It is closer to you than your own breath.

Unless all of us take the responsibility for our own inner peace, the wars will continue. We cannot wait any longer for someone else to change. We cannot wait for someone else to forgive us so that we can then forgive them. We cannot wait for someone else to say they are sorry. Peace cannot be postponed.

Recognize that to whatever degree the war is going on in your own mind, it is based on one thing: the firm belief that you are a separate entity, separate from your parents, your children, your lover, or your enemy.

All wars are based upon the ignorance of our true nature and the illusion of separation. When you firmly believe that you are separate from the totality, separate from peace, separate from love, you protect yourself. That protection takes many forms involving personal and territorial identification. The horror is that if what you are protecting is the thought of who you are, it does not, in reality, even exist. It is only a thought, and whenever a thought is honestly investigated, it is found to have no inherent reality. Yet this thought of who you are has immeasurable power, because it becomes the filter of all experiences of reality.

When you look through tinted glass, reality takes on that tint. It isn’t that reality is tinted. The tinted glass mediates and distorts reality. People fight for the distortion that this “I,” as an individual or as a group, is separate from all other beings. And yet that “I” is actually nothing! It is a made-up story. Yet in the belief that the story is reality, there is colossal tragedy and suffering. When this “I” that is assumed to be real and separate is examined by consciousness, it is discovered to be none other than consciousness itself.

As a conscious human being, you have the opportunity to discover that never, not even for an instant, is it possible to be separate from consciousness, from the source of everything, from God. Once you discover this directly, you then broadcast it with every breath you take. Whether you speak of this discovery or you never speak again, you will broadcast it through the natural radiance of your being. In your willingness to take that chance, to accept that invitation, you will naturally share that peace everywhere.

Join Gangaji on Sunday, January 17 at 11 AM PST for a conversation about our relationship to change. Learn more