Inner Peace Activism

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about the idea of inner peace activism. So when we look at human history, we can see that there's been so much war and injustice, so much human suffering as a result. In current news headlines, we hear reports of conflicts still happening in so many parts of the world. And scrolling through social media, we see groups of people with different viewpoints being really aggressive towards each other, creating greater division and polarization in the world.

When we see all of this, we can feel a bit helpless and overwhelmed. We may think that there's nothing that we can do. We might think that we don't play a part in all of this, that we're not contributing to it. But the reality is, is that we can play our own part in bringing more wisdom and compassion, understanding, love, and peace into the world. And when we do that, we are contributing to the end of conflict and bringing about peace in the world in some way.

Now, of course, this doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to magically end the civil war or in a particular area. But ending the wars in our own mind, the hate, the greed, the aggression, the righteousness, the judgements, the reactivity and ending the conflicts in our own lives. You know, the arguments, the blaming, the shaming, the criticism, the harsh social media posts. And any behavior that, you know, harms or even supporting groups of people or companies, politicians that cause harm to people, places, or the planet. All of this has a significant and critical impact in the world.

In fact, it's my belief that we, as a humanity, cannot hope to experience peace in the world if we do not learn each, one of us, to find peace in our own mind and life. Outer conflicts arise from inner conflicts, from our state of consciousness. And as within, so without. So when you see conflict in the world, rather than feeling helpless or hopeless, let it inspire you to channel your energy into inner peace activism. By training the mind to incline towards peace, presence and compassion, we stop creating conflict in the world within us and all around us.

And we become an island of sanity and love in a sometimes frantic world. And in this way, we don't just transform our own lives, but that peace ripples out and touches everyone in our lives and really ripples out into the world. As Gandhi once said, "We begin to be the change we want to see in the world and what could be a more valuable contribution than that." As always, thank you for your practice and for your presence here in this community. And let's settle in now for today's meditation.