Signs of peace and doves will make appearances on holiday cards and 'yearly communiqués' between busy friends. Most of us are not aware that the UN has been celebrating a Day of Peace in September since 1982. It's come to Tampa Bay in a big way. People with different ideas and expressions about peace came together, looked into each other's eyes and hearts and created Peace Week, September 14 - 21. Thousands of school children in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties chose personal and public projects throughout the week to bring peace into their lives. Who knows what ripples those connections and experiences will have on peace in the coming years?
By a series of rather remarkable synchronicities, I was recently re-reading Marilyn Ferguson's wake-up call, The Aquarian Conspiracy, and was amazed to recognize how perceptive she was in the late 70's and how relevant her book is to what's going on here and now. Does that mean we haven't come very far? I think not. Rather that we have been experiencing what she could see on the horizon and captured in words. Her choice of the title is promising: Aquarius, the zodiac's water bearer, quenches the sun-soaked desert; and conspiracy, meaning literally to breathe together. We are coming together and conspiring for peace.
This has been a century torn by wars, like many others in the Piscean Age. Besides neighborhood and tribal wars, nations used the same methods of exploring differences: aggression and power over. The belief system supporting this for so long is one of independence and domination. Other ways have been creeping around the edges, growing stronger particularly after our personal fears exploded to the surface along with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When would it be our country, our neighborhood, our family? However, these years of the Cold War have given space for other beliefs to grow--new (and old) ways of thinking and being, awakening us to our interconnections, the essentialness of diversity and recognizing the hate in our own hearts. The villain wasn't only across the world or in the south side of town, but in our own homes and within ourselves. War and violence are not only in the headlines and on TV. As Pogo said many years ago, "We have met the enemy and it is us."
Marilyn Ferguson urges us to reframe our concept of peace--preventing war and creating states of non-conflict. She says we are trying to overpower darkness rather than switching on the light. (Notice how we use the language of aggression.) By fostering community, healthy innovation, self-discovery and purpose, we 'wage' peace. "War is unthinkable in a society of autonomous people who have discovered the connectedness of all humanity, who are unafraid of alien ideas and alien culture, who know that all revolutions begin within and that you cannot impose your brand of enlightenment of anyone else." The "peace paradigm is a society based on creativity, freedom, democracy and spirituality."
Our old ways of thinking about peace remind me of how we often think of dis-ease and illness. It's about seeing the doctor, taking drugs, having surgery, putting our energy in the problem, thinking someone or something outside ourselves will fix it, rather than focusing on healing love to restore us to our natural wholeness and well being. We've forgotten about the natural state of healing within, mirrored back to us by nature. Love heals.
Science is now proving what we've always known! When we put our prayers and intentions into wholeness and peace, disease and conflict are pulled into healing. Quantum theory gives us a model for a healthy 'push-pull'. The social disease of racism and economic disease of poverty push us forward to other ways of living. Holograms of congruent information, from the New Sciences to rediscovering the common messages of the world's religions, pull us into wellness and into peace. We need both the push and the pull to affect change.
"Peace is a state of mind, not a state of the nation. Without personal transformation, the people of the world will be forever locked in conflict." People, communities and nations can have a change of heart. And "we can begin anywhere--everywhere." "We find our individual freedom, by choosing not a destination but a direction."
South African visionary Sir Laurens van der Post made an astute observation as to why new leaders aren't surfacing to lead this conspiracy. He said we don't need them any more! We don't have to wait for leaders, but instead recognize leadership within ourselves. We are the leaders, every one of us. Stories abound how one person, with a strong belief in a better way, initiated creative action that inspired others to bring forth their version--right here in Tampa Bay. It happened during Peace Week! "All beginnings are invisible, an inward movement, a revolution in consciousness." We discover it's more about freedom with, than freedom from. "We can conspire with and for each other. " "Those who take part will be transformed by their own participation."
The inspirational Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote about a "conspiracy of love" and Nikos Kazantzakis, the Greek novelist, urged his comrades to unite for the sake of the earth, like conspirators. Who knows? By conspiring with love, maybe Peace Week and the Season of Peace will grow to flower peace throughout the year--in our time. We have a growing trust that in coming together we can and will determine new, healthy courses. This is the time. This is the season. Trust the process.
"Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me."
Sharon Joy Kleitsch is coordinator for the Suncoast Community Institute of Noetic Sciences and principal of The Connection Partners, an organizational and community consulting firm. Madeira Beach, Florida (813) 392-4505.