“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” So said Pierre de Chardin the French Jesuit priest and philosopher. The first time I read this quote, I knew that he was right. It explained everything to me; my very existence suddenly made sense. I was here on earth to have a human experience, but I really was that spiritual being that I always sensed I was. I felt I no longer had to apologize for being gentle and loving, for wanting peace and love in the world, for my so called naiveté or simplistic views of how to solve the world’s problems. I knew that only such idealistic views embodied the real nature of reality and that only they would work to resolve conflict and achieve worldwide peace.
De Chardin also said these words when the Nazis were fast advancing in Europe during World War II: “Peace cannot mean anything but a HIGHER PROCESS OF CONQUEST…The world is bound to belong to its most active elements…But no spiritual aims or energy will ever succeed, or even deserve to succeed, unless it is able to spread and keep spreading a fifth column.” In essence, he was letting the world know that the Nazis were the “most active element” at the time, the kind of energy that had the potential to spread like a wildfire, and it was imperative that the spiritual rise to the occasion and conquer it. It was a dire warning that we too, in our time, must pay heed to.
John Lennon once noted that Gandhi and Martin Luther King, both proponents of peace and nonviolence, had been assassinated for their efforts. He didn’t understand why people wouldn’t “just give peace a chance,” and then he too was assassinated.
We are at a point in our lives, in the life of our planet, when the imperative to give peace a chance is at its most crucial, and for spiritual consciousness to dominate and spread like wildfire. For that is the only way that real change will happen, by good once again becoming the dominant force, the HIGHER PROCESS, as de Chardin suggests. De Chardin also spoke elegantly about love being the most powerful of all forces that we as human beings could employ for ourselves and our planet, the same love that John Lennon, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King embraced.
When you are in a room of peaceful people you notice how peaceful and calm the atmosphere is. When you are in a room of happy people, you notice happiness. When you are in a room of angry people you notice anger, you feel anger, it takes over. When you are in the midst of evil you can smell it. Which kind of room would you like to be in?
As simple as it sounds, the only way to make change happen for the better, is to change the way we think, act, and react, the way we treat each other, the way we treat the planet. To become a peaceful Self is the first step in enacting change outside of the self, to learn to take responsibility in the world and inside the self, to really be the spiritual beings we are, to stop blaming and judging each other, to realize we are all the same.
If I set an even greater intent than usual to be peaceful, gentle, loving and kind for the rest of my life, toward myself and others, I will be part of a new spiritual consciousness. The more who are engaged in this new peaceful and loving consciousness, the more powerful grows a movement of real change, soon a spreading wildfire. Many of us are children of the 60s, still idealists at heart, gentle souls still hopeful of peace in our life.
I support the movements started by Gandhi, King, and Lennon—among the many others I have not named, men and women of peace and real caring—who knew that we are all indeed spiritual beings having a human experience. A new peaceful and loving existence requires taking both a personal journey and a badly needed universal journey, each day being different as we go out into the world and interact with others, as well as in our innermost thoughts. If we all decided that love of each other and love of the planet was the most important aspect of our human existence, how quickly change could happen and perhaps a new national mood would prevail and spread like wildfires around the world.
Spread the word: Give peace and love a chance.
Change begins with me,
Jan