Shalom

‘The Garden of Eden’ – Thomas Cole, 1828 – WikiArt

It is always revealing to reflect upon a certain word in the context of spirituality, and see how it came to appear and be chosen. Why this one and not another word. There are many synonyms to the word ‘peace’, amongst which tranquillity, calmness, or quietness, which all seem better suitable to an entity or an object than peace. Peace is profound. It stands on its own. Just its pronouncing deepens you, fills you with its referent. ‘Peace’. The word takes you somewhere else, makes you leave your habitual field of suffering, desiring, projecting, coping, aiming, all that renders life a battlefield. ‘Peace’. Peace is a mantra in itself. A prayer. An occasion to go within. It has the automaticity of something fundamental, inescapable, and the simplicity of something that everybody knows or has experienced.

The word ‘peace’ comes from the mid-12th century root ‘pes’, meaning ‘freedom from civil disorder’ or ‘absence of war’. Likewise, in the dictionary, the first meaning for peace is stated as ‘freedom from disturbance’. Peace is always negative. It is here when something else has receded or died down. It is revealed through an absence. After all, in common parlance, the word ‘peace’ has always been used to refer to the state of things that exists in the absence of conflict or disorder. The word was almost invented to refer to this moment when a war ends and one can return to the state of affairs that existed before the conflict started. It is never a new state or occurrence. It is what is usually here in the background and is disrupted by the incursion of movement, conflict, war, thought. The tiniest thing, as long as you believe it to be you, will disrupt your peace. Peace is a return. A recognition of something known but forgotten for a time, or rather eclipsed by the incursion of time. Peace is something that is always here in the background, waiting patiently for your return. Our mind as ego is the disruptive factor, the war in which we have decided to engage, and found ourselves caught and lost. Make it end and peace will come automatically. It is not a new state invented, but the pre-existing state of your deepest self as being, which only a quietening of your wrestling with the objective world will make apparent. Peace is the very foundation of your self. It is the cornerstone of the edifice of life, as is easily seen in nature, which seems to have peace as its very fabric.

[…]

An exploration of the meanings behind the word ‘peace’… (READ MORE…)

.