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We don’t often think of Peace as a presence. And yet, we can tell when we are in the presence of Peace.
If you have ever entered a home where a family is “at war”, you pick up immediately on the energy – the tension and fear. Some of us grew up in families like that. Maybe you have also experienced households that exude harmony and peace. There is a feeling of joy and openness. People, and even other species, find relief and refuge there.
What if Peace is not just an absence of conflict but an actual entity that shapes and is shaped by our collective consciousness? In this way, Peace is not just a personal experience or an agreement among people, but a broader, more universal condition that manifests through the collective consciousness of a family, community or society.
An important paper by Otto Scharmer and Eva Pomeroy explores a similar concept. It introduces “fourth-person knowing” as a new form of epistemology distinct from first-, second-, and third-person perspectives, “knowing that comes through me but is not of me.” This form of knowing, they suggest, can unlock new potentials and possibilities that were previously out of reach, leading to significant and transformative impacts.
Can this recognition that flows through us, yet originates beyond us, lead to a synchronization of actions and attitudes that support the emergence of Peace? Arkan Lushwala, an Andean ceremonial leader hints at this potential in his book, The Spirit of the Glacier Speaks, when he explains how we are creators of spirits:
…every living being in nature has a spirit, and there are spirits that are much older than humanity. The spirits that humans create are born from strong beliefs, grand ideas, visions, prayers and collective devotional practices that make us constantly invoke their names. That spirit offers us many advantages since it enables us to have a dialogue…
If the spirit of Peace could speak, what would she say right now?
Kosmos explores this theme in various contexts, from the collective memory of resistance in Haiti to kinship among whales; from the enduring presence of the Nile River amid the crisis in Sudan, to the ways karma aligns our actions with collective consciousness.
News and social media bring the horrors of war much closer to us. We must use the constant reminders of war to help us cultivate a flower in the sea of flames, to evoke, inhabit and enact the collective Mind of Peace.
R. Fabian, for Kosmos