I am still remarkably capable of turning another human being into an idiot.
Someone says something that triggers me. Someone behaves badly. Someone holds a political position I find hard to comprehend. Within seconds, my mind can produce a convincing case for why the problem is them.
Almost thirty years of meditation haven’t changed that completely. I have become better at noticing it. It still happens.
This has been on my mind because so many of us look at the world right now and long for peace. War, polarization, aggression. We feel powerless in the face of conflicts much larger than ourselves.
Then comes the spiritual cliché: Find peace within yourself, and there will be peace in the world.
I don’t buy it.
Meditating yourself into a peaceful state will not stop a war. Inner calm does not replace justice, responsibility, boundaries or resistance. Sometimes peace requires confrontation.
But our powerlessness is only half the truth.
We may have little influence on wars between nations. We have enormous influence on how much peace or conflict we create around us.
And conflict begins earlier than we think.
A colleague becomes “a narcissist.” An ex-partner becomes “toxic.” A politician becomes “an idiot.” People voting differently become “stupid.” The difficult neighbor becomes “an asshole.”
Sometimes people behave terribly. Spiritual maturity does not mean pretending otherwise.
Deeper meditation asks something much more uncomfortable. Can I stay with my anger long enough to see how I am creating “the other”? Can I look deeply enough to recognize that, given another childhood, culture, history and set of wounds, I do not actually know who I might have become?
At its deepest, even the separation itself becomes less certain.
I am you. You are me. What looks like two entirely separate beings can be experienced as expressions of the same consciousness.
This is not an intellectual exercise, and it certainly doesn’t always work for me. It can take very deep practice to experience even a glimpse of it.
It also doesn’t mean approving of everything. You can oppose someone. Set a boundary. Protect another person. Hold someone accountable.
The question is whether you need to deny their humanity to do it.
That is where spiritual maturity meets ethical maturity.
Many people who lament how hostile the world has become are remarkably hostile themselves. In their judgments. Their language. Their certainty about other people.
Sometimes I am one of them.
We cannot make peace everywhere. But we can make more peace in the small part of the world we actually touch: in our relationships, families, organizations and communities.
The more uncomfortable question this Sunday is not why there is so little peace in the world.
It is how much peace you and I are creating around us.