MAINTAINING PEACE II

Despite the recent cold, the days have been very beautiful.
Today it is cloudy, but the last few days have been mostly brilliant. It doesn't feel cold, even when it is below zero when the winds are calm and it is Sunny.

We need to talk more about Peace. Maintaining peace is very,  very important. Everything worthwhile we want to create comes out of peace.

It seems to me the biggest obstacle to maintaining peace is our self-regard. I was trying to think of a word like self-esteem that has no tinge of ego. Maybe there isn't one. We should be looking for a word that describes a love for ourselves that implies no separation and measurement with others. It is the state that we were created in; the state of unconditional love.

Do you react to others' judgements? I do, at least if they are ones I am close to. We wouldn't if we regarded ourselves as Love. We would not see it as our problem that others are controlling or judgmental.

We are not very good at controlling our reactions and we tend to interpret all our outburst as reactions. It is always the other person who starts the fight. Right?

We need to begin by accepting that we have responsibility for our reactions. Not blame; but acceptance, it is our thing and we can do something about it. Blame keeps us in the spiral of negativity. We must always remember to love ourselves.

I get lot of practice with this phenomenon. Jamie and I are both capable of reacting and of course, it is always the other persons fault. We have had some wonderful arguments over the years. We both want the other one to grow up and quit reacting to trivia. We have grown up a lot and we are getting better at not reacting when the other is less than sanguine.

We need to understand that the more we love ourselves, the more we are able to experience another's negative expressions without getting our undies in a bunch. What another is going through is not a reflection on us. It is their thing, It is a call for love. If instead, we react with either an attack of our own or defensiveness, we magnify the problem.

Many of us have a hard time understanding, that defensiveness is seen by the other as attack. When we are defensive we are saying to the other that they are capable of hurting us. It is an accusation.

These problems seem difficult. Yet, as we become more aware of ourselves and our reactions we will find that we will make surprising progress. It is especially important to realize the more we love ourselves the less likely we are to react in a negative fashion. When we regard ourselves highly, we will see the others negativity as a call for love. We will return any seeming attack with love. It takes practice but we can do it. We will do it.

Love and Peace,  Gregg