Humanity idealizes peace, but in practice, we are far from establishing peace. From our experience in over thousands of years of development, we see how unrealistic it is to seek peace between nations and societies. On the contrary, the more we discuss peace, the more we see war.
What is peace? It is common to think of peace as a state of no war. But is that what peace really is?
The word for peace in Hebrew (Shalom) comes from the word for completion, wholeness and perfection (Shlemut). That is, the way to the achievement of wholeness and perfection is a way of understanding how, on one hand, we are divided according to our inborn self-aimed desires, but if we aim at reaching a common goal of wholeness and perfection among human society, then we will discover how to make connections between us above our divisions and differences.
Therefore, the way to peace first requires an upgrade in education. We first need to understand what peace is and why we are at war. Our war is bigger than what nations and armies enter into at various times, but according to our nature, we are all in a constant war and struggle with each other. We thus need to learn about nature and human nature, to understand the extent in which we are egoists by nature, how we each wish to use other people and nature for personal gain. Also, we need to see how our egoistic nature is constantly growing, and the more humanity develops, the crueler we become, wishing to succeed on account of other people and nature. We need to look no further than history’s unfolding events to see its proof.
What can we do about it? If we agree with simply letting ourselves flow with our nature, we will eventually reach an impasse where we will see an increasingly dark cloud hover over our lives, and the lives of our future generations. Going with the flow of our egoistic nature will lead to our planet’s destruction, and to several more wars, conflicts and suffering on personal, social and global scales.
We thus need to first learn about our nature, the range of our capabilities and our limitations, how nature operates on us at every moment, and how can we best respond to the impulses we receive from nature.
The first step toward peace is to advance in self-awareness, to understand who and what we are, the range of our ability to affect our destiny, and how to optimally direct ourselves as we head into the future. In other words, we first need to correctly situate ourselves in the world, the nature and the realiry we are in. When we understand how we become activated, and how we can influence the system we are parts of, then we can start taking steps on a path of peace toward discovering wholeness and perfection among our connections.
Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.
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