Ahimsa is a significant premise in the world of yoga as well as in most societies today. But what to do when we become aware that even though we understand that violence is not acceptable, we still see violence around us, whether it is in our immediate surroundings or in far and distant lands?
What we need to do is try and find the violence within us, become aware of it, and let it go. Violence can be of action, word, or thought. For many people violence of action is less frequent, but violence of word is more frequent, and violence of thought, rampant. A good path is to begin with ourselves. To rid the world of violence we have to first rid ourselves of our own violence, but for that we must first find the root of our violence.
Soon the holiday season will be upon us and we will all hear of the many efforts to promote peace in the world, especially before the end of the year in an attempt to manifest the peace that we did not achieve throughout the year. Let us use this opportunity then to start our own personal project of
non-violence. To go from violence to peace we need to stop, look inside, and seek to understand it in a personal and transpersonal way.
Peace is not a lack of conflict. Conflict is natural. Human beings have the intellectual capacity and the intuition to deal with conflict, so it doesn’t turn into an armed conflict, which is when violence makes its appearance.
Let’s use the spoken word as a way to communicate, and may this communication be with an open heart, with patience, empathy, and with the intention to try and understand, instead of trying to convince and force others to adopt a new vision. In short, peace depends on us. If we really want it, we can find it inside and outside. It is then a matter of choosing with consciousness the path of peace, to then face the path of self-awareness and social participation with all the consequences that that
implies.