It’s Easier Than You Think:

Having a peaceful existence is easier than you think. Of course writing it down and making it accessible to everyone is not as easy. In order to do this I might have to give you a few personal examples that might make me seem full of myself but I assure you that there is nothing special about me. Peace mostly comes from knowing a secret that you won’t find in school.

I wrote the happiness exercise years ago to try and help people to see what the secret to peace really is. It really takes committing your life to keeping that space for letting people be who they are everyday even though in the exercise I ask people for only a 3 day commitment. The reason for the 3 days is just to get people to glimpse at the possibility. The ultimate goal of following the exercise is that by opening up to accepting the people in your life at whatever level they are you will begin to accept yourself. You do not have to be anything but what you already are and the same goes for your people. That is the secret to peace.

A few years back I went to an event with a couple of other people who also manage offices in other areas of the business that I work for. These two ladies actually said to me in regard to how calm my office is, “I want to absorb some of whatever you have.” I told one of the ladies I went to lunch with, “I can tell you the secret but you probably won’t believe it works.” I told her that you cannot meet people in a battle between wills. Anytime you engage in that way no one will win. Just imagine how frustrating it is when someone tells you that you have to do something or else and then compare that to how it feels when they just ask you politely. I know in our office we have a lot of folks saying yes when they might have said no because we don’t use force and we give them a choice. We just choose to take the gentler approach.

Another example is this. In the last job I had before I started my current job, I was asked to teach a day class in an art camp for children. During the process of planning the camp we had numerous meetings. In every meeting we spent most of the time talking about how we would disciple the children and how we would keep them corralled in the individual classes throughout the park where the camp was taking place. The lady who was directing the project explained to us that she had always handled projects with children in this certain manner and that it had always worked. After about the 5th meeting like this it became so unbelievable to me that I finally had to speak up. I just said, “I am not going to do anything you have suggested and these children are going to be amazing.” And, folks, that is what I did and they were. I did not give them one rule, I did not direct their actions in anyway and I had zero issue with any of the children. Here is a little glimpse into what my campsite looked like.

The class I taught was the arrow ceremony and the art was making really creative arrows for the ceremony. The hope was that I might teach the children to be creative in their own way while also learning to set goals. I hung dream catchers in the trees, burned incense in the air and played tribal drum music out in to the world. I also threw a blanket on the ground for any of the children who wanted more solitude while they worked. I gave them paint, ribbons, silk flowers, feathers, fabric and thin wooden dowels and then I told them about the ceremony and set them free. Let me tell ya folks, it was the place to be. These children were so calm and relaxed. It was the favorite class of the day. The lady who directed the event came to me at the end of the day and she said, “You have amazed me.” The thing about it was that I did not do anything really. I just allowed. 

I just wanted to talk about happy class again. It's been on the blog a long time.

Later