Peace is a civil right of every individual. Stopping violence, saving lives and avoiding any kind of dispute are the key steps to build a peaceful community. But the most important thing is one’s inward peace. Inner peace eventually leads to external peace. The agitations of the mind, caused by various factors, produce repercussions in the external atmosphere, and it looks like a social conflict.
There cannot be a social conflict unless there is individual disturbance and conflict in one’s own self because society consists of nothing but many people like you, like me, like anybody. If every individual is filled with inner peace, society will have a completely peaceful atmosphere around. By creating peace in your inner world, in your mind, you bring it into your external world, and into other people’s lives.
Peace of mind is a state of mental and emotional calmness, having no unnecessary worries, fears or stress. In this state, the mind is quiet, and you experience a sense of happiness and freedom. Almighty give us a gift of spiritual peace, but we can find the peace of interior only by forbearing and being kind to others and by avoiding quarrels and contentions. Don’t hold grudges. Learn to forget and forgive.
To acquire peace of heart and mind, one has to follow the right path, and the right path is only the command of our Almighty. One should strive for Him, to establish and make firm the peaceful state of heart. All your virtues, all actions should be directed towards achieving this peace. As Arsenius so wonderfully put it, “Make it your whole care that your inner state should be in accordance with God, and you will vanquish your outer passion”.
It is not possible to have peace unless you know the source of peace. The source of peace is the balance that has to be struck in your mind. The balance is disturbed on account of the mind working as the medium of the sense organs. The anxiety of the mind is caused by the necessity to think in terms of external objects. The phenomena you call peace or harmony of existence is the situation that you establish between yourself and that to which you belong, the universal whole. It begins with lesser wholes and then enlarges itself into larger wholes until it covers the whole universe.
Until the whole creation is in peace, you cannot be in peace because it is not possible for a limb to be healthy when the organism is suffering. Moreover, peace of heart is distributed by passions, if you do not allow passions to approach the heart, it will always remain at peace. While the heart is at peace, victory over attackers would not be difficult. Peace of heart and mind is both the aim of spiritual warfare and the most powerful means to achieve the victory in it.
Human life is nothing but endless warfare and temptation. Temptation provokes struggle and so warfare terminates. Owing to this warfare, you should always keep awake and do your utmost to guard your heart and watch over it, to keep it peaceful and quite. When some disturbing movement arises in your soul, strive with zeal to suppress it and pacify your heart. If our heart is thrown into some disturbance, our mind loses the capacity of right thinking.
This is why it is necessary to make your heart quiet and peaceful as soon as it becomes troubled by something internal or external. Direct your intentions to the right subject and try to find out how to achieve a state of affairs when every action is done in a peace of state of heart, with pleasure and joy. In brief, preserving peace of heart, should be the constant effort of your whole life, and you must never allow it to be cast into disorderly disturbance.