Forging Peace with Practicality: World Peace, Part 2

Isn't it a bit abstract to speak about spiritual principles creating peace?

Not at all. The principles outlined in Part 1 of this series exist within the purest spiritual cores of the three Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—where most of the world's troubles are flaring right now. What most people don't realize is that they, and all other major religions of the world, stem from a common, sacred universal spiritual tradition that reveals the true interconnected nature of existence.

The mystical core of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are called Kabbalism, Gnosticism, and Sufism respectively. These are truly unified brotherly traditions that have more in common with one another that they have with their outer religions because they teach the spiritual truths of the ages. Here we see the dividing line between religion and spirituality.

Prophets speak the heart of God; their followers start religions. Religion is the superstructure of manmade customs, interpretations, and agendas for power that distort high spiritual truths. Do you think Mohammed encouraged the systematic abuse of women? Of course he didn't. This stemmed from old, primitive Bedouin customs inserted into religious practice. That's not a spiritual truth. The Bible experienced the same process.

If we cut through these limiting agendas to the spiritual truths, each religion can see the distortions of its own making and reach across the void to embrace each other on common historical and scriptural grounds. And we don't need popes or imams to do that, we need open-mindedness to overcome our initial religious brainwashing.

Do women play a special role in creating world peace?

Very much so. It goes back to raising consciousness being the ultimate solution. Heartfelt intuition and insight is the gateway to individual experience of higher consciousness. These faculties have long been recognized as being female in nature as in the analytical left brain and the intuitive right brain operation of our psyches. This is not to say that men don't possess such faculties, they do, but intuition is a feminine energy in the yin yang polarity of the world and it's most evident in the female nature. Having said that, the insights gained from such intuition must be applied practically to be of any worldly benefit. This is where the male energy comes in, the analytical, directive force.

Are there any caveats for spiritual people to get involved in world affairs?

Many would like to ignore the world and stay within our own comfortable spiritual cocoons. It's easier that way, but we are spiritual beings in a material world and we've got to deal with it. Moreover we have to improve it.

Fuzzy spirituality is a condition where a person suspends his or her critical judgment at the point where they can feel warm and satisfied about their own humanity without ever thinking through or solving a real world problem. It's more about living with ourselves than living in the world, and the world can't survive on platitudes or hazy ideals.

We must couple our good intention with practicality as much as possible or we fall into a form of New Age vacuousness. Taking a spiritual approach to real problems does not mean being airy fairy. It shouldn't mean forsaking ideas like personal responsibility by idealizing those who claim to be victims. It shouldn't mean not speaking our truth for fear of contradicting what's politically correct. It doesn't mean putting our energies into utopian socio-political forms that just create new elites.

Spiritual people should dispel the naïve notion that money is bad or the root of all evil. Love of money, or the soul focus of making money is the real source of error. So, in other words, we need to exemplify balance. There's nothing spiritual about poverty. Statist, utopian forms of government such as socialism and communism have caused more deaths and poverty than any other forms of power and all under the name of equality.

The highest form of spirituality is not to make everyone the same. That just creates a vacuum of human potential that glorifies mind-dulling conformity, and places a power hungry class of bureaucrats as the new elite. The highest form of spirituality to rise as high as you can in your given field and then give back, not because society says you should but because you know in your heart that helping others is the good for the spirit.

How can spiritually inclined people best move forward in forging peace in the world?

A good way for spiritual or religious people to help is to work with like-minded people on a two-pronged approach. First, help train other people to achieve their own inner peace. Secondly work within the messy framework of what the world is while promoting worthy ideals like freedom, education, personal responsibility, personal development, while recognizing that we need viable, strong economies for people to live in the best they can.

We need to identify people on the "opposing" side who really want peace. Everyone will talk about peace but not everyone truly wants it because they have an agenda that ultimately profits through lack of peace. Governments have such agendas, so people-to-people outreach is best. Finally we have to recognize that sometimes peace must come through force as it had to do to end Nazism. But spiritual traditions tell us that thoughts are things, and if many people throughout the world focus their thought on a unified concept of peace, it does have an effect. We need to be practical and metaphysical to achieve any kind of meaningful peace.