It is my afternoon period of meditation and retreat and I am seated quietly in my sanctuary. On my simple altar a candle burns. The room is filled with the smell of fresh flowers and subtle incense. I am in prayer and meditation about my desire for peace in the world, expressing my hopes, my willingness to participate, asking what I can do to further this aim. Suddenly my perspective shifts, a vision opens before me. I see our world as though from outer space. I feel its life and all life upon it, and my heart fills with a love and awe for that life.
At the same time that I see this broad view, I also seem to see the microcosm. I am shown the millions of people on this planet that are praying for peace. I feel their lives; I know the sincerity of their prayers, the deep longing of their hearts. I have an experience of knowing all those prayers, feeling them, and it is beautiful. My heart swells with excitement at the numbers — there are so many earnestly praying! I become elated and overly excited by what I see and find myself, suddenly, back in my room, thrilled by what I have witnessed. It seems to me that peace must be inevitable if so many millions of hearts yearn for it, pray for it, for I know prayer to be a powerful force.
At this point I am interrupted by the gentle voice of the Indwelling Christ that seems to resonate in the marrow of my bones.
“The prayers for peace are wondrous indeed,” the voice says, “and necessary and good they are. But if the prayers were enough there would have been peace upon this planet long ago.”
Shocked silence ripples through me, penetrating every atom of my body. A hush falls like dew around me. Time extends without even a heartbeat or breath. Then a wind rises up through me, filling my belly, my lungs, my throat, and my head to bursting.
I cry out, “What is enough?! What will bring about the change we so much desire? How will we ever live in peace?”
The beautiful voice speaks in answer.
“Be peace.”
A penetrating love begins a soft pulse through my veins and a bottomless peace engulfs my entire being as though I am held in the very arms of God. Tears drip from my chin, covering my blouse. Information of a wordless nature fills me.
In that moment, I come to know it is the action of peace in every individual life that is the missing part. I understand the vital difference between wanting, praying, or even working for peace, and being peace. And, I come to know it is possible to be peace.
Be peace. The wisdom, the necessity, the potential of it fills my chest cavity, expanding in my mind until it transforms all thought. “How?” I wonder. “How can one be peace?”
In answer comes the words, “My peace be with you. My peace be unto you.”
I am stunned, then, by the realization that the peace has been within me all along.
Disoriented, I look around me; night has come and the candle guttered out without my notice. I am aware only of a deep gratitude and a profound peace as I sit in the circumambient azure glow that lingers in the darkened room.
In the days that followed this vision, in 1992, I realized that our current perception is that an abiding peace is not really attainable by the average person. This is largely because we have been taught that though we may futilely strive for personal peace, such perfection is beyond our grasp. Peace, we seem to think, is not possible in an active, everyday world.
So we have for the most part delegated the task of peaceful living to good behavior on Sunday mornings, or we leave it entirely to our great spiritual leaders or religious orders living secluded from the world. As a result, our individual lives remain full of fear, anxiety, tension, stress, argument, and disharmony. Our interactions on even the smallest level are very often not peaceful: our mindless but potent anger at another driver on the road, the dueling egos of family members or neighbors, petty gossip about a coworker. This results in the turmoil that creates a world of individuals living in disharmony with each other and all their resources.
When the voice of my vision spoke to me, “Be peace,” I knew, then, that it is absolutely possible for me and for every one of us to be peace in our lives, and it is vital to our survival as a species.
With the addition of, “My peace be with you,” I realized that peace already existed. It was there, gifted, all around me. I didn’t have to try to find it — it dwelt in the stillness within and surrounding me; I needed to learn to access it and to express it.
I made a covenant, in that dim room that evening. It was a covenant between my Soul and that which I know to be God. I do not enter into covenant lightly for it is a sacred and powerful commitment; one I make prayerfully and ceremonially. I covenanted to focus my consciousness and my discipline toward becoming a personification of peace. This propelled me into an exploration of learning to access peace and seeing how a human being could become a pure expression of it in both thought and action. To date, it has been a wonderful and fruitful journey full of surprises and questions, challenges and victories; and one of profound changes in how I relate to myself, to others, with my world, and with my God. There is a peace that surpasses understanding, and it is available to us all.
The opportunity of our times is for each one of us to understand, at a very personal level, that we can have a profound impact on the world in which we live. The greatest possibilities for global transformation exist in the fabric of our individual lives. If we can learn to become our prayers and hopes, expressing them in our daily interactions, then together we can create a more peaceful and loving world.
This vision, and my commitment, changed the very fabric of my life. Every interaction is now an opportunity for transformation — for me as well as my immediate world. I no longer move mindlessly into potentially difficult situations. I bring, instead, a mindfulness and willingness to see what else can be done; I realize I have choice. Since I am the one who dreamed the situation, what does it show me about me? What can I master within myself? How can the process with another be elevated for better results?
Every day we face the choice repeatedly. Will we succumb to road rage or will we require ourselves to notice our strong response and reroute it with a prayer, or deep breaths, or self-compassion? Will we call the difficult sales clerk an idiot or will we exhibit clarity and grace while dealing with him or her? Will we always cling adamantly and fearfully to our own views or will we allow differing opinions and methods to cohabitate with our own? These are the mundane but vital moments where we can choose to pioneer peace into our lives.
For example, there was a woman who held a place of trust in my business. We spent a great deal of time together and she was aware of many details of my business and personal life. She had access to my accounts and sensitive private information. It was a position that required great mutual trust and cooperation. All was well until the woman entered a time of crises and stress in her personal life. In response to her crises, she began to act out certain unhealthy coping behaviors at work that resulted in anxious and, primarily, unconscious misuse of resources at her disposal.
My team noticed that accounts were not balancing and items were being purchased that were not in our inventory. Merchandise was disappearing and petty cash was unaccounted for. We made some changes in our system and her supervision in an attempt to correct matters, but the behavior continued. It was behavior that not only violated her work agreement, but also was legally actionable. In most cases she would have been fired immediately with threat of legal action.
Instead, my team first entered into a period of fact-finding to fully grasp the situation. In this process we discovered that she had falsified her previous experience, covering up a similar situation in a previous employment. When we were sure of the extent of the offense, I met with two of my executive officers to decide our action. We were deeply contemplative together, feeling a genuine concern for this woman as well as the responsibility to our business — the two things were not at odds. We looked at the immediate and big picture, the holistic aspects, and agreed to review how we had helped to create the situation. We discussed how to proceed, looking for methods and timing that would create the least ripples out into our system with the greatest growth for the woman involved.
We agreed it would likely be necessary to terminate her employment but I felt strongly about waiting until we were certain of the moment. This was to allow Spirit a hand in the action: the preparation of the woman for changes in her life and clarifications on our part about what our legal procedure required. We waited until we knew it was the right moment to interact. It was nearly three months before we fired her. During that waiting period, we tightened the system, making it difficult to take advantage; we also gave her further warnings and training and made her aware of our scrutiny of the accounts. The misuse continued, though to a far lesser degree, but the changes and restrictions caused her to feel irritated and she began to grumble and gossip to others about her dissatisfactions. She said many things that were not true in an attempt to gain sympathy with other team members and people in the industry outside of our company. I knew, however, that I have a company strongly committed to more elevated behaviors; the gossip was seen for what it was. I was also secure in my company’s reputation in the business; it was sad that she was damaging herself in this way.
I remained even with her in my interactions and thoughts and asked my team to do the same. I felt calm, and certain that I would take the right action at the right moment. I counseled those involved on my management team to maintain a loving, even, and nonjudgmental stance toward the woman. I asked that we not move into typical behaviors such as case building, acting outraged and betrayed, vilifying her to each other or coworkers, or determining to “teach her a lesson.” This was not easy for those close to the situation who felt protective of Jewel and me, but it was an important exercise for us all.
When I felt it was timely, I met again with my chief executives for a period of quiet contemplation. During this meeting we assessed all the information, reviewed our legal requirements under the state labor laws, as well as discussed the needs of the company and the soul of the woman.
We set up a meeting with the woman, beginning with a fifteen-minute period of silence together. We presented her with the evidence we had gathered and our view of her situation and our position. While we made it clear that we were terminating her, we offered her choices about the method. She was tearful, frightened, and regretful. We were not accusative or shaming though we took a firm line, speaking very frankly to the problem but in a way that allowed dignity, compassion, and self-assessment. We did not vilify or humiliate her. The meeting was short, but powerful in its ability to effect change.
With a swelling roster of employees, we experience numerous difficult situations; we keep internal discussion of such matters to a minimum. Gossip, backbiting, and judgmental means are prevalent in most companies; these create a great deal of spin in the environment that enormously decreases the creativity, productivity, and satisfaction at the workplace. While we find it necessary to assess and discern situations, we draw a distinction between discernment and being judgmental.
We try to handle each circumstance with comprehensive preparation in silence, and with evenness, compassion, and attention to human dignity. The company and the individual are both served in this way. These methods greatly decrease the stress for all involved, cause the least disturbance in the company, and create the most likely environment for change.
We attempt to hire employees interested in and willing to elevate their methods and interactions in the workplace. This integration of our highest-held values into our actions is where our evolution must take us for our health, happiness, and survival. Taking time to center in the stillness of our Being, we access resources greater than our common tendencies and abilities; it then becomes possible to operate in more elevated ways.
