Peace?
I have found a slight glitch in my current (previous?) world view. I have been maintaining for years that peace is the awareness of the sacred. However, I have recently realized that that line of thinking kind of skipped the whole “mystery” thing. God is, in the largest sense, eternally unknown and unknowable. While we can have some kind of awareness of the sacred, that awareness by definition must always be limited, flawed, and transient.
This realization in combination with my definition of peace amounts to a rather unsettling conclusion: there is no peace. At least not any whole, perfect, and enduring peace. There must always be, to some degree or another, ignorance. And ignorance of the sacred, by my recent thought, equates to suffering and violence. Yuck.
So, this leads me to a few different questions. First, is peace actually the awareness of the sacred? Second, if so, is there an awareness beyond relative, conditional knowledge of forms? Third, if peace is not the awareness of the sacred, is there some form of radical acceptance of what is, complete with ignorance and suffering, that would be a better definition of peace?
My first instinct that the answer to all three questions is “yes”. That peace is not a relative knowledge of God, but rather an attitude and perspective of radical willingness for all that is, which is the “awareness” that is beyond the scope of conditioned forms.
I think I just defined faith.
So, we arrive at a “peace” that is inclusive of mystery, ignorance, pain, suffering, limitation, and helplessness. It all fits, but I have to say that it’s not a peace I had really ever imagined working towards.
Hrm.