How do we live our lives in this existential scenario? What are our relationships, with ourselves and with others, if not the expression of who we are inside, where no one sees us, where we believe we are safe and can think or imagine or feel whatever: chaos (confusion) or cosmos (order)?
That inside is an inner space where we keep and treasure what we believe is important to us: the image we have of ourselves, what validates us. Yes. What validates and reinforces our values and our feelings and emotions of love, gratitude, trust, joy, courage…; and equally our resentments, sadness, guilt, and disappointments.
Science locates this inner space in the brain; specifically in the cerebellum, if what we store relates to our survival; or in the neocortex, if the matter is emotional. Or in the front of the brain, if it’s about intellectual-rational matters… All these regions of our brain store the images, information, and memories that constitute the being I think—I believe I am, the set of ideas and beliefs through which I observe the world and relate to my environment: that’s my operating system (OS).
In the course of life, sooner or later, I begin to sense that I am something more; suddenly, I feel that I am…; and the being I feel I am doesn’t have a specific place in the being in which I feel what I feel. I realize, at a given moment, that there is something more, that I am an immaterial being in my perception of myself: I am a body, yes, but I am not just a body; I feel emotions, yes, but I am not just emotions; I have ideas, I think, yes, but I am not just thoughts. I am, then, a spiritual being; and the spiritual being is not dense material, which is why I could not rationally understand it from a scientific point of view. This being so, it is best that we descend from the brain to the heart and converse from there, from that physical space where everything we do is born, with serenity, generosity, balance, integrity, orderly and orderly love.
In the heart, we are all brothers and sisters; we serve and accept our neighbors, our friends, and those in need. From the heart, we integrate, we listen, we understand, we forgive. Judgments, lies, divisions, and ill intentions do not arise in the heart. To live from the heart is to live in love and harmony; it is to be able to grow our selves by giving the best that we are. And as we grow, we can face vicissitudes, problems, and conflicts by integrating and dissolving them in our inner order. And there, in that order, where divisions cease, where we feel that we are part of a whole and act in coherence, Peace is born.
Because Peace is not the absence of conflicts or problems. Peace is that “permission” we give to our inner being, to grow in reconciliation, solidarity, service, and unconditional love. Peace is putting ourselves in the other person’s shoes and, by understanding them, loving them.