Mandy Kahn's Peace Class at PRS (12/7)

Friends, those who feel called, join Mandy Kahn tonight at 6:00 pm Pacific on Zoom for "Peace Class." The Zoom link to tonight’s class is found below.

Below the Zoom link, find the text of the peace talk given during last week’s class, “Peace ‘Solves’ All of Society’s ‘Problems’ at Once.”

All are welcome to join tonight’s gathering, so feel free to share with friends. No prior signup is required for attendance and Peace Class is always FREE. Why? Free people free people (just as Hurt people hurt people).

Peace Class Instructor Mandy Kahn, Philosophical Research Society prs.org

Mandy Kahn invites all to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: Peace Class 2022-2023 Time: Dec 7, 2022 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85803910628 Meeting ID: 858 0391 0628 One tap mobile +16694449171,,85803910628# US +16699009128,,85803910628# US (San Jose) Dial by your location +1 669 444 9171 US +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) +1 253 205 0468 US +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 719 359 4580 US +1 360 209 5623 US +1 386 347 5053 US +1 507 473 4847 US +1 564 217 2000 US +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) +1 646 931 3860 US +1 689 278 1000 US +1 301 715 8592 US (Washington DC) +1 305 224 1968 US +1 309 205 3325 US +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) Meeting ID: 858 0391 0628 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kSImDsT6j

PEACE “SOLVES” ALL OF SOCIETY’S “PROBLEMS” AT ONCE

Mandy Kahn’s Peace Class HANDOUT 40

Peace “solves” all of society’s “problems” at once. I have put “solves” and “problems” in quotes here because, from peace’s perspective, there are only situations, not problems. And situations are simply evolved from and into a more loving state.

From peace’s perspective, there’s nothing to “solve," for there is only the opportunity, if one so chooses, to evolve. But to help communication, I’ll use the terms “solve” and “problems” here. All of society’s “problems” are part of the same situation: a world in which most beings are directed by fear rather than carried by love.

Every being has a choice: s/he can choose to be mind-led and to react to situations from a place of fear, or h/she can choose to be heart-led and operate from a loving and peaceful perspective. There are two centers of operation within every person, and every person can choose which operating system to set as “primary” within themselves.

Peace evolves those who choose to work with it out of the fear state and into a love-based operating system, if this is their choice. When many choose to do this, what it looks like, to those with a separated perspective, is all of society’s “problems” being “solved” at once, almost miraculously. But change is actually happening very practically. Here’s what’s taking place.

Let’s take, as an example, the issue of plastics and how they fail to biodegrade and how their existence and their production is polluting our planet. To a person operating on the fear-based side of the spectrum, this problem would seem almost insurmountable.

That person would see billions of people dependent upon products distributed in plastics and all the factories already built to make things from plastics and the power of the corporations that benefit from the use and low cost of plastics, and the size and monetary wealth of these corporations, and the political power and influence of these corporations, and that person would likely say, "This situation is unsolvable."  But this situation is very easily solvable.

As people connect with peace, they will begin to shift, in their own time, and by way of their own choice, into a love-based way of navigating. And from this new love-based system, they will be able to see new ways to innovate. And new, earth-friendly, cost-efficient means of packaging will emerge that will unseat plastic.

The heart-based system births continual innovation. The heart is the place of genius in the body. It’s the place of innovation. It’s the place of world-changing and world-evolving and population-evolving ideas. The fear-based system, and its mind-led way of doing things, recommends small steps forward — not innovations, but advancements, and by very small increments.

The heart is the place of great leaps. Genius can only arrive through the doorway of the heart. That’s physiological, and it’s unchangeable. So as more people transition into the heart-led way of being, we will enter the Era of Innovation. What had seemed like “problems” to the separated mind will be seen from a new, higher perspective. And innovations will flow as they never have before.

So with regard to plastics, two things will happen. One, those who have evolved to a love-based perspective will simply not want to buy things that are sold in plastic. And they will represent a larger and larger market share, until it will become profitable to find a way to serve them.

Two, some of those who are heart-led will begin to intuit new ways to package things. They’ll discover new materials that are organic to the planet, and inexpensive, and biodegrade effortlessly, that can easily be made into packaging. They’ll make these the new materials viable and available, and these new packages will become beloved and popular. And they will evolve into holding more and more market share until plastic is phased out completely.

And this can happen very quickly. It is only the rate at which individuals choose to peacen (peace out) that will determine the speed at which this occurs. So it is the love-based perspective that will solve our plastics “problem.”

That same evolution — people choosing to transition into a loving perspective from a fear-based perspective — will “solve” all the world’s major “problems” simultaneously. It will transition us out of ongoing “conflicts” or “wars,” for example.

It will transition in new systems that honor and support all beings and support and honor the planet. It will transition us into new and more loving methods of educating our children. It will transition us into a new and nourishing diet.

It will transition us into a new and loving agricultural system. It will transition us into a medical system that fully understands the body, including the energetic body.

What is a hate crime? It is a symptom of a separated perspective. What is pollution? It is a symptom of a separated perspective. What is mass incarceration? It is a symptom of a separated perspective.

What is war? It is a symptom of a separated perspective. From a separated perspective, any of these “issues” might seem huge and unsolvable. But through the doorway of a love-based perspective, new innovations will emerge that will seem like miracles — innovations that the mind could never have discovered.

Innovations only the heart can perceive and present. And because we will be working with the heart, and the heart is the place of all knowing, these innovations will be easy to implement and convenient and inexpensive. They will so perfectly transition us out of the old system that they will feel like miracles.

When the body gets sick, one has the opportunity to treat each symptom individually, or to treat the whole system. A deficiency in a certain vitamin, for example, might result in a rash, compromised eyesight, migraine headaches and chronic fatigue. One can treat the rash with a cream, and the eyesight with glasses, and headaches with pills, and chronic fatigue with coffee.

But as long as that vitamin is absent, these symptoms will continue to be present. Simply listening to the body, and learning what is missing, and supplying what is missing will transition the whole system back to health, and these individual symptoms will disappear all at once.

We can choose to work on each of our collective “problems” separately. But if we work with peace, we are working with the most efficient substance that exists in the most efficient way possible. We are transitioning our human community out of all our “problems” at once.

We are healing our rash and our headaches and our fatigue and our degrading eyesight in one elegant motion. Now, from peace’s perspective, even physical ailments are simply situations, not problems. Peace judges nothing as good or bad, whereas we have a preference for good health.

But from our perspective, and to use our language, this transition will feel like “healing” the body of the whole human collective at once: healing all our “problems,” which are simply the symptoms of a fear-based operating system and emerging in head-to-toe excellent health.

These “symptoms” have felt painful and almost unendurable; we have called living with them “the human condition.” But agony is not an inherent human condition; it is a symptom experienced by a person who is human suppressing his or her inherent humanity — that loving and peaceful true nature — in favor of “surviving” in a world that teaches something different about what we are and who we are.

This agony is the agony of separation from our loving knowing of ourselves, and a loving experience of ourselves, and of each other. Agony is not the human condition. It is a temporary symptom that clears up quickly — and permanently — when one steps into a loving perspective.

Peace “heals” this “symptom,” this “problem,” to speak from a separated perspective. What peace is doing, more technically, is evolving us into a fuller experience of ourselves — a fuller and more accurate experience of ourselves. This feels good because it feels right.

It feels accurate when we are ourselves. It feels uncomfortable to live as something other than what feels truly authentic to us. We can perceive something “off” about our situation when we must survive in a system that does not understand us and does not accurately define us.

When we are understood, and when we experience ourselves as who we are, it feels good, and right. All that precedes that “good” and “right” experience of our accurate nature is what we have called the “human condition.” But the true human condition — the evolved human condition — is a perpetual state of right-feeling, and of peace.

** Taught by Mandy Kahn, Peace Class is a weekly gathering that brings participants together to build inner peace and world peace in community. Each meeting of Peace Class presents a stand-alone lesson; participants are invited to drop in for any meeting of the class or to join us for the class series. At each class, participants will be presented with a short talk that elucidates one aspect of the nature of peace and how to engage it. That talk will be followed by a journaling-based practice that gives each participant the opportunity to develop a set of peace-building tools they can use at any time. Each hour-long class also includes a collective peace meditation, teachings about pioneer peacebuilders like Peace Pilgrim, and the opportunity to share one’s personal peace-building discoveries with the group. Some of Peace Class’s past topics have included: how to engage the healing perspective of the Peace Mind, how self-love seeds world peace, how stepping from the guilt cycle allows inner peace to occur naturally, how inner peace evolves our physical bodies, and how to use the mantra “I honor all beings” to build collective peace. We’re grateful to be joined by peace advocates from around the world in this supportive online space. We hope you’ll join us. Details: *Peace Class is a free, weekly Zoom-based gathering presented by the Philosophical Research Society and led by Mandy Kahn. It takes place every Wednesday night at 6 p.m. Pacific Time. *Each meeting of the class presents a stand-alone lesson; anyone is welcome to drop in for one class or to come for the series. *Attendees are welcome to participate in the interactive aspects of the class or to keep their cameras off and just observe. About Mandy Kahn Mandy Kahn is a poet and peace teacher based in Los Angeles. She’s the author of three collections of poetry, Glenn Gould’s Chair (2017), Math, Heaven, Time (2014) and the forthcoming Holy Doors (2023). Her poems have been included in the Best American Poetry anthology series, have been read on BBC Radio, and have been featured in former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s newspaper column American Life in Poetry. She has given readings at Cambridge University, the Getty Museum, the New School, and the Barrick Museum, has been profiled in the magazines Flaunt, Issue and Malibu, and has been interviewed by The Los Angeles Review of Books. She’s also the subject of Courtney Sell’s feature-length documentary Peace Piece: The Immersive Poems of Mandy Kahn. Kahn holds a degree in English from UC Berkeley. She serves as the Philosophical Research Society’s Contributing Writer, and prior, served two years as its Artist-in-Residence. She’s currently in the process of turning her past peace talks into a book. mandykahn.com ** Peace Class attendees should bring something to write with and something to write on. Attendees are welcome to participate in the interactive aspects of the class or to keep their cameras off and just observe. Feel free to use the time converter link below to see what time 6 p.m. PT translates to in your area: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html SUBSCRIBE: If you’d like to join the email list for Peace Class, simply sign up using the form at the bottom of this page. FREE PEACE TALKS: If you’d like a peace talk to be presented to your organization or group, simply contact Mandy Kahn.