Tuesday, January 28, 2025

Peace is a choice for evolution (1/29)


PEACE CLASS with Mandy Kahn
Friends, Peace Class meets tonight (Wednesday). To join us, simply click on this Zoom link at 6:00 pm (Pacific Time) on Jan. 29th:
Feel free to share this link with friends and fellow humans. ALL are welcome. At last week's class, we talked about THE LAW OF PEACE-BY-CHOICE.

THE LAW OF PEACE-BY-CHOICE
Mindfulness Yoga at PRS: Meditating w/ Chaos & Uncertainty, multiple dates (Eventbrite)
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Peace, Love, and Happiness versus? Your choice.
Sooner or later, all beings choose to live in a way that is peaceful, one that honors all beings. Peace-by-choice is the direction of all spiritual evolution. Choosing is not enforced; there is no need to enforce it.

A peaceful way of being is always ultimately chosen. There is no expected timeline for choosing to live in a peaceful and loving way. There is simply a natural law that all will choose to live this way eventually. Notice that it was not said that all must choose to live this way. No one ever has to choose it.

What's so great about sustainable practices?
But time is unending. In all that time-without-end, eventually everyone does choose it. We'll call this the Law of Peace-by-Choice. Think of it as a natural law, a bit like gravity. Gravity is not enforced; it simply exists. Peace-by-choice is not enforced — it is simply a path that all will eventually walk. [Could there be war without end? That would me unmanageable, untenable, and ultimately unsustainable, whereas peace is sustainable].

There is no external expectation regarding how quickly peace is chosen, and there is no time limit. Some may spend many lifetimes exploring other choices before choosing a peaceful way of being. And others may choose a peaceful expression right away. It is up to every being to choose how quickly that being wants to evolve.

Peace-by-choice is always the forward direction of evolution. Here's an analogy that helps explain how this law functions: Imagine a person lives in a hotel and that, at every meal, she may choose to eat whatever she likes from a large and varied buffet. Among the many options available is a cookie that we'll call the Peace Cookie. This person has complete free will to eat or not eat that cookie. There are many other desserts to choose from — war cakes and cruelty pies, massacre meringues and mass bombing mousses, and of course smart-Alec tarts.

The great clock in the sky says time's passing.
Perhaps this person might go an entire lifetime without trying this one delicious cookie, given there are so many other options to explore. But to understand how the law of peace-by-choice works, one must come to understand the endlessness of time (going on for aeons as explained by the Buddha).

If that person does not choose the cookie of peace during her first lifetime, she will be reborn again and will again have absolute free will to choose whatever she'd like from the buffet. And if she doesn't choose peace during her second lifetime, there will be a third and so on ad nauseum.

This process can go on as long as the chooser likes [that is, until she does something about it to bring all suffering to an end and gain nirvana]. Eventually, that cookie will be chosen. It might take thousands of lifetimes to choose it, or it might be chosen quickly.

It's not that it must be chosen but rather that, eventually, it always is chosen. Why? Eventually, everything else is unsustainable. Eventually, that person becomes curious about that cookie. At some point, all other options will have been tried. At some point, that cookie will become the most appealing option. Then it will be chosen.

And only when the cookie of peace has been eaten will the person realize that it is unlike every other food available at the buffet. It's not just a food — but a doorway to a new kind of experience. It's a doorway out of this dingy hotel for good. There is never any external pressure to try that cookie. It is simply always made available. There may even be obstacles to it. It is the free will of every person to choose it or not to choose it at any given moment. Free will is always honored by the universe.
And the law of peace-by-choice functions everywhere in the universe. All beings, wherever they reappear and whenever they are reborn, are subject to this law.

This law is how we evolve. There is a gravity-like pull that draws us towards choosing peace, but there is also a spirit around us that respects our timing and honors our free will. This law applies to us, and it applies to our neighbors. No matter how our neighbors might act, they are evolving towards their own peacefulness.

They might be evolving by not choosing peace yet. They might be evolving by eating a massacre meringue, or by shoveling slices of war cake right down others' throats. They might be evolving by appearing to do whatever seems to be the furthest thing from expressing peacefulness that they can find to do. Our neighbors might choose to furiously sample everything at that buffet, life after life, until they tire themselves out, until they discover for themselves how it feels to choose what isn't peace.

We might look at our neighbors and think, "No people could be further from peacefulness." However, there isn't anyone who isn't evolving towards choosing peacefulness at their own pace at all times. We do not need to regulate our neighbor's peace-choosing process because it is already regulated by natural law.

All-that-is has already determined that our neighbors will choose peace eventually. Knowing that, we can feel free to focus on our own evolution. Our neighbor's pace is our neighbors' choice to make. The opportunity we were reborn to have is the opportunity of the self. The question we came here to consider is this one: How quickly do I choose to evolve?
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