How to Apply Your Intention Toward Peace in All Your Relationships

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MAUDE: The road toward peace within all your relationships begins with your intention to have this experience. It comes from a strong attraction to it that starts to replace old habits of interaction. Often, we develop this intent without knowing how to bring it to life in our connections, or what that intention will be like when we apply it.

To move toward such an intent, begin wherever you are in understanding what it might look like in practice. First, look inside at your images of that kind of peace. What do you see? We all associate this with different ideas and actual experiences. Some see it as an absence of elements: discord, division, unease, anger, being triggered, misunderstanding, separation, distance. Some of us see it as the presence of a deep sense of calm, balance, naturalness, contentedness, presence, trust, safety, ease.

Whatever comes up for you, reach into it, picture it, become familiar with how it feels to you; taste it, smell it, bring it to life within yourself. When you select this as your intent, you make a choice. This is what you want; this is the place where you want your relationships to dwell. That choice becomes a core value, residing centrally within you. Such an intention toward peace is powerful and grows ever stronger as you feed it. You feed it with that choice, and turn to it whenever there is a disturbance in the force.

When you are confronted with interactions that don’t fit with that sense of peace, or that trigger reactions within you that disturb it, Pause, with a capital P. You are seeking to respond to the choice you have made, not react to old stuff or fears. You are going to bring your intention into action by responding from that place of peace that you have chosen. This does not apply to situations that are an actual threat or require a different kind of response. In either case, you want to take enough time to assess and make a choice of how to respond, not be driven by instincts or old stories. It is best to practice this within your deep and developed relationships first.

Peace is a dynamic, living reality. It is something that can be experienced between people who have made a choice and come to a decision about where they are going to give their energy. It starts within you and spreads to each relationship you have. For me, it is full of joy and an inner sense of well-being. When it bounces back and forth between people through the sharing of love and a true sense of kinship with each other, miracles become possible.

PHIL: We talk about relationships and draw on our direct experience, but that can give the impression that we are writing exclusively for couples, which is not so. The peaceful quality we have is something that can be sought with any other person. We take the feeling that we have and approach everybody the same way. It will not always be recognized or reciprocated, but I strive to maintain that equanimity. I used to use Dick Cheney as my ultimate challenge; now it is a different cast of characters.

So I want to speak about how we have a peaceful relationship, and one thing that stands out for me is that it has been consistent from day one, and can this be a happy accident? No, it has to be something we actively do; there must be an intention there. It might seem strange to be inferring this, because most intentions are explicit: I intend to clean my desk, etc., but this intention is hard to see in action. It manifests whenever we take different courses on something that affects both of us. I can argue my case, but also look at it from Maude’s viewpoint, and we are always able to find some middle way. That’s a story all by itself; the point I want to make here is that neither of us chooses to squabble, and there – in that choice – is the intention to live harmoniously with each other.

I will add that for this to be possible, it is necessary to be aware that something is happening, rather than simply reacting. You have to pull the two apart, making a space between the action and the response, so you give yourself a chance to have a response rather than a reaction. For me, that doesn’t always happen immediately, but usually fast enough that I am not drawn down into the maelstrom.

I think additionally that I need to say something about the state of peace, because if you don’t recognize and appreciate it, it’s hard to have the intention of being peaceful! For me, it is a natural state of calmness, of being rather than doing, a centered feeling of being myself. Obviously, nature didn’t design us to be this way at all times; survival needs self-defense at the least. But let me suggest that it is our natural state, and if we are not there much of the time, something is wrong with us, our lifestyle, or our culture. And to be that way requires intention.

Photo credit: Maude Mayes
Photo note: This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before. Maya Angelou

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