Relational Peace From the Inside Out

This may be the greatest relational position of heart to acquire:

“I can neither harm, nor be harmed.”

Imagine that, as a position of personality, nurtured within—acknowledging now that any of us can graduate above our present personalities, in spite of what we’ve learned—for the betterment of us and all we come into contact with. If we are committed to the above, and we can achieve it, we live a happy life and so do others, so far as their interactions with us are concerned.

This peace we discuss—to remain committed to neither harming, nor being harmed—is, first and foremost, an inside job. It has next to nothing to do with other people.

Nurturing Quietness And Kindness Within

How are we to be neither harming nor susceptible to being harmed in the overall context of our relational lives? How do we deal with the bullying element, for instance?

We know that certain personalities may attract bullying; those susceptible to harm. It is fascinating the link between those who were once bullied and those who sometimes end up becoming a bully. We can theorise that if we are susceptible to harm, we, as a human reciprocal response, have then the potential to harm others.

In protecting others, we need to work first on ourselves.

If we are to work on ourselves, making every effort to develop strategies so harm does not befall us, we do so by nurturing quietness and kindness within. By doing this we halt the cycle of inner violence, given that our submission to tyranny becomes an attack on our self-structure. And if we stop the cycle of inner violence, we stop the cycle of violence toward others. The more self-respect we have, the more respect for others we have.

We have to understand that none of the abuses that occurred to us were our fault.

We also need to understand that those that abused us were, themselves, earlier on, subjects of abuse. They have hurt us because they had been hurt. Surely, once we allow God to heal our hurts, we begin to have compassionate empathy for them. Nobody asks to be abused. And it becomes a repeating cycle.

Forging Relational Peace From Its Centre – Within Ourselves

There should be no complex way of saying this.

Peace with others commences from peace within. If we neither harm nor can be harmed we have found a safe place in ourselves.

We take care to ensure we provide safety for ourselves; the key benefactors will then be others.

Sometimes our relationship outcomes are dependent on how we respond. And how we respond to others reflects, in unconscious ways, how we respond to ourselves. It is right to question our anger—not to judge it, but to enquire of it; to learn about what is going on deeper down.

If our relationships are chaotic, and there is much conflict, we can expect the same environment is mirrored within—a chaotic and conflicted environment within both produces and is affected by the chaotic and conflicted environment from without.

We are mirrors of our world. The world appears to us as we see ourselves. If it is a harsh place, we have, perhaps without understanding, nurtured a harsh place within. If it is a place of beauty, it is beauty we have nurtured within. What do we wish to see?

Whatever we nurture within is what bursts forth. Whatever of the incoming world is accepted within, that is what we are becoming.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.