How Inner Peace Brings World Peace

We all want to see peace in the outer world, but can our own inner peace affect the greater whole? How can one person choosing to create peace within save someone from committing an act of violence?

According to the butterfly effect, a concept that comes to us from chaos theory, a small change in the universal energy field that connects everyone and everything can bring about a large change somewhere else, so the beating of a butterfly’s wings could, conceivably, affect a storm thousands of miles away.

Finding Inner Peace

Achieving a state of inner peace through practicing stillness, being contemplative, and spending time in nature feels good and contributes to our feeling a sense of well-being, but does it actually do anything for anyone but us—and perhaps the people closest to us?

Maybe we need to think about our inner peace as reaching far beyond the limits of our bodies and personal energy fields. We know that in the energy field we all share with the earth and her creatures, an animal can sense its way back home from miles away, picking up on signals within the field that even the most sophisticated scientific instruments can’t perceive. What if someone seeking peace or even simply opening their heart to feeling it can be reached by the peace we generate within and radiate outward?

What if believing in our interconnectedness with the universe keeps us mindful of our power and causes us to make conscious choices to be more understanding, kind, and compassionate in everyday interactions? Imagine how your inner peace might affect others. What might change? Imagine your inner peace will now be traveling with others as they go on to their next destination, affecting even more people who carry it to their next destinations as well. What if your inner peace will travel along invisible currents in our shared energy field, affecting some anxious or angry stranger who today needs to feel peace within?

Acting on Inner Peace

We may never have the measuring instruments to prove that our inner peace can bring about outer peace, but we can choose to believe it and act on it. We might decide we will listen a little longer to someone before injecting our opinion or trying to think of what we will say in response just as soon as they stop talking.

Sacred listening means holding space for someone to express themselves and feel heard by someone offering their undivided attention. It’s a type of listening that contributes to peacefulness in our communities.

We can also act on our inner peace by acknowledging that what is true for someone else may not feel true for us. We can simply sit with that conflict in beliefs and perceptions, contemplating it. Choosing to experience inner peace during a disagreement might help us find common ground with others and solutions that can help everyone to feel they have been heard and respected.

You can act on your inner peace by removing the barriers between you and others, sharing your peace as you share your “piece.” Your act of peaceful connection with others might even change the mood of people around you. As you bring about peace in your small corner of the world, you can choose to picture that peace traveling along an invisible thread extending out from you and your energy field and maybe even coming back to you someday in an unexpected way.

Pay attention when a feeling of peace arises in you. You might want to ask yourself, where did this peace come from? Did I create it, or did I tap into it? Where will this peace go as I, embodying it, allow it to radiate outward into the energy field we all share?

Let your peace travel in mysterious and invisible ways. Remain open to the possibility that the peace within will become the peace in the world as easily as a butterfly beats its wings.

Want more of Carl’s writing? Check out the story “Engage Nature's Healing Energies.”