Allure of Conflict Sabotages Peace

by Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters)

from Art and Science of Raja Yoga

Peace, for many, is the mere absence of conflict. The peace they long for is a gentle retirement in old age; a simple cottage in the mountains or by the sea; a secured income; and the certainty that any crisis that may come their way will be met with a minimum of effort and worry.

Yet, often, when we retire from a life of intense activity, without continued challenges, we succumb to the perils of old age. Something similar happens in the absence of conflict. What begins as peace soon gives way to boredom. The dream cottage is idyllic perhaps for a weekend. Then it becomes a dreary prison.

Peace is a goal of yoga. The longing for peace is instinctive, but the peace of the soul, dynamic, expanding to the consciousness, the very opposite of stagnation, is too easily mistaken by the worldly mind for sleep and other negative states of being.

The Bhagavad Gita describes the spiritual path as a battle bet-ween the forces of light and darkness in our consciousness. The battlefield where the discourse between Krishna and Arjuna takes place is, in fact, the field of man's inner consciousness.

True spiritual peace is not passive; rather, it is a state of victory, of a fight well fought and of the certainty that one has overcome. It is not a wall placed protectively around one to shut out the horrors of life; it is a blinding light, banishing those horrors into non-existence. The path of progress must be seen as an overcoming. No man ever slid downhill into heaven. The path has been described as an ascent up a mountain, to be achieved only after hardship. The image of Mt Meru, or of Mt Carmel, is descriptive of the actual ascent of consciousness that takes place in the inner realm. In spiritual growth, for every setback there is an increased determination to succeed; for every obstacle there is an increasing surge of energy.

On the spiritual path, because of the nature of duality, even painful experiences have some joy. Though we may not consciously enjoy them when they happen, it cannot be gainsaid that we enjoy talking about them in retrospect, that we even revel in them, once they are over.

And although a certain amount of pain lurks in all worldly happiness—the pain of knowing, for example, that a happy day today must surrender to the drabness of a routine existence tomorrow—there is enough enjoyment in the pleasures of the moment to make one reluctant to abandon them.

Man is not easily weaned from his attachment to the ebb and flow of this relative, and endlessly contradictory, world. Although spiri- tual joy is incomparably greater than material happiness, even the devotee is typically reluctant to give up the lower for the higher. He finds it difficult to imagine that the very energy with which he enjoys lesser pleasures is the same that helps him find bliss in the Spirit. Spiritual joy is free of boredom.

Spiritual awakening is accompanied by a rising energy and consciousness in the spine. In this spiritual state, one may indeed dance, laugh, and sing with unending gladness, enveloped in inner joy. All joy lies in giving, in the raising of one's energy, in expansion, in the dynamic application of one's will. All peace, to be true and lasting, lies in this sort of uplift, not in the passive "flow-with-it" consciousness that is gaining popularity. Peace is a mind soaring in the free skies of inner consciousness.