Peacewalker Through Fields of Tumult

"What happens when someone won't let you stay in peace? Someone for whom words do not work?" -Kanaka from Halawa Prison

We can bandy about words like peace all we like, but what does peace really mean in the midst of conflict? Asked by a man in prison, we sat with the brutal reality of this question.

This is what arose:

Peace is not a peaceful situation. It is not peace of mind. It is not peaceful emotions. Nor is it a body in perfect health or free from danger.

Peace is that within you that is untouched by situation, mind, emotion, and body. You may still find yourself face-to-face with a hostile environment, a chaos-mind, consuming emotion, and a body under siege. But if you know that place of peace within, then nothing about the situation, mind, emotion, or body needs to change for you to be at peace: peacewalker through fields of tumult.

Emotions seem to be the hardest to reconcile with unshakeable peace. Let us consider, as the peace-that-you-are, you will still feel. You can feel sadness, anger, and frustration. The peacewalker feels all emotions in their entirety without trying to run or change them. Doing so, emotions come, have their expression, and pass through — the peacewalker feels emotions in their truth.

Paradoxically, from that place that does not rely on change to be at peace, you can take action with the desire for change — knowing that change or no-change, peace is already at-hand.

The original question asks about people who, "won't let you stay in peace." Are you up to finding a peace that transcends circumstance?