Take Four

Here comes another style Change, and it’s all because of the dreaded “ISM’S”!
Capitalism. Communism. Racism. Truism. Criticism. Cynicism. Fanaticism. Catholicism. Paganism. Mysticism. Sexism. And so on, and on. While these words are not inherently evil themselves, what they do to your Mind is.
Each word has the power to dredge up in your Unconscious, Subconscious, and Conscious Mind all the knowledge your belief structure relies on, true of false. Your experience will have given you a healthy (or unhealthy) bias, and you will instantly form “Attitudes” based on what you recollect.
Your Attitudes will drive your Feelings and Emotions, and depending on the strength of what you feel, your ability to observe or inculcate new information will be limited to some extent.
Nothing has happened. No event has taken place. All that has occurred is that you have, in this case, read a particular “Word” – let’s say “Racism”, for example.
Your mind suddenly fills with images and thoughts, feelings and Emotions, all centred on your selectively filtered previous experiential learning.
This is what Language is all about. Iconic values, symbols, and Mindsets and pictures which make up your memory store. We have learned a lot about Communication, and the principles involved in Leadership, Motivation, and Personality. We understand that each Person is going to learn things at their own rate, and for their own reasons. We also have seen how specific Personality Styles have “rules” which enable us to Communicate with them efficiently.
Use of Language is something as a Peacemaker you must pay great attention to. Just using one wrong word to a Director can completely tilt a discussion away from your Objective, as they intuitively “flinch” from it. They may not even be aware of doing it, but subconsciously, the damage will be done, and instead of listening to you with a clear Mind, they will have their defences up, actively looking for the next “ugly” word.
The problem with a Socialiser is that the wrong word will send them off into an Emotional journey of Mental fantasies, and their ears will be more closed than open! The Thinker will immediately start an internal debate with themselves, and not hear anything more that you are saying. And the poor Relator will loose the thread of the conversation by trying to work out how to help you overcome your gaff.
And it doesn’t necessarily have to be a word. It can be a concept or idea that you are trying to Communicate. A hint – before starting any Communication, do a reality check – find out where everyone’s Attitudes are, where they are Emotionally, and what they are most likely to be receptive to. Use stories to defuse any perception of wrongful intent, and always depersonalise the Communication and invite participation and Ownership in the Idea or Concept.
Find someone to “Own” the conversation, and let them set the pace for you.
See if you can find some clues to how to do this in what follows.
Making Peace with the Swimming Pool

Making Peace is a bit like a swimming pool - it has definite limits, beyond which you can't go. Only you can choose to swim in the deep end, or wallow in the shallows. Or just stand on the edge and watch everyone else have all the fun.
Consider this story ……

Clint Eastwood, resplendent in his Airline Captain's uniform, four gold stripes proudly worn on each arm, struts purposefully into the cockpit of the Boeing 707.
"Good morning Captain," the Second Officer says, his neck held at a strange angle by the blunt barrel of a heavy automatic pistol. The terrorist smiles, his face a mass of scars and ugliness, and gestures for Clint to take his seat.
"Yes, good morning, my Captain," he says mockingly, resting back on the edge of the dead Flight Engineer's table. "Now, if you wouldn't mind, get us airborne as quickly as you can." Clint squints manfully at the camera, settles into his seat, and then turns to his Co-pilot.
"Let's get this rolling," he says through clenched teeth, pushing the four throttles to the firewall. The big jet stutters, trembles, then slowly begins to move as the power of the flame spewing engines surges through the airframe.
In a matter of seconds, the jet is roaring down the runway at over 100 knots, nibbling at the air, getting ready to fly. For some reason, call it instinct if you will, the Co-pilot is alerted by Clint's decided lack of airline procedure, and casually asks out of the corner of his mouth, "Have you ever flown an aircraft before, Captain?"
"Not a one," Clint replies, jamming his feet on the brakes, screwing the huge whale of an aircraft off into the grass verge. As all Hell breaks out in the cockpit, terrorist fighting Clint, Clint fighting the aircraft, the Co-pilot fighting everybody, we are left with the certain feeling that it sometimes takes just a little more than putting on the uniform with the command stripes, to acquire the necessary skills we need in Life!
Luckily, all this happened in a movie, and, yes, the bad guys get shot to bits, the passengers are rescued, and Clint gets to carve another two or three notches on the handle of his 44 magnum pistol (the most powerful hand-gun in the world!).
Unfortunately, Life is not a movie, with endless rehearsals, and the chance to do things over again and again, until they are perfect. And you can't just leave the bits you don't like out, as discards on the cutting room floor. Everything you do affects your soul, and leaves a residue of experience. Every bit of experience contributes either a positive or a negative value to your Peace making ability, and your innate ability to make Peace.
Now experience, by itself, is like so much worthless baggage. You have to internalise the experience, and make it part of your truth, for you to get any real value out of anything you do.
What has all this got to do with Clint pretending to be a jet pilot? Or swimming pools?
Plenty.
Just as putting on the Captain's uniform didn't empower our hero to fly the plane, doing things for the sake of doing them will not empower you, unless you internalise the experience gained in the doing. Internalise (enclose, enfold, take in, make your own) the process, suck in and chew on the understanding, discard what you don't want, then keep all the good bits. That's how you develop your Peace making ability. Not by striving for or wearing the mantle of recognition, but by obtaining the skills and the experience to do the job. By trying and failing, making mistakes, learning, and then improving as you exercise your HOT process, you BREATH, SMILE, and get ready to RACE.
A swimming pool (a traditional one) has four sides, two of which are long, and two of which are short. A deep end and a shallow end, and sometimes a set of stairs allowing easy access. When the pool is empty, you have this huge hole in the ground, which always appears to be larger to the eye than it really is. If you should walk into the hole, an ominous creepy feeling pervades your mind, as the pool seems to dominate your spirit. The lower you go, the further into the pool, the more hollow your voice sounds, and the heavier the air feels.
All that changes when the pool is full. It's soul-tugging emptiness is hidden, and the natural buoyancy of the water helps you to float on the surface. You actually have to work hard at getting down to the bottom, and staying there, without some compensating weights to hold you down.
The hole is the same dimension, it still is as large as it seemed, but now the very nature of the pool has been altered by filling it with water - fulfilling its destiny, as it were. (Allowing it to be used for the purpose for which it was designed and built).
Empty, the pool looms as a discontented object, unfulfilled, lacking in purpose, and poses a danger to all.
Full, it sparkles with joy and fulfilment, encouraging participation, and revels in being used to its fullest extent.
Your soul suffers the same fate as the empty swimming pool whenever you deny it your truest endeavours. Take away its substance, deny it stimulation, reduce your experiential learning, and your soul takes on all the gloomy, despondent, pervading feeling of the huge empty hole in the ground.
But fill your soul with stimulation, new experiences, exquisite samples of your intellect and your skills, and it flourishes and provides an endless stream of energy to your internal batteries, fuelling your Peace making ability.
Just as it is the empty hole in the ground that must be filled before the true purpose of the pool can be realised, the emptiness within you must also be filled so that you can achieve your true purpose.
Making Peace.
Once in the pool, you have several choices. You can play, or you can swim "laps". You can swim between the short sides, or stream up and down between the long ones. You can splash around in the shallows, or power around in the deep end.
You can swim underwater, until you need to BREATHE again, or you can stay on the top.
Or you can just sit quietly off to one side, and watch the wind and the sun play with the water, in peace and tranquillity.
The swimming pool is very much like Life. There are many, many choices, and just as many ways to benefit from them, or not, as the case may be. The point is, it is your Life to determine what you will do with it, but determine something you must. And it is always your choices that determine what your Life will be.
If you choose to float on the surface of the pool, eventually you will have to either get out, or accept drowning. You have a limited amount of energy, which needs replenishing. Simply put, you can't float forever. And if you try, you diminish your Life force progressively to the point beyond which it cannot sustain you any longer.
Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you choose to cruise through Life, you rob yourself of the very essence you need to survive and prosper. Likewise, if you allow yourself to become Stressed, you sink into a cycle or pattern of negative Behaviour that eventually kills you before your time.
But if you float for a predetermined period of time, allowing your mind and body to rest, you are taking advantage of one of the greatest benefits given to mankind.
The ability to actively choose to regulate the environment around you, to suit your purpose-designed activity. Deliberately, and skilfully.
This is the same process as deliberately reducing your exposure to self-induced Stress, by using all that you have discovered here to manage the environment as a Peace Maker.
If you choose to swim long laps, you create the environment within which you can condition your physical state, and enhance your intellect. Controlled physical exertion causes the chemical factory in your body to release millions of naturally beneficial stimulants, helping your body to grow and achieve its potential.
Because your body (the walls of the pool that contain your emptiness) is actively benefiting, your intellect is freed up to spark and refurbish, enhancing your creativity and your ambition. Feel good, act good, look good, and you will be good, at Making Peace.
By choosing the long sides, you are setting your sights on the big target, the one that requires the greatest effort, and promises the greatest reward. And you are using your body to enhance your Peace making ability, but not in a physical way. It is the synergy between the physical effort and your intellect that provides the stimulus for your Peace making ability.
And you can't have one without the other.
If you splash around in the shallows, eventually you will become tired, and flop down, feeling heavy and discontented. The water is not able to support your weight, and you feel uncomfortable because you are neither in it nor on it. It's like indecision and Stress- it robs you of your power, because too much of your energy is being consumed trying to make up for what you haven't got control of.
If you choose to play in the deep end, then all of a sudden you can float (choice one), swim (choice two), dive to the bottom (choice three), do laps (choice four), or just play around with a combination of any of the possibilities (choice five). But you have to make a choice, or you will have to retreat, by getting out of the pool. If you don't, you will eventually drown.
The upshot of this is that if you focus on your ability to become a Peace maker, but choose to muddle your way through, either the process or the attainment of your goals may well sink you - physically, or mentally. It isn't good enough to just jump into the deep end, you need to know what you are going to do once you are there. You need a strategy, and from this strategy, you must develop some tactics.
Strategy is simply knowing what to do when there is apparently nothing to do. Tactics is doing something when there is something to do. So first, the plan - what is the goal you are going to achieve? Become a Peacemaker. And then the action - how are you going to achieve it.
If you want all the Peace making ability that you are capable of generating, you have to develop it like any other energy force - you need a container (your body and your intellect), you need a source (the learning and experiencing process), you need control (your wisdom and compassion), you need an outlet (an objective, or something and someone to focus your Peace making ability on), and you need other People (to act as force-multipliers).
Your Peace making ability will always be limited by something - the amount of energy available, the purity of your soul, the amount of experiential learning you have participated in, the state of your intellect, your ability to focus on your goals, and your willingness to actively choose and execute your strategies and tactics. Just like the pool can only ever hold a predetermined volume of sparkling water, so too your soul can only hold a predetermined quantity of purity.
The one single key to firstly achieving, obtaining, and then being able to use your Peace making ability is locked solidly in your ability to understand other People. You must understand yourself, that is axiomatic to your success. But you must also totally understand other People, so that you can empower them to help you to achieve your great role in Life.
Making Peace.
By yourself, you are always limited by the extent to which you can influence your environment to achieve your objective. But with others actively helping you, you multiply your influence many times more than the sum total of the People involved in your effort. This is called “synergy”, and it is one of the most powerful forces available to the Peacemaker.
To successfully encompass others in Making Peace, you need to know certain things. You must learn what Motivates them. Where they are in the development of their own Peace making ability. What their goals in Life are. And how you can foster, and help them to achieve, their fullest potential.
Imagine that you have chosen the long sides of the pool to swim between. Your strategy is to swim 10 kilometres. This means that you have chosen to go for the biggest goal in your Life, the one that will take the greatest effort, and provide the greatest reward.
You dive in the deep end, and you commence a series of laps. If you have good People at each end, who can continue lapping the pool for you in relay-style, while you occasionally pause to catch your BREATH, then you will quickly start to achieve your goal. Without the good People at each end, you are limited by your personal energy, and your influence is restricted to what you can achieve by yourself. If you don't make the 10 kilometres, you fail. You do not achieve your strategy. When you falter, and start to sink, your achievement is coloured by what you have limited yourself by, and the limitations of your tactics. Your failure bruises your soul, depletes your Peace making ability, and quenches your thirst for taking giant strides.
But you learn, what worked, and what didn’t. You adjust your tempo for the next try, and you change your tactics accordingly.
Never striving for your goal is far worse than trying and failing to attain it. When you choose to do something, you are making a commitment to yourself to execute a Strategy to the fullest of your ability, win, loose or draw. If you believe that you cannot achieve it by yourself, then you are honour-bound to involve as many others as you need to see you through, because you must always be true to yourself, and you must always give yourself the best chance of success.
The greatest salesman in the world is only as successful as the number of People who consent to buy from him. Likewise, you will only achieve your goals if you learn how to involve the skills and abilities of other People in what you choose to do, should it be beyond the limits of a normal man or woman.
Back to the pool. To get good People to stand at each end, swim laps for you on demand, and help you to achieve your goal, is an arduous task. But is both a bold and achievable strategy, if you follow through with an equally well-executed set of tactics, and your personal goal is worthwhile.
You have to identify the People who can swim, and establish their individual capacity. You have to involve them in your goal. You have to Motivate them to swim for you. And you then have to reward them for their effort, so that they may choose to help you in the future.
You can only do this if you truly are aware of what each person is seeking for themselves, and clearly demonstrate how by helping you, they will in turn, be helping themselves.
And any short-changing on your behalf will diminish their capacity to succeed for you, so in cheating them, you ultimately cheat yourself. Nothing sours quicker the taste of victory than the image of a cheat.
This is true of Making Peace. When you cut corners, take the easy way out, short change someone, hold something back by not giving your all, you effectively poison your intellect. The scars on your soul are testimony to this, and the single most damning limitation you can place on the development of your Peace making ability is to attempt to lie or cheat your way to success.
It can never happen. The purity of your soul determines the amount of energy available to be used by you, in anything you do. And your soul has a God-given ability to determine what you will be capable of. You cannot lie to it. You cannot cheat it. You cannot fool it.
Remember HOT?
Just as if you attempted to swim between the short sides to achieve your great distance, you effectively are making your task all that much the harder, because you suddenly have three or four times as many turns to make, robbing you of the vital energy needed to complete the swim.
You will wear yourself out doing the least important thing in the process of achieving your goals - changing direction.
People learn what they want to learn, when they want to learn it. People do things best, when they do things they want to do, when they want to do them. In other words, when there is a heavily internalised desire to learn or do something for "self", it will become the most powerful motivating force in the person with whom you are establishing a relationship.
If it is not already obvious in their bearing, character, or outward stance, then this is what you need to stimulate in everyone you need to swim for you.
You need them to swim for you, but for their reasons. They must understand that they are helping you to achieve your goal, but that they are doing it so that they will achieve some of their goals. And you must become the perfect mirror - only showing them pure, positive, good images, which will enable them to achieve for you (and therefore achieve for themselves) what it is you want of them, in the most efficient manner possible.
Efficiency is a bitter word. It can be charming, but it usually dredges up images of tough black-suited People cracking whips and carrying large stopwatches. But it is a very necessary concept, because like swimming between the short sides, inefficiency is an energy draining, mind numbing, soul-destroying activity that drags you down. Inefficiency is the blackest of all the attitudinal cancers, infecting and corroding all around it. It catches on like wildfire, moving from person to person faster than a speeding bullet.
Simply put, efficiency (competency, effectiveness, practicality, and sensibility) is doing something once, well, and with the minimum of fuss and expended energy. When you are in this mode, all around you adopt the same mindset. It's like a cooling wind on a hot day, that suddenly brings relief - you feel better, you feel energised, and you feel more powerful just for being exposed to it.
When you execute your goals in an efficient manner, you are paying the greatest compliment possible to those People you have chosen to help you achieve your goal. Because by conserving your energy, and minimising the trauma, you are conserving their energy, and maximising their respect for you and your goals.
No one likes to think that they are wasting their time or energy, because both are precious commodities.
If you stop and think about all the People you regard as role models, or People whom you look up to, it will become apparent that part of their attraction is their calmness, their organised manner, their considerate nature, and their engaging personalities. And their ability to make Peace.
For you to be a role model to those around you whom you need to influence and motivate, you also need these qualities.
There is one other quality you should seek in others - because you believe in it yourself - and that is the definite mantle of excellence.
The People you choose to swim for you must be the very best there are, under the circumstances. Just as a chain is weakened by a faulty link, so is overall performance degraded by a poor effort or intent. The quality of what you achieve will always only be as good as the lowest common denominator is capable of executing.
It is of little value to you or your People to achieve the goal, but lose your desire in the process. The attainment of your objective should be the point at which you realise your maximum flux of Peace making ability, not suffer the draining experience of a negative victory.
There are many different sizes and shapes of swimming pool, and all have to be approached cautiously, one at a time, for their lessons in learning in how to become a Peacemaker. And while your ambition to swim 10 kilometres in each may remain the same, with as great an intensity as your original goal, the manner in which you do it will have to change dramatically, depending on the physical qualities of each pool.
This point may seem terribly simple, and obvious. But it is usually the obvious that escapes most People. Some would approach an ornamental kidney-shaped pool, and instantly decide that it isn't even worth the effort to try to swim 10 kilometres. Just the shape of the pool, the assumed degree of difficulty, and the lack of genuine desire is enough to stall them in their tracks, denying them the opportunity of ever achieving their goals.
The person who wants to become a Peacemaker sees the kidney-shaped pool quite differently.
They size it up, measure it out, test the water with their toe, confirm the deeps and shallows, and sometimes, if they are highly committed to achieving their goals, shucks off their clothes, and goes for a test swim. The whole time, they are regarding the shape and nature of the pool as a challenge that must be met in the most efficient way. Not a barrier or obstacle, but a test of their will power, a challenge to their comfort zone.
And by internalising this experience in working out the strategy they must employ to achieve his objective, they are firming up their resolve, giving Life to their vision, and empowering their intellect to assist in arriving at excellent conclusions. These positive attributes will shine from their eyes as they tell their People what it is they must do.
And because you believe so deeply in what must be done, so will everyone else, and with an intensity that exactly matches yours. In effect, the other People will become a mirror of your goal, the physical manifestation of your achievement. You have found the keys to their success, and in the process of unlocking their power, you will achieve your goal.
Every swimming pool in Life has to be swum, at one time or another. You cannot avoid your responsibilities, just as you cannot deny your destiny.
What you can do, is face your future with a pure soul, and engage those around you to force-multiply your talent. Learn to help People find their inner source of Peace making ability, and in the process, learn to use their skills to help you find yours.
And make Peace!

The Third Pregnant Pause

By now you will have noticed the distinct change in Style we alluded to in Take Four. Remember the four Learning Styles?

The Kinaesthetic Learner
has to “feel” the
information.
Tactile cues promote
sound learning,
combined with
visualization.
The Thinker – likes
facts information, detail, and reason.
They build a system to
provide hard core
rationale
The Visual Learner has to “see” the information.
Visual cues trigger the
right responses, and
they learn fast.
The Doer - learns only
by trial and error.
Hardly ever process any information, doesn’t use visual or tactile cues.
Well, what we are doing now is appealing to the different needs of each individual Reader who may be trying to inculcate the theories, observations, and concepts in this book into their own experiences and Mental models. By changing the writing style, we are appealing to a different side of your mind, and by changing the tempo, we are allowing everyone to take away the bits that are important to them.
Remember, People only learn what they want to learn, and when they want to learn it. We are simply trying to make it appetising for you to want to learn about how to make Peace now!
Stay with it, because there are more style and tempo changes to come, and they may suit you even better!
Just remember to BREATHE, be HOT, prepare to RACE, and SMILE.


Making Peace with “I”

There's no one in the whole world more important than you. Instinctively, you may dismiss this notion, and if that is your reaction, then consider this.
Why should anyone allocate any values to you, if you are not prepared to allocate some to yourself? And why should someone else's opinion be higher, or better, than the opinion you hold of yourself?
The answers to this conundrum lie within the confines of your own self-confidence and self-esteem, so if you are unable to immediately and without question accept that you are the key to your Universe, then be patient, and read on.
The development of your Peace making ability relies heavily on how you perceive yourself, not only in the isolation of self-examination, but in the competitive environment of the social structure within which we all live.
Everything has a beginning, middle, and an end. Everything in Life has a start, middle, and a finish. You are born, you live out your Life, and then you die.
Many of us believe that what you do with your Life between birth and death, the "middle", is what "it" - Life - is all about. Many believe that you are the sum total of your actions.
In truth, it's not just what you do that counts, it's how well you try to do it!
It's your performance and Attitude that gives you the buzz, not the achievement.
The journey, not the destination.
Even though you may stand on the ultimate level of success, flushed with the pride of recognition, it is not the instant of reward or acknowledgment that is the pay-off. Your true worth is the sum total of all your experiences, your wins and losses, your successes and failures, and long after the milling crowd has forgotten who you are, and what you did, you will still have the internalised values you acquired through your diligence and effort in getting to your goal.
Understanding is exactly the same - first you come to grips with the fact that you don't know what it is you need to know (to understand), then you go about learning all the facts and things you need, and then, finally, you understand.
Remember the four stages of Learning – unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence.
But it's the process of learning where everything good takes place, and you measure your achievement by what you do with this new understanding. We’ll say that again - "you measure your achievement by what you do with this new understanding" - not by what the understanding is.
Your Peace making ability grows as you do, like a slow burning fuse heading for a gigantic bomb.
You are reading this book, making value judgements as you go, absorbing some points, and selectively filtering out others. You don't even necessarily have to think about it, you just do it. But you don't consider the ability to "read" as any great feat, because you remember the fun and enjoyment you had (and still get) from the process of reading, not the fact that you can read.
Being able to read gives you limitless options in the possible execution of your reading skills. But if you don't use them, then your ability (to read) is worthless.
No winner's medal for learning to read, but plenty of gold medals for using your reading ability to advance your intellect, and learn new things. The same goes for stretching your comprehension, and enhancing your Attitude.
All of which will help you to develop your Peace making ability.
This is what getting new, pure understanding is all about.
If, at the end of the process, you perceive little or no worth for your new understanding, then the understanding you have gained is of little value. But you have achieved a great deal by going through the process of learning - what we call the "middle effort" - and that in itself is valuable, and shouldn't be discounted out of hand. It is this "middle" from where you derive the most benefit, even if you do not achieve your original goal - of getting a new understanding, that you could do something with.
Sounds like double Dutch, doesn't it?
But what it comes down to is as simple as this.
It's what you do with your Life that counts, not what you may or may not collect on the way. Very few of us ever come to truly understand this, and it is perhaps the biggest single problem we all face in growing our Peace making ability to the limits, and not being Stressed out of existence.
Constantly you are faced with the public pressure and perception that you should perform or try to attain standards set by others. But as we have just discovered, the only values you need strive for are your own, and not someone else's.
Because, throughout Life, there is only the one absolute apart from the fact that one-day you will die - and that is the literal truth. Everything else is a derivation, an interpretation, an extrapolation, a perception, or a figment of someone's imagination.
And the literal truth about you, is that you are the only one who can be "you".
No one else can, no matter how hard they may try. You are the only one with your fingerprints. The only one with your special mix of DNA, the sub-molecular biogenetic building blocks that make us each the unique, individual person that we are.
You determine who you will be. You determine what you will be. You determine how you will be perceived by others. You determine how you will be judged by others. You determine how you will be valued by others. You determine how fast or slow you will be - whatever it is you are to be.
And in the final analysis, you are the only one who can determine how successful you are at whatever it is that you have become, or will become in the future, or choose to do.
You will determine how much Peace making ability you develop, and how you use your Peace making ability. No one else can do it for you, even if they wanted to.
Now do you see why "you" are so important - to you?
A lot of every day, you are going to be doing things that are vitally important to you, and your development as a wholesome, integrated personality, but not necessarily as important or vital to those around you.
You have to get "you" right, before anyone else can follow. And that means you have to be a little selfish, examining everything from your perspective, to discover what new and beneficial kernels of wisdom and understanding are there for the taking. It's this constant need to internalise the exterior process that sometimes gets you into trouble with the People around you, even though what you are doing is right, and vital to you. You provide them with the mechanism to self-induce Stress by the way you are dealing with you.
They don't understand what you are doing. They don't understand why, and they don't understand how important it is to you. And because they are not as aware of the process as you are, they attempt to pollute your mind and your value system with heaps of scorn and selfish criticism, which, if you're weak in any area, will work itself into your psyche and become destructive, lessening your Peace making ability, and causing you to self-induce Stress.
It is a natural predatory tendency of the human animal to attack someone weaker than themselves, not just to prove how clever or strong they are, but also to remind you that they know you're weak, and can have you on their terms at any time.
And it is an established fact (but not necessarily a literal truth) that the polluted garbage we take into our psyches from other People is the most damaging of all, right next to the polluted garbage we invent for ourselves!
The simple solution? Develop your own value system, decide on your own self-worth, and confidently radiate your newly professed self-image. And be prepared to upset a few People with your positive stance, because just as the predators like to suborn the weak with their power, they are equally uncomfortable with any display of confidence by you. Let no one person ever put you down for their reasons, and never accept a reflected value less than that which you set for yourself.
After all, you are the only person who can be you, so why should you?
Your Peace making ability depends on you, remember.
There are always only two choices, with lots of potentially confusing alternatives. There's "YES", there's "NO", and then there's all the other stuff between a "YES" and a "NO". You can choose to decide "YES" or "NO", (one choice) or you can wallow around in the grey areas of Life, bouncing from pillar to post, lost in confusion, rationalisation, and indecision. (The other, second choice).
A lot of every precious day is spent in this most damning area of grey. Sometimes you even enjoy it, failing to understand that every second spent in indecision is taking precious Lifetime from you, with absolutely no return!
If you do nothing else with this book on Making Peace, take this to heart - do not wallow between "YES" and "NO".
If you cannot make a "YES", then make a "NO", and start the understanding process to find out and learn what you need to make the "YES". It's that simple. All you have to do is decide to do something, and everything will fall into place.
There's the tried and tested One-Five-Ten rule, origin unknown, that you can fall back on if nothing else comes to mind. It will help you overcome indecision and that most dreaded state, inertia – and the attendant Stress that goes with it.
One means that if you do just something that's 1% positive in the general direction you think the solution to the problem might lay, then something will happen that will head you towards the answer. The idea here is that just by doing something, rather than nothing, you get your creative juices flowing, and open up the fertile world of limitless possibilities.
The value Five is a little bit more focussed - you're looking for a 5% input of energy, streamed towards the probable solution, and experience tells us that you can expect a high probability of success in solving the problem in a relative short time span.
By now you've guessed that the Ten value demands a whole 10% of focussed energy, directed exclusively at resolving the issues. There is little doubt that 10% of your best effort can solve practically any problem, given that some of us cruise along in Life at never more than an estimated 3% of our capacity at any given time!
Every person is an Island, standing alone in a sea of choices, and humankind is the only animal on Earth that has the power to choose and project their self-image for all to see. Let a dog loose in a paddock, and you'll get a lot of holes. Let you loose in a paddock, and you'll get everything from a Shopping Centre to a Space Port, with all the drama in between.
Now, everyone knows this, yet very few ever make the most important choice of all - to do something with their Lives. It's almost as if developing your Peace making ability is too hard. The very fact that you are learning to become a Peacemaker suggests that you are not someone blighted with this deadly, mind-numbing short-sightedness.
You want to empower your intellect, and develop your Peace making ability to its fullest capacity.
The simple problem seems to be that it takes some energy to make a difference, and it is all too easy to sit back and watch Life go by in glorious colour, with stereophonic sound, on a high-definition television set, with some anonymous talking-head doing all the work for you, than it is to participate.
But as you know only too well, you get back out of Life what you put into it.
Not a penny more, not a penny less.
Humankind (yes, you) is the only animal on Earth that has the ability to create, to dream, to speculate, to be creative, to think laterally, and to combine all the natural elements into purpose-designed artefacts. You don't see a lot of cows living in high-rise apartments, or driving expensive cars to chrome and glass towering city buildings, and while a dog was the first animal into Space, it was a Man who put him there.
If it is okay to accept that we are the predominant culture on the surface of the earth, and that it is our destiny to evolve from our humble beginnings into a futuristic society, then why is it not so okay to stand on your own two feet, and be counted for the values you hold dear to your own heart? And develop your Peace making ability as God meant you to do?
Man is the quintessential thinker, dreamer, creator, designer, builder, constructor, motivator, and doer. In fact, throughout all history, in every field of human endeavour, with but one exception, nothing has ever been achieved in this world until a man or a woman has had the vision or idea to do something!
Things do not happen by themselves. You make them happen, or they simply do not take place. If you cannot make a "YES", then make a "NO", and get on with solving the problem that is preventing you from making a "YES." The key issue is to get on with making something happen, and not sitting back in a blue fugue waiting for a miracle!
Science would have us believe that miracles don't really happen, and even if Science is wrong, it is better to do something under your control than be under the control of others. Your Peace making ability is personal. It is yours, and yours alone. You can share the benefits, but you cannot share the power. Only what you do with it.
What the mind can conceive, man can do. I'm sure someone has told you this before. And it's true. Once something has been thought about, it's just a matter of time and resources before it's done, whatever it is.
Look at just one simple, yet humanly enduring example.
In the fourteenth century, just over six hundred years ago, a very clever man dreamed up the concept of manned flight, sitting on a cold, cobblestone floor. From his lofty perch near the top of a buttressed tower, which was usually pressed into service to repel nasty aggressors with bows and arrows, he watched an eagle soar overhead, cutting the sun into shadow and light. It so inspired him he dreamed of being up there, floating on the warm afternoon breeze, peering down at the rich green meadow below. He framed a wild, bizarre idea in his capricious mind, thought about it for a whole day, then sketched it out with a handmade quill, onto a piece of tanned animal hide.
It took another three hundred years for mankind to develop the technology that enabled yet another clever man to actually build this "flying device", and get it to work. He drew up his idea with the handmade prototype of the fountain pen, using a distilled black substance that would later become known as "Indian Ink", in free-flowing broad strokes that gracefully covered five sheets of quality French parchment paper.
The drawings were of a simple hot-air balloon, made out of stitched hand-worked animal skins, amazingly similar to the hide the original drawings had been made on three hundred years before.
Those primitive sketches showed a languorous envelope being filled by the heat from a peat fire, stoked by a terrified blacksmith. The contraption that eventually flew, carrying its creator up some hundreds of feet into the cold mountain air, changing for all time how we would move about our planet, looked like a colourful child's toy that had been made too large!
Just a scant two hundred years later, men have walked on the Moon, sent satellites far out into space to explore the Universe, and routinely use small electronic devices that hold more information and distilled wisdom in one tiny microchip, than existed in the whole of the known world at the time our would-be flier defied all the odds to rise so gracefully above his peers.
What is the secret to all this?
You are!
The Island of "I", the home of your Peace making ability.
Because everything ever achieved by mankind started with a single person, just like you. And that's why it is so important that you get you right. If you accept that the only person you have any real control over is you, then it is up to you to get you in the finest working order possible.
You cannot hope to influence anyone else unless you are in your strongest, purest, most powerful mental condition. And that state of activity starts, and centres on, your self-image.
Bad self-image, weak external perception.
Pure self-image (notice the word "pure", not "perfect"), strong external perception.
You will never be perfect, at least not on the outside, and certainly not perceived as such by someone else. Perfection is something to strive for, knowing that the tiny bit you fall short is no more or less the difference between being Human and being God.
Stop and think about this for a minute.
Companies don't do things, People do.
Motor cars don't go Sunday driving along the beach road, People do.
Apartment blocks and fine houses don't give character to a neighbourhood, the People who design them, decorate them, live in them, and see them for what they really are, do.
The most sophisticated and expensive electronic device is useless, and serves no purpose, unless it is doing the bidding of a person.
The most incredibly efficient shopping plaza with all its attendant regalia of brightly lit malls, colourful shop fronts, enticing signs, and demanding merchandise is dormant and mute, useless in the early morning light, unless, to the melodious clank and clatter of waking commerce, you bring it to Life with your presence.
You may not see yourself as the master of your Universe, but you should, and you are, every time you choose to exert your influence, and use your Peace making ability. Because you were born, (and it is your birthright to be a complete, unique, experiential human being, capable of magnificent thoughts and actions), you at least owe it to yourself to reach your potential, or die trying.
The only limitations placed on you are those you place on yourself - or worse, allow others to place on you. It's very much like the pressure that drives you to take actions you feel uncomfortable about.
You perceive that the pressure is being applied by someone (or some situation) in such a way that you have no alternative but to respond, and do something. The truth is, the pressure may be being applied, but it is your acceptance of the pressure that creates the problem for you, not the other person, or the situation, that seems to be applying the pressure.
This is yet another description of how you self-induce Stress.
If you choose not to respond to the pressure, it will diminish! It may not completely go away, but it will lessen in its intensity.
Let's look at it piece by piece.
If the pressure being applied is from another person, by refusing to let yourself be affected by the pressure, you lessen that person's ability to influence you. By standing firm, self-contained and in control, you empower your intellect, your reflexes, and free up the total sum of all that you have learned and experienced in Life, expressly for the purpose of dealing with the problem.
You bring the mighty force of your Peace making ability to bear on the problem.
If the pressure is being applied by your perception of a physical occurrence - a car crash, a fire, a threat of some kind, or a situation that seems out of your control, by accepting the pressure unchallenged you fuel your "fight or flight" reflex, depriving you of your fullest abilities to think, observe, plan, and act.
You are, in fact, achieving the exact opposite of what you need - you are depowering your intellect, and robbing yourself of your Peace making ability, by accepting the Life shortening effects of Stress.
Now it is extremely hard to agree with this if you are the one being threatened by the speeding train, as it roars down on you, bound hand and foot to the rails!
But ask yourself this one question. What was it that you did in the first place to get yourself into such a dire situation? Without a single doubt, somewhere way back at the start, or soon after, you accepted someone else's pressure, or the assumed or perceived pressure from an untenable situation.
It's exactly the same as the office without a door, with a big sign posted to its frame - "As you can clearly see for yourself, this door is always open, unless you perceive it to be shut!"
Every worthwhile door in Life is always open, should you choose to see it that way. On the other hand, if you perceive it to be shut, why, then, it is, as surely as if it had massive steel bars running across it from top to bottom.
It's how you view the things in Life that determines how and when they can affect you. Smile, and the whole world smiles with you. (Where have you heard that before?)
It doesn't matter who you are, or where you were born, how rich or poor your parents were, how much schooling you got, or what you think you should or shouldn't be capable of, you will never really know what an incredible Life you can have unless you try. Be all the Peacemaker you can be!
And that means that you must be aware, you must seek, you must question, you must try different things, you must read and strive for new understanding, and then you must take risks, in trying to implement what you have learnt.
And you can never willingly accept pressure from another person, of from a situation. You must be in control, and able to use your full facilities, to bring the awesome weight of your experience, wisdom, and understanding to the problem.
The full might of your Peace making ability!
Making mistakes is a very human attribute, because no one person is perfect.
You have never met someone who is, and you never will. You have met many who say they are, act like they are, and even believe they are. But we bet you saw right through them, and perhaps even brought their delusion to their attention.
Even if you didn't get your lights punched out, then it's a fair guess that they are not a friend of yours at this time.
You see, the concept of perfection is a spiritual one, and is truly not obtainable in the physical sense. When was the last time you saw or heard of a perfect motor car? Or a toaster? Or a lawn-mower? Or even a perfect computer?
Perfection, by definition, "completion; making perfect; full development; faultlessness;" is not an achievable thing as far as human beings are concerned, and that goes for anything we do in this Universe.
Those of you who are deeply religious will recognise this statement in the context of the teachings of your Church, Guru, Master, Rabbi, Deacon or Spiritual Leader. The Bible, Koran, Mayan Scrolls, Dead Sea Scrolls, I'Ching, and every other Guide Book you read spells this concept out in exquisite detail, so we won't belabour the point here. It is sufficient for you to understand this secret - don't kill yourself trying for perfection, unless you are striving for spiritual wholeness.
One vital tip. Always give "permission" to those around you to make mistakes, because if you don't, you will be denying them their right to experiment and be human. Just because you seek perfection within yourself, is no reason to seek it in others.
Just as it is your right to seek your answers as you choose, so it is everyone else's right to seek or not seek their answers, as they choose.
And make their own mistakes, if that's what it takes for them to achieve their understanding, in their own time.
And develop their Peace making ability for their benefit, in their own unique way, by remembering the Island of “I”.

Making Peace with “P”

This might feel like you're about to chew on a dictionary, but hang in there, the "P" words are where your Peace making ability really comes from. There are a number of “P’s”, and each and every one is critical in your pursuit of learning how to become a Peacemaker. Let’s look at them one by one (The Thinkers amongst us will love this approach!)

The vertical "P".
No one likes to be dominated by another person, chastised for poor performance, or taken for granted by their peers. Just as you can never win an argument, because it is an emotional event, and not rational, you can never hope to impress someone who counts in your Life with external values. You may well make an impression, and it might even be a good one, but the gloss will soon wear off as the discussion or relationship develops, because what you say and do will be at odds with how you look. (You will see the four “D’s” at work faster than you can blink).
How you feel is another matter.
"Clothes maketh the Man" is an old saying, and a false one. Clothes maketh the outside of the Man, giving you a certain appearance, which may generate a certain bearing in your external stance. What happens is that the process of getting, then putting on, a new dress or exquisitely cut new suit pumps you up emotionally, charges your ego with false power symbols, and allows you to strut your stuff for all to see.
But an emotional fix is a purely horizontal experience, and as the dress or suit quickly becomes worn with age, as does their ability to pump you up. A horizontal experience is one that is flat, only able to generate a short-term boost, which often is just a repeat of the same old thing, but perhaps in a different form.
Now, there's nothing wrong with a short term emotional ego fix, so long as you recognise it for what it is, and don't become seduced by it. Anything that's external, sucked in emotionally, or built on a false, short term premise, is potentially misleading, and harmful. Not to mention Stressful!
Why? Because it's all too easy to accept an abnormal situation as reality, and get drunk on the temporary thrill and power surge of external reinforcement. Trouble is, the hangover from an ego drunk destroys your self-image, depreciates your self-worth, and robs you of your rightful Peace making ability. And Stresses you out into the bargain.
You can't fool the real you, no matter how hard you might try.
An internalised, or vertical experience, one that is taken inside to your very soul, lives on forever, and can provide endless stimulation and joy. Holding a newborn baby for the first time, discovering you are in love, recognising the intrinsic value of true craftsmanship, are all examples of this most necessary type of experience.
The thrill and buzz that surges from doing new things, with new energy, can light up the dullest Life!
Just as mankind is the only animal given the ability to choose, so is mankind the only species given the ability to differentiate between a horizontal and a vertical experience.
You have often heard People lust after all that is "new", or different. Who can resist the seductive smell that wafts delicately out of the interior of a new car? Or the super bullet-proof feeling of putting on a new, expensive dress or suit for the first time?
But no matter how new something may be, no matter how seductive its call, until you internalise the smell, the look, the touch, the feel, the warmth or the chill, and hear the crackle of the starch and the rip of the zipper, you will only enjoy your new experience but once, over and over again. (That's the danger of the horizontal.)
The majesty of a vertical experience is that it stays with you forever, adding to your total fund of experiences and knowledge. And every time you add to the experience, it gets all the more powerful, to the point where you can actually generate the feelings and the smells and the crackles in your own mind, without actually seeing the new object!
True personal power comes from within, not from without, and is a manifestation of the purity of your soul, not a measure of your intellect or physical strength. One of the greatest scientists of our time lives in a shrunken, dyslexic body, and Communicates with a stick clenched between dribbling teeth. But one look into his eyes, one quick snapshot of his soul, and the awesome power within him attacks you like a laser beam. True beauty comes from inside!
True power comes from recognising who a person is, not what they are, or might become. The simple cause of the modern disease of "opting out" is People's inability to cope with who they really are. They have strived so long, worked so hard, learned so much, yet inside they are hollow, empty, unfulfilled, and hurting. Simply because they concentrated on the horizontal experiences, gobbling them up like PAC-MAN, only to find that the feeling of achievement passed with the night, leaving precious little residue.
Look what happens to some Olympians when they fail to take a Gold medal - the ordinary ones (lost in the grey void of the horizontal experience) fall down as losers, but the extraordinary ones shine with the glow of victory, because they recognise that the process of getting to the Olympics is the true achievement, the Gold medal only a short-lasting form of external measurement.
Of course they wanted to win Gold, and of course they are disappointed at not achieving their ambition. But because the "win" was but one small part of the process, and not the inglorious end, they are able to refocus themselves and not squander the emotional and physical achievement that has been derived through years of sacrifice and hard training.
Sometimes it takes more than just a few years to become an overnight success!
Every elite athlete knows that practice doesn't make perfect, as most People would have you believe. Perfect practice makes perfect. The trouble with Life is that all too often we are waylaid or misled by something someone says they know, or professes to know, better than we do. Or even worse, something we read and only partially understand, but try to operate on anyway. Remember the model of Attitude formation? Attitudes can just as easily be built on false information as reality.
We all too often run off fully charged only to discover that the path of our well-meaning effort leads to a dead end. Well, now's the perfect time to take control of your Life, and do away with all the misconceptions and half-truths that creep around us like so much choking pollution. Now is the time to recognise the frighteningly short value in the horizontal experience.
Now is the time to learn about the power within you, just waiting to be tapped, a power all to do with towering vertical experiences. The simple, but awesome power of the mighty "P" words, and their role in your development as a Peacemaker.

The "P" that stings.
Most People are scared about pain, but we all know that no pain, no gain. There's no such thing as a free lunch. You get nothing for nothing. You only get out of Life what you put into it, and the more you put in, the greater the return. So if it hurts sometimes when you are trying hard to do or learn something, that's good. But don't feel good about the pain, feel good about the gain! Remember, it's the process that you learn the most from, not the achievement.
Pain can also be a sign that you are using the wrong parts of your intellect or body to attempt the task with. If you are feeling decidedly uncomfortable mentally, then it's a good bet that you are trying to wade through confusion or deceit. Remember the four “D’s”. Pain is usually a physical signal that you are close to maxing out, reaching for a new level of physical capability and performance. And like anything physical, it can easily be controlled by discipline and training, and a positive mental attitude towards the task at hand. This is called "process". Remember, you only do well the things in Life you want to do, so when you choose to do something, go for it.
It is this focus on energy and achievement that enables you to motivate yourself towards your goal, so always take the time to experience and enjoy the process of getting there. Many seconds make a minute, and sixty minutes make an hour. Take one second, or one minute away, and you have everything else but an hour.
And it is precisely because time passes by this point but once, that you should savour every split second, taste every minute, and revel in every hour you are given until the day you die. If you don't, you'll pass on feeling cheated of something you were vaguely aware of, but never quite able to put your finger on.
A full and invigorating dynamic Life!
And the fullest use of your greatest asset - your Peace making ability.

The perfect "P" within.
Everyone you meet lusts after a place called Paradise, but very few of us can specifically describe this mystical place. It seems to vary from person to person, like a fast moving cloud. Yet they are all very positive that they seek it, and believe it to be better that where they are now. Paradise means "A garden of Eden; Heaven; A State of supreme bliss", so it is easy to guess what they really mean when they say they seek it.
They are looking for a way out of their present predicament - whatever that may be at the time, and they are always searching for something that they believe is being denied to them, but should be rightfully theirs.
Many Religions and their Sages would have us believe that we have to die in a State of Grace to go to Paradise, where God or some other Sentient Being is patiently waiting for the pleasure of our company.
Others would have us believe that you earn your ticks in the "Book of Life" as you go, and your entry to Paradise is dependant on having accumulated enough to pass through the Pearly Gates when you time has come.
This may or may not be true - this is up to you to determine - but what is true is that from the time of your birth, you have Paradise within you at all times. It's always there, just waiting for you to visit.
Paradise is "A garden of Eden; Heaven; A State of supreme bliss".
There's a marvellous old poem that is said to have made the rounds about five thousand years ago, in the Middle East where Babylon is thought to have been sited. It goes something like this, with no apology for the imperfect and somewhat liberal translation of the original Gortighern Script.

"The rim of the wheel,
it is made of steel,
And the spokes
that joins it
are of solid oak.
But I know, as you do,
That the mighty
brass hub
Is all but useless,
Unless the hole
in the middle
is not broke."

The mystics and scholars of ancient times had a very simplistic philosophy. They studied and viewed the known Universe in minute detail, then promptly cast everything into one of but two acceptable baskets of knowledge.
The first basket held the plausible, or that which was able to be explained to the satisfaction of the many, without causing the sudden death by stoning of the scholar doing the explaining. The second held everything implausible, or that which could not be easily explained using the signs and symbols of the physical Universe, and consequently demanded the label of "magic", "possessed by demons", or "spiritual".
Suffice to say that naked fear abounded in the presence the second basket, which from time to time was filled to the brim with wonder and unexplored mystery, drawing scholars to it like a flame draws moths.
It is said that the scholars that visited this second basket became very creative in the way they went about unravelling the seemingly implausible secrets of the Universe, taking care to have a sufficiency of proof before letting anyone else view their work. This tended to slow the natural process of discovery down somewhat, and might explain why the Middle Ages took so long to pass!
But by paying careful attention to the detail of their torrid existence, the scholars were able to slowly advance the knowledge of mankind, developing a wisdom far greater than the one we seem to have so casually adopted in this modern age of super-computers and spaceships.
Unlike now, nothing was taken for granted, and it was always assumed that everything in Life had a purpose, if only it could be divined. And that it was mankind's responsibility to discover these universal secrets.
Their starting point on every voyage of discovery was that that which stood before them was no more than a temporary barrier between knowledge and mystery, put there by God to encourage them to greater wisdom, gained in the solving of the riddle.
They viewed the final uncovering, the reveal, and the peeling back of the secrets of Life like attacking so many layers of an onionskin. They patiently peeled each layer, one layer at a time, savouring the revelations and incredible discoveries they made on their specific journeys. The final result they presented to the world, but the knowledge and the experience they collected on the way they kept to themselves, fuelling their intellect, and swelling their Peace making ability.
They discovered, for instance, that no matter how large a wheel, no matter how magnificent the construction, and no matter how noble the ultimate purpose, it's what was in the middle of the massive wheel that gives it its Life.
A hole full of nothing!
Now, imagine for a minute, trying to explain that to a Saturday morning crowd at the market, five thousand years ago!
Until an axle was placed in the hole, the massive wheel could never fulfil its destiny. It could be used for many other things, what at best only added up to a rationalisation of its function, but never for its primary role until the little hole in the middle was filled with the right stuff!
What's in the middle of us all? What fills your core, your central "hole" through which the axle of Life passes second by second?
Paradise is. "A garden of Eden. Heaven. A State of Bliss." Peace. Perspective. Perception. Potential. Personality.
And a thousand other powerful "P" words, all just waiting to be visited. And you can prove it to the most virulent sceptic. But first, you have to learn (if you don't already know) how to get into your very own paradise any time you choose.
This is not a book about Meditation, it's a book about Making Peace. But if you want to discover the majesty and beauty of your own Garden of Eden, your own personal State of Bliss, your very own Heaven on Earth, then get on with learning how to become a Peacemaker. Believe it when it's said that Paradise is within us all, available now, just for the visiting, and it's the place where all your real Peace making ability comes from, so get acquainted real soon.
Think about yourself as a scholar of old, possessing many secrets, but able to only share a few, lest you confuse your audience, or get stones for your troubles. Peel back the onionskin, one layer at a time, and savour the revelation of discovery as you learn all that is good about yourself.
Look inwards, not out, and start to appreciate the quiet, reflective moments that occur from time to time, and taste them for their worth. They are a path to your Paradise, just waiting to be used. And Paradise is the battery that enables your Peace making ability to flourish, and grow.
When you centre your focus, you gain a peace and tranquillity that is all empowering, and most often defies description. Your whole being seems to float in a sea of calm, and your awareness is heightened to the point where you find yourself solving amazingly difficult problems with alarming ease. You gain a new perspective about your role and place in the Universe, and you allow your mind and your body to heal and draw closer to each other, integrating your personality.
What do you find when you peel back the final layer of the onion? What is the vital core of a tennis ball? Which part of a water tank is the most valuable?
Within the onion, nothing.
The inside of a tennis ball is composed of air, or empty space.
And that space of nothingness which is contained by the walls of the tank is what the tank exists for!
The "hole" in the middle of us all, through which we pass on our journey of Life.
Anyone who would, through scorn or ridicule, attempt to prevent you from discovering this secret about yourself, deserves your best smile, and tolerance. Naked fear still abounds around that second basket, the one filled with the unpalatable. And a deep distrust of the unknown still drives an ungodly proportion of the world along the path of ignoble ignorance. This is perhaps why we need so desperately a new cadre of Peacemakers.

The bewildering "P".
Our lives are full of paradox - contradictions abound, inconsistency is the norm, and it's almost incongruous to expect anything better. But there's power in paradox, if you take the time to understand it. A paradox is no more than a person, a thing, or a statement that apparently conflicts with your preconceived notions of what is reasonable, correct, or possible. What is palatable. The key words - apparently conflicts with your preconceptions - say it all.
By understanding that your confusion stems from brain lock - that dreaded self-inflicted state of inertia, where you deprive yourself of your power at the time you most need it - you give yourself the best fighting chance to resolve the conflict of perception verses apparent fact. It's a strange observation, but it appears that facts change little in their Lifetime, but our perceptions alter constantly. It seems to depend on our awareness, our mood, our state of fitness, our mental alertness, and on the level of our genuine desire to understand, rather than just take the things around us for granted.
Scientists have an adequate description of the phenomenon, in that they relate Paradox as that "which an observer, standing in the centre of his Universe, discovers to be two or more things that apparently conflict, resulting in the attitude that both cannot possibly be true at the same time."
This enigmatic state occurs frequently in the physical world, and can only be resolved by tedious observation, experimentation, and study. But when it occurs in your mind, it is a simple thing to deal with.
You just back off a pace, realise that your perception is at odds with the facts, and determine to resolve the issue. Establish what is what, accept the reasonable, and question the unreasonable. And never take anything at face value. This is Attitude modification at its very best.
The two baskets of knowledge still exist today, and their purpose is still the same. One allows easy acceptance of a deluge of known things, the other a passive, non-threatening way to deal with the unknown. A paradox is simply something that seems to cross or link some of the contents of the two baskets, and to be resolved, all you need do is discover which basket it comes from, which basket it belongs in, and what you have to do to put it safely away where it belongs. And make Peace.
And if that seems paradoxical, spend some quiet time thinking about the consequences if you don't!

The "T" and "D" of "P".
Don't be limited by what you think you know. It's an easy trap for young players, and an often-used refuge from the pain of truth. You know that there's no gain without some degree of pain, no matter how small. Real Peace making ability comes from real understanding, and real work, not from preconceptions or self-delusion, so take the time to really find out exactly what's what with your world.
Just as you cannot see through someone else's eyes, they cannot clearly see through yours. To see your world, you must use your eyes, and experience your learning and understanding, for yourself. Nothing worthwhile, other than well meaning advice, comes second hand.
It is easy to assume things, and even easier to ignore truth. But where is the possible gain? A saving of effort? Lifetime spent somewhere else? You cheat only yourself, and lower your self-worth. Just as you are the only one who can determine your truth for you, so are you the only one who can do your real work for you.
And ultimately, you are the one who benefits.
The only real pressure that exists, is that which you place on yourself, so take all the time you need to search out the truth in Life. In reality, that's what you are here for. To discover your truth for your Life, empowering your soul to fulfil your destiny.
Pressure comes in many disguises, from demand and anxiety, all the way to frustration and exterior influence. But like a hosepipe with both a tap at one end, and a controllable outlet at the other, you always have two distinct ways to deal with perceived pressure and the attendant Stress.
You can shut it off at the source by refusing to accept it from another person or situation; or you can "tune" it to your advantage at the other end, by deciding how much, and in what form, you will accept the pressure you perceive is being placed on you.
Either way, all it takes is a conscious effort not to let it dominate you, and you will suddenly be empowered to deal with it, in any form it may strike you. Reduce the Stress, and you increase your ability to deal with the situation.
The downside of accepting pressure from others to perform in certain ways, is that it is like a cancer, eating away at your confidence and your abilities. It is insidious, and it can be lethal. Stress kills!
Pressure, Stress, confusion, and frustration can kill you, maim your brain, and destroy your personality. But it need not be so.
Just imagine the hosepipe, and either shut off the tap, or tune the nozzle to the required amount. Manage the Stress, and make Peace.

The inner "P".
It may be hard to accept at face value, but there are no worthwhile prizes for meandering through Life other than those that you award yourself. You are the only person who can accurately assess how well you are performing at any given time, because you are the only one who has access to your soul. Everyone else is looking in from the outside, seeing only that which you choose to project as your physical manifestation of who and what you are at any given time.
To seek the rewards of others is a short-term fix to stitch up an ego problem, caused by a lack of wholeness. When you hold up the mirror of Life, what you see is what you get. But you can also see inside you, and you can see what your Life is really all about.
To flush with the warm feeling of externalised positive reinforcement is only of value when you internalise the praise or support you have been offered, taking it to a new dimension. You clutch the strong positive feeling of a sense of achievement to your heart, and you fuel your soul. This internalising is what keeps you going from day to day, seeking your truths.
While graciously accepting the praise or confirmation of your achievement from others, always be aware that it is what you do with it that counts, not the praise itself. It's the process we learn from, not the achievement. You are the one who must award the prizes for your endeavours, and you are the only one who can accurately and honestly value and judge your performance.
And as you will discover, to do this you have to know who you are, and what you are, and accept yourself from within for all that you are and can be.
However, having said that, be advised that as most of the world around you is not as aware as you are, true praise is the most constructive reinforcement you can ever offer someone else. Nothing boosts self-confidence and self-worth faster than an ego charging honest compliment from someone respected. This is indeed a Peacemaking process that is extremely powerful.

The public "P".
You need to stir the beast of Pride, generating positive energy within yourself, and face the reality of your existence, whatever that may be. To be proud of something, you have to believe in its intrinsic worth and value, otherwise you simply fool yourself. You have to openly commit to it, overtly declaring your feelings for all to see.
And that's a very difficult and dangerous thing to do, because the moment you declare your intentions publicly, the razor sharp knife of prejudice comes out, heading for your back. (Or, if you work in some Organizations, you could get stabbed in the front!)
But if you use Pride as your stimulant in everything you do, then it will only be the really impossible situation that defeats you, and even then, only temporarily. You can be proud of your best effort, and your best attitude. You can be proud of your achievements, and of conquering process. You can also be proud of your inner stance, and the way it affects those around you. You can be proud of the way in which you strived to make Peace.
"Pride commeth before a fall". True, and certainly if you become lost in it, at the sacrifice of your true values. But if you use Pride as a means of setting self-standards, then you will never fail.
For how could you ever, knowingly, let yourself down?
It would be most unworthy of you, and it would rob you of your hard earned Peace making ability.

The powerful "P".
You need to understand the incredible force of Patriotism, and stand tall amongst your peers, recognising that you may well make them feel decidedly uncomfortable with your naked display of pride and emotion. If you cannot feel proud about your Country, if you cannot shed a genuine tear at the playing of the national Anthem, and the raising of the Flag, then you should abandon you place, and go somewhere else, for you can never really feel proud about yourself.
Any measure of a lack of respect for something or someone, no matter how small and seemingly insignificant, burdens you with a double measure of lack of self-respect. You intuitively know what is right, and your psyche punishes your soul when you are not true to yourself.

Man does not easily dwell on the fringe of Life, it is not his purpose, so recognise this, and start developing a feel for the strength and sense of belonging a nationalistic stance can generate within you.
Your Country is a great one, brought to Life with your intellect and physical presence.
Don't ever deny it, and don't ever turn your back on it.
You make its History, you create its Culture, and you determine its Future, if it is to have one.
Just as your Peace making ability allows you to achieve all the goals you have set for yourself, so will it contribute to the growth of your Nation.
This awesome responsibility comes with Citizenship and Nationality, from the day your are born, or arrive, and can never be denied.

The primary "P".
This County is a boundless series of arid deserts, strolling mountains, furious seas, and a patchwork quilt of colour and intrigue. But it takes you to bring it to Life, to add that extra dimension of colour and activity that gives it its unique culture.
For millions of years, this Country has been evolving slowly and deliberately, nudged here and there by fleeting traumatic and sometimes cataclysmic events. The dinosaurs have come and gone, seas have conquered and receded, and mountains have erupted only to be worn smooth by the irresistible passage of time.
Compared to this gigantic, unstoppable evolutionary process, the transient nature of the minuscule Life span of a single human being is but a mote in God's eye. But the years we are given us at Birth can be used to develop a harmony with our ever-pulsing environment, and use our earth-sense to generate internal power.
This is not a "save the environment" speech. This is a "savour the environment" plea, and make Peace with it.
Feel the warmth of rich red earth running through your fingers. Smell the rain on a gum leaf. Absorb the rolling sound of thunder as you recharge your soul with the strident music from a naked flash of lightning. Take your shoes off, and let the moist mud and sand filter up between your toes as they talk to your feet.
Watch the waking birds with your ears on a crisp winter morning, and imagine what it would be like to walk across a moonbeam flickering on a placid ocean.
Just the simple process of absorbing the magic and majesty of the world around you charges you batteries - your Paradise - and causes your Peace making ability to bloom and flower.
It is, after all, your world to enjoy for your four score years and ten. You owe it to yourself to seek and find your true relationship with your environment, that's why humankind was given the gift of the five senses. Use them, and use them well, because in finding your balance within your environment, you are finding your balance within yourself. And like all things dynamic, if you don't use your senses, they deteriorate in terms of sensitivity.
And your Peace making ability depends on stimulus, and renewable energy, so don't let any of your senses go slack, lest you deprive yourself of valuable experience.
Earth symbols are very powerful in our lives, but all too few People ever see the incredible potential of summoning them. Yet they govern our very existence, influence our every mood, and colour our every achievement. The primary "P" is one of the most powerful of all, yet, strangely, it is perhaps the least understood and used!
Our forefathers understood this far better than we do now, as the unstoppable march of technology seems to have desensitised us to our heritage. But like any Paradox, all it takes to reverse the trend is to recognise it, cast away the grey areas of indecision, and do something that brings music to your soul.
Earth music!

The inquisitive "P".
There's a lovely dichotomy in the endless debate between Art and Science - which is which, and what applies to each. Truth is, both apply and directly effect each other in the perpetual search for the answers to the mysteries of Life, and in many ways this parallel debate reflects the development of your personality.
If you choose to be a "pioneer", always striving for understanding and enlightenment, breaking new ground, exploring the realm of possibilities, one day you will stand on the pinnacle of knowledge, and see it for what it is.
Your batteries (inner Paradise) will be constantly charged with vertical experiences that will stack up before you like a massive harbour bridge.
But no one person can ever hope to absorb everything available in the span of a single Lifetime. There's simply too much knowledge to cope with. But wisdom can come cheaply, and with a simple change of attitude, you will see first hand that you don't need to know everything to have a rich and long Life, you only have to know yourself.
And the best knowledge comes from true discovery, true process, and true experience.
Wisdom (discipline, common or good sense, judgement, knowledge and philosophy) is simply the force you apply in the use of your Peace making ability, enabling you to achieve your dreams without causing harm to those around you.
You need to exclusively live in the world of positive energy, making things possible because you want them to be, not necessarily because they are. You need to be praiseworthy in your endeavours, which simply means that what you choose to do is always worthwhile in real terms, and excellent in execution. Now excellence can be a well-worn standard, and rarely achieved in spite of the brouhaha that surrounds its use in modern day language.
But excellent also means "heavenly" and "precious", so take these meanings to heart, and ensure that everything you do, no matter how small, is executed "heavenly" because the action is "precious" to you.
Exquisite little touches of excellence delight, and light the path to Heaven. The Mystics of ancient years believed this, and over two thirds of the world has evolved with this simple philosophy as their principle guide.
The strongest nation on Earth is but a stage for the delicate skills of a Master, for who here can refuse an honest man, with honest skills, and honest endeavour? Who can rightly refuse a HOT process?

The secondary "P".
Profound wisdom is not the exclusive domain of the well educated. Profound wisdom is your right, and the right of all who choose to seek it. Knowing one small simple fact and being able to intelligently and excellently benefit from it provides the basis for profound wisdom. It is this "understanding" that sits comfortably within your core from where the Peace making ability within you can be generated. It is your wisdom which determines how much power you have at any one given time. It is also your wisdom which determines how you use your power.
For when you have real power, and choose to use it, the only time it will work for you is when you exercise profound wisdom!
If you don't, then you may end up dominating someone, denigrating them in their own eyes, because of their lack of ability to cope with you. And as sure as night turns into day, your power will dissipate in the wind, leaving you unfulfilled and empty, angry and embarrassed, and afraid to face the mirror of Life.
You can cheat everyone and anything for a short while, but you can never cheat your soul or who you really are, not even for a second. And the only time you don't have your power is when you know inside you that you don't deserve it, because its negative use is, or would be, destructive.
And we've already discovered that you are a builder, a creator, a dreamer, a thinker, and a doer. All these attributes come to Life when underpinned with your profound wisdom, and the strength of your intellect, and your ability to make Peace.

The bridging "P".
If you take the attitude of a protector, always careful to see to the welfare and well being of your peers and those around you, then you will automatically limit your potential to hurt. It is impossible for you to hurt yourself if you are balanced and in harmony with all around you, just as it becomes impossible for you to hurt others.
Sensitivity is another human trait that is very much in danger of being swamped by all things electronic, simply because being sensitive takes great patience, great empathy, great warmth, great Peace making ability, and a big heart. But by being sensitive to your environment, to those around you, and to your real needs, you attune your intellect and sharpen your awareness, allowing more of your internalised Peacemaking power to be used constructively.
Sensitivity is an attribute that is often frowned on by modern society, often mistaken for weakness or lack of power. In truth, the exact opposite it true. For you to be able to constantly allow your sensitivity to come to the fore, you must be self-confident, have a strong perspective of your role in Life, and a high self-image.
And heaps and heaps of Peace making ability.
Strange, isn't it, how the very things that make us strong, that make us what we are, that give us our real power to motor along in Life with, sometimes appear to others as a weakness!

The tertiary "P".
If you take the role of a provider, then you will never allow yourself to take advantage of someone who has yet to find the "Gate of Wisdom". Rather, you will, at their request, help and guide them to find their own Paradise within themselves.
Remember People discover and learn what they want to learn, at their own rate, so offer support and guidance, don't push. Let them develop their own timetable, and allocate those resources they feel are necessary for the process of discovery. Don't judge them by their progress, but by their intent. And don't be hasty to celebrate a breakthrough, lest it be but the tip of the proverbial iceberg of knowledge and wisdom.
And should you find such a person, give them a copy of this book, and encourage them to discover how they too, can become a Peacemaker, using the power of the “P’s”. After all, doesn’t the word “Peacemaker” start with a ..?