Excerpt from Prem Rawat's address at the Universal Forum of Cultures, Barcelona 2004

"So many people are waiting for other people to do something to bring about peace. But peace needs a very different process. Each individual needs to understand their own responsibility for it because peace is felt in the heart of every human being. This is the palette where the manifestation of peace takes place, not on the outside.

So often peace is defined as the absence of war. There is war that happens between two countries. There is war that takes place between two people. There is war that doesn't even require two people; it takes place inside of a person. For a war on the outside, maybe a cease–fire can be negotiated. Between two people, maybe an understanding can be negotiated. But even in the absence of those kinds of wars, there is a war that takes place inside a human being—a much more ferocious war that devastates the very elements that are the foundation of a person. Which of these wars will become absent so that one day we can stand up and say, "Now there is peace"?

Those people who have talked about peace in earnest have said, "What you are looking for is within you. You are the source and you are the resource for peace on the face of this earth. This is the realization, the understanding, and the challenge of feeling peace in this life, of not being distracted by all our agendas, but accepting and understanding the agenda we have been given with the opportunity to be alive."

Generally, we measure ourselves on a negative scale. Before we set up what we want to accomplish, we look at what we do not have. People come and tell us what we do not know, what we have not accomplished, all the things we do not have. Every window of a shop dares to tell us what we don't have. If the objects displayed were the things we did have, the whole purpose would be defeated.

So in a world where everything is judged on a negative scale, how can we even begin to talk about peace when peace can only be judged on a positive scale? Peace is one of the things we do have. It is one of the things we can have. It is one of the things that is innate within every human being. Like a lamp lit on the darkest night, it is waiting to be discovered.

We need peace in this world as we are. We need peace in this world with all our problems. We need peace in this world with everything that goes on. We need peace in this world because our heart desires it. Something very fundamental wants that peace. There has been an attraction to that peace since time immemorial.

When it comes to peace in my life, it begins with being ready and able to stand on my own feet. It doesn't end there, but it begins there. For too long, we have looked to world leaders. They try, but succeeding is another story. The noblest gesture we can make is to recognize the possibility of peace in our life and to find ourselves to be the source and the resource."

Prem Rawat

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