by Lawrence Comras

As we bear witness to the war our country is waging on the environment, not to mention on other peoples and cultures, not to mention on our own civil liberties, it’s easy to get upset, or angry. We may even at times feel hatred toward all the seemingly evil people in big business and government wreaking havoc on our world. Indeed, there is some sort of negative pleasure in just letting ourselves get mad. It is maddening.

The situation is now really serious out there in the warring world, and so we actually need to get serious about creating peace. Yes, "they" are really close to destroying it all. But "we" are really close to figuring it all out. It’s going to be a photo finish to salvation. I think we’ll succeed in transcending and rising above ourselves, but it’s also up to us in a very radical way.

We need to behave more impeccably when we approach the problem. We can no longer afford to traffic in the methods of the warmongers. If we want to wipe out all the evildoers, what does that make us? Even in our more subtle borrowings of their practices, such as being dominating and confrontational, we’re still feeding the reality that allows them to continue to dominate and confront. The time has come for even things like projection and blaming to go. From here on out, it can only be about us.

If we point one finger at them, there are three fingers pointing back at us. If we’re full of vitriol at the spectacle, the spectacle feeds on us. We need to dismantle the notion of fighting for peace. We need to acknowledge that when we experience a lot of hostility in the world, we usually have the same clashes going on inside us. To really create peace abroad, we have to do the hard work of looking within and shifting the focus back to us.

We must have the willingness to want peace. Bringing consciousness to places within ourselves where we may not want peace is the first step. Our outer world is a reflection of our inner world, so we need to ask the question: where in ourselves are we at war? Peace will come when we want it so profoundly that we're willing to give up the negative pleasure of engaging in fighting.

We need to take responsibility that we create our own reality and act accordingly. Peace begins in our own heart. Only there do we have the power to create peace. When we shift from a place of war to a place of peace within ourselves, it radiates out to shift our environment. When we hold more love, we stretch the container of the world to hold more love.

That’s the hard part: We have to be willing to be the peace we want. Then comes the really hard part: It’s more than willingness that’s required. After all, it’s the living of a life that makes a difference. How do we do the everyday American life so that it's consciously, actively, actually, creating peace? What do we actually do?

Meditate? We don’t know how to meditate. We’re busy scrambling to survive in a highly competitive Western culture. Most of us don’t have the context for the cultivation of a daily practice. Inner quiet is not in our historical tradition. Our lives are too noisy.

Too bad though, because as long as the inner struggle for peace is suppressed, forgotten, mocked or exploited, so is the movement towards peace in the world. And until we become the peace we want to see in the world, the world will be at war. Which is where we’re at at the moment. A world at war. Ourselves at war.

Here’s an idea: We, each of us, can create world peace by cleaning our house.

The idea behind creating peace starting with our homes may seem radical because no one has been yelling it from blow horns or preaching it from a pulpit. We haven't been taught to believe that it matters. Yes, most people would know the words: one person can make a difference. But who would tell people that the way to make that difference is to sweep, dust, mop and vacuum?

We would. Consciously cleaning out the toxins, the poisons, the noise and the clutter in our homes clears space where the life force, the good energy of peace, can flow into our lives. Then we can access it, and then voila! it radiates out.

What do we mean when we say: clear out the toxins so that the life force can flow in? Let’s take a step back: What is life? Well, we don’t know. It’s a mystery. The best we can say is: life is the life force. It’s some kind of flow or animatory power. All we know is that we are most fully alive when we are in connection with that force, and it’s flowing through us. We are like human wind socks, and it blows us up.

Our ability to wage peace, to be peace, depends on connecting with that life force, being in its breeze. It’s the hearth, the heart, and our survival depends on letting it in. That’s why we must clear out our spaces of what’s blocking it and let it in.

Neurotoxins, chlorine, TV, radiation: all of these disrupt the flow. Feng shui, Vastu, and other home healing arts are based on these same principles. They are focused on helping the flow of energy through your home. Living space is a healthy space when energy is flowing through it.

Consider this article a spiritual crowbar. Pry open a trans-dimensional rift in your home. Open it up to the health and peace dimension so that the life force can flow through.

The home is the ultimate bridge between us and the outside world. It’s both an expanded version of ourselves and a contracted version of the world at the exact same time. Just as breathing is the bridge between the conscious and the unconscious mind, the home is the connection between the individual and society at large. The home is on a human scale. It’s manageable. It’s not too big, and it’s not too small. It’s just right.

Some resources, Web sites, healers, self help gurus, experts and books focus only on the health part, on cleansing the self. You won’t see much from these sources about saving the planet. Rather, the focus is on internal purification. They say: "To be well, work on you". But what if you are more than you? What if part of our feeling of illness comes from the world being ill, because our actual selves are part of that world?

Other voices for peace focus only on the outside, on politics or activism, with a focus on just changing the world, or saving the planet, as if it's a goal that can be posited in contradistinction to what we're already doing. It doesn’t matter so much how in tune you personally are. What matters is fighting the good fight and knocking yourself out for the cause, even sometimes at a personal cost.

But what if we focused our attention on the middle ground, on the homes we all inhabit daily? Of course, there is no reason to reject anyone on the macro and micro ends of the scale: those doing internal cleansing and spiritual practice on the personal level; street protests or resisting worldly injustice on the global scale. But somewhere between flushing out your colon and getting arrested at a peace rally is cleaning up your living space so the life force flow through.

Even if we can't manifest peace in ourselves or in the outside world as often as we would like, or almost never, we can take actions to manifest it in our living environment. We can connect with the interconnected oneness that will lead us to peace by making these simple changes where we live. By getting rid of toxins, radiation, poisons, negative vibrations - not to mention noise, air and water pollution - we can remove the obstacles that block our experiencing deep peace. Then, it will flow in (it's always there). By clearing out our clutter and surrounding ourselves only with things that have positive associations, we create the space where it's possible to change ourselves. And it is only by changing ourselves that we can change the world. So we go: Home -> Self -> World.

To take the peace thing all the way, there cannot be a distinction between these areas. Self and World are also our “homes.” And actually, we live in more homes than that.

What's our innermost home? It's our core, our soul. This is our most inner home. And yet it is the home that is the soul that, as our ownmost nature, moves outward from within. The penultimate inner home is the subtle body. From here we derive our concept of interiority. Then there’s us as we normally see ourselves, just standing in front of the mirror (in our skin). And our "homes" continue outward from there. The next home is our clothes, sort of a second skin. Then there’s our house or apartment or condo, our third skin in a sense. Then continuing out from there, there’s our local community, our country, our planet, and ultimately, the universe.

That’s eight homes right there. These could also be viewed as many concentric circles of the self expanding out, or conversely, many concentric circles of the universe contracting in. If our goal is to be well, let’s start with our home and work in. If our goal is to save the planet, we can likewise start with our home and work out. When the home becomes the venue for peace action, it becomes the fertile ground where we can take active steps to make peace without needing to be politically engaged or disciplined spiritual practitioners. Just homemakers!

The process of becoming the peace we want in the world is not easy, and we need to give ourselves the space, the tools, and the context to allow it to happen. Taking action to keep one’s house clean can be an active step in creating the space to be better able to do spiritual practice and to have a sanctuary from which to engage worldly powers.

It might take a while to get used to seeing the ripple effect of our choices. The very idea that every little step we take to change our home is having a profound affect on the world’s home may seem new to us. But it's more than a ripple effect. It's a resonance.

We’re that resonance. By changing ourselves we can change the world. And by changing our homes we can change ourselves. By seeking the life force within us, we can find the greater life force that we are within.

Call it DIY (do-it-yourself) Spiritual Remodeling. Call it holistic retrofitting. Or call it what we called it for this article, Healing Your Home. But CALL IT. Whatever we call it, taking this idea to heart is our chance to discover our own definition of what it means to heal. By starting within our homes, we find ourselves already in that place where we participate in being the missing link that changes the world.

© 2007 Green Home, Inc.