The Initiatory Way to Peace

The Initiatory Way to Peace constitutes the inner path which a peace maker chooses to tread in his quest for peace. This involves a free choice in total consciousness, personal responsibility and total commitment to one’s ideal of peace and is based on universal and unconditional love for humanity. The path leads to a process of self transformation and ‘deconditioning’ from the education previously received from the family as well as society at large.

The Twelve Steps

The inner path followed by the peacemakers showed that:

1. They were able to look at History as a relational heritage. Subsequently they freed themselves from the historical memory and could thus avoid all desire for revenge or domination. In this way they were able to liberate both the oppressor and the oppressed from the status which history had assigned to them.
2. They also freed themselves from their personal history, the patterns of thought inculcated in them by their family. This enabled them to discover their personal nature, and hence become conscious of what they wanted.
3. They always engaged in action which enabled them to stop the escalation of violence through reaction and they proposed solutions which honour both the winner and the loser.
4. They never imposed their truths but they worked with people’s qualities through intelligence of the real. They respected differences which they believed to be a necessity of life. For them there is only one country: the earth, one religion: love, one language: that of the heart.
5. Their intentions were free from selfishness, anger and pride and their energy free from all forms of manipulation. This enabled them to change the face of their society by the power of their belief and their thought, which nothing could stop, not even the risk of losing their lives.
6. They were aware of the sorrow, anger and fear of those around them, but did not take sides. They had no enemies and no friends as all their efforts were geared towards this ideal: to unite and harmonise differences.
7. The peacemaker is above superiority and inferiority complexes. In fact their awareness of both the human and divine nature of the human being enabled them to show that none is superior to others. Rather, everyone is a potential treasure to humanity, for differences among individuals are a necessity of life.
8. The peacemaker strives to transform competition into cooperation. He uses the richness of difference to restore positive relationships between individuals lost in a merciless fight for power and wealth.
9. To attain universal love which represents the perfect from of relation, the peacemaker knows that forgiveness is the key that unlocks the prison in which the victim has locked himself. His heart is then liberated from anger, shame, vengeance and all the vices to make space for the virtues.
10. He strives to establish an economy through means of peace, that is, an economy which places the human being at the centre of all preoccupations, an economy which respects and promotes the human being first and foremost and offers him the possibility of doing in order to have.
11. Irrespective of differences of race, culture and religion, everyone has his place and everyone has a right of expression and a right to dignity irrespective of his socio-economic status. This respect of everyone is the foundation of a democratic society based on peace.
12. The peacemaker is like the prophets: he becomes an actor of society. For this he becomes a reviver of the prophetic messages which state that no social status or cultural tradition can allow the Human Being to be rejected. To Serve Humanity according to the prophetic model is to be conscious that everyone can contribute to the welfare of humanity.