Reflections on Peace, Philosophy, and Life
Clarity is a rare and precious quality. It’s the ability to cut through the noise — the distractions, the agendas, the endless clamour of competing interests — and see what truly matters. Yet, today, clarity is missing where it is needed most: in leadership.
Leaders, especially politicians, often start with good intentions. Perhaps a desire to serve, to make a difference, to improve society. But the realities of politics quickly erode that clarity. The constant pressure to compromise, to negotiate, to protect alliances, and to secure funding, all muddy the waters.
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At the Turning Point: Transition, Resistance, and the Hope for Awakening
We are living through a great transition. You can feel it in the air—an unsettling, unstable pull between the old and the new. Some call it the Age of Aquarius, others a shift in consciousness, or simply a changing world. Whatever the name, the signs are everywhere: something is breaking down, and something else is trying to be born.
But transitions are never gentle. They stir up the dust, they shake the foundations, and they often reveal just how attached we are to what is familiar—even if what’s familiar no longer serves us. In these moments, resistance reaches its peak. That resistance comes dressed in many forms: political backlash, conspiracy theories, religious rigidity, the craving for “strong leaders,” the refusal to listen, the denial of truth.
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In a world so often defined by distractions, deadlines, and mental noise, it’s easy to lose sight of something astonishingly simple: you only ever live in one moment — Now. The past is memory. The future is imagination. But life — real life — happens only here.
And only you can be conscious of it.
This present moment is not just a blip between two others. It’s the only point of existence, the unbroken field where everything unfolds. To be aware of it is not a luxury or spiritual flourish — it is the beginning of clarity, peace, and presence.
The I That Is Always Here
From the moment of your first memory until now, something in you has remained unchanged — an inner sense of “I am.” Not your name, not your opinions, not your circumstances, but the silent knower that has watched it all.
When you say, “I remember being five,” what you really mean is:
“I — the same witnessing presence — was there then, and I am here now.”
Everything else has shifted — thoughts, emotions, body, beliefs — but that witnessing “I” has never come or gone. It doesn’t age. It doesn’t rush. It sees.
Discovering the Witness
This brings us to a powerful word: Witness.
The Witness is the silent observer within you:
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Aware of thoughts, but not entangled in them.
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Feeling emotions, but not defined by them.
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Perceiving the world, but not lost in it.
It is you, stripped of roles and narratives. It is the part of you that can simply watch, without judging, resisting, or holding on.
When you’re angry, sad, overjoyed, confused — the fact that you can notice those states means something in you is already free of them. That something is the Witness.
The Practical Power of Presence
Being aware of the Witness — and grounding yourself in the Now — isn’t abstract philosophy. It’s deeply practical. Here’s how:
✅ Decisions become clearer — because you’re no longer reacting out of habit or fear.
✅ Stress reduces — as you stop living in imagined futures or replayed pasts.
✅ Relationships improve — because when you are present, you truly listen.
✅ Joy becomes accessible — not dependent on outcomes, but arising from the simple beauty of being.
Even a few seconds of returning to Now — through your breath, your senses, or stillness — can reconnect you with what’s real.
A Simple Practice
At any moment in the day, I try this:
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Pause.
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Feel my breath entering and leaving.
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Notice sounds, light, and movement around me — without naming them.
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Say silently:
“I am the one aware of this.” -
Rest there.
I don’t have to fight my thoughts. Just observe. In that observation, a gap opens — a moment of spaciousness. And in that space, I meet myself again.
The Witness and the Now Are One
To witness is to be present.
To be present is to witness.
They are not two separate practices — they are one movement back to what has always been with you.
The Witness doesn’t need to be created.
It only needs to be recognized.
And when you do, life changes — not because the world changes, but because you’re no longer lost in it. You’ve come home to the only moment you’ll ever live in: Now.
And the only one who can truly know it: You.
Reflection :
What is one moment today where I can pause, become the Witness, and return to Now?
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We live in a world where everything appears solid. Houses stand firm, names are etched in stone, and people speak as though their positions, identities, and beliefs are set in concrete. But physics, philosophy, and personal experience all point to a deeper truth: nothing is solid. Nothing is permanent.
Modern science has stripped away many of our comforting illusions. Atoms, once thought to be tiny building blocks, are mostly empty space, their components flickering in and out of existence. Time bends. Particles jump unpredictably. What looks stable is actually in motion—changing, vibrating, decaying.
And yet, most of us live as though things will stay just as they are. We ignore what science and physics have taught us and pretend.
We plan, we accumulate, we define ourselves through roles, possessions, opinions. We fear change, and cling to certainty—even when it hurts us. Why?
Some of it is practical. Our biology is built for survival, not truth. Predictability helps us function. The illusion of permanence gives us a kind of mental foothold in a fast-flowing river. But there’s more to it than that.
We’re afraid. Afraid of loss, of death, of meaninglessness. Afraid that if everything changes, then nothing matters. So we tell ourselves stories. Stories about forever. About permanence. About control.
And into that fear step those who promise safety. Leaders, ideologies, systems—offering to take the burden of uncertainty off our shoulders. “Follow me,” they say, “and I’ll protect you from the chaos.”
But if we look more closely, it becomes painfully clear: power is only ever given. Those who seem to have control over others are only empowered because the rest of us accept the story they tell. We trade our freedom for their promises. We allow the illusion to harden into a structure.
There’s no real control—only agreement. And often, it’s agreement with something that doesn’t serve us at all.
This fear-based resistance to impermanence is the source of so much suffering. Grasping at what must pass. Resisting what must come. Hoping life will sit still for us when its very nature is movement.
Buddhism calls this clinging the root of suffering. The Stoics call it false expectation. Taoists say, simply, that to fight the flow is to lose one’s harmony with life. Modern psychology has its own terms, but the message is the same: peace comes not from holding on, but from letting go.
There’s great freedom in this—not nihilism, but clarity. When we stop pretending that anything outside of us is permanent, we begin to look within for what is. And here, I’ve found something worth sharing.
There is, within each of us, a place untouched by change. Not a belief. Not a theory. A feeling. A presence. Call it peace, call it being, call it home. Call it me. Whatever the name, it is something you can feel, now—not someday, not when everything is “sorted,” but right here, in this breath.
Teachers like Prem Rawat speak to this with simplicity and warmth. He reminds us that the only thing that doesn’t change is this moment, lived fully. That the peace we seek isn’t out there in the shifting world, but already within us, waiting to be felt.
When I touch that place in myself, the fear of change fades. I can love more easily, because I no longer need guarantees. I can grieve without being destroyed. I can live without being trapped in the illusion that life will wait for me to be ready.
The truth is, life isn’t a thing to hold on to. It’s a wave to ride. A breath to feel. A gift to receive.
And perhaps the most beautiful thing is this: once we stop insisting on permanence, we can finally begin to appreciate things as they are—precious precisely because they are passing.
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I sometimes ask myself whether I have the courage I’ll need when things really get difficult. Not the kind of courage that makes headlines or earns medals—but the quiet, enduring kind. The courage to remain human when the world forgets what that means. The courage to live by what I believe even if everything around me is falling apart.
These thoughts often come to me when I consider how quickly the world seems to be unravelling. “Going to hell in a handbasket,” as the old saying goes. It’s an overused phrase, but lately, it doesn’t feel like an exaggeration. Climate, politics, society—so many systems feel brittle, like they're held together with frayed string. I wonder what might lie ahead, especially as I grow older. If I live to be over ninety, what kind of world will I be living in? I’ve imagined four different futures, each more difficult than the last.
The first: the key change is due to climate. Water becomes scarce. Rationing becomes a way of life. Crops suffer, food becomes harder to come by. But at least, where I live, there is no war. People are tense, perhaps fearful, but the social structure hasn’t collapsed. It would take resilience to live in such a world, but not necessarily moral courage. Not yet.
The second: climate chaos remains, but now society has fragmented. Local vigilante groups have taken power, dividing the land into jealously guarded territories. Fear and suspicion grow. “Their turf” versus “ours.” The law means little any more. This is where courage begins to take on a different shade. Do I hide? Resist? Collaborate? Survive?
The third: as the climate worsens and local conflicts multiply, wider war breaks out. My country isn’t directly under attack, but it is pulled into the conflict. Contributions are demanded—manpower, goods, loyalty. The old dream of neutrality falls away. This is the moment when everyone is asked to take a side. Would I go along? Could I refuse?
And the fourth: everything above, plus an unravelling so total that any attempt to restore structure feels like patching a sinking ship. People scramble to hold onto something—anything—that feels stable. But too few are willing to sacrifice their privilege, their comfort, their certainty. Without shared willingness, the centre cannot hold. Here, the danger isn’t just external—it’s in the loss of meaning, trust, cohesion.
And in every one of these futures, the same moral question rears its head. Sooner or later, I might be faced with a terrible choice: fight and possibly kill, or resist and possibly die. In that moment, would I have the courage not to abandon my humanity?
I think of people like Bertrand Russell, who refused to fight in World War I and went to jail for it. Later, he helped to lead the “Ban the Bomb” movement. I think of the Quakers, quietly courageous, who took their stand on non-violence even when society scorned them. I’ve always admired such people. Could I follow their path?
It’s easy to imagine myself being brave in the abstract. But when a gun is pressed to your temple, and someone demands obedience or blood—what then? The question chills me. I don’t claim to know the answer. I do know I’m capable of defending myself to a point, but that point is growing shorter every year. Physical strength ebbs. What’s left is clarity and resolve—or fear and compromise.
Would I be strong enough to say no, even if that meant the end of me? I hope so. I hope that even then, I could feel grateful for the life I’ve had. That I wouldn’t be driven by fear or anger, but able to see—even in that final moment—that life is a gift, not a possession to cling to at all costs.
Courage, in the end, might not mean standing up with fists raised. It might mean letting go. It might mean trusting that inner strength is more powerful than a gun. That the dignity of a life lived in alignment with one’s conscience matters more than survival at any cost.
I don’t want to be tested in this way. But if I am, I pray I’ll still be able to look inward, find that still point, and say: I remember who I am. I am still human.
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Murder Is Not Murder? A Personal Reflection on the Madness We Justify
Murder is not murder?
That phrase caught me off guard the first time it crossed my mind. It’s double-think at its worst. Every country on Earth has laws that prohibit the taking of another human life. We all nod our heads in agreement when we say murder is wrong. And yet—somehow—we keep doing it. We justify it. We twist it. Not only that, but we even make it heroic.
Why do we have laws against murder in the first place? My own sense is that, at the most basic level, we've observed something about death. Its finality. Its irreversibility. There's a natural understanding, deep in the human heart, that life is precious—and not something to be cut short lightly. That awareness is universal, even among those who have lost touch with their conscience.
And yet, we kill.
And what's worse—we build systems to make it acceptable. We create laws, and then we train lawyers to find clever ways around them. It’s almost as if the purpose of law becomes not to uphold what’s right, but to find legal cover for what is clearly wrong. If the right argument is made in the right courtroom, even murder can become "justified." The very framework that’s meant to protect life is twisted to excuse its destruction.
On an individual level, what drives a person to take another’s life? The usual suspects come to mind—fear, greed, hatred, jealousy. But those are surface-level explanations. I find myself asking a more uncomfortable question: Why do we allow these emotions to overpower the deep knowing inside us—that killing is wrong?
There is something so fundamentally sacred about each person. Not in a religious sense necessarily, but in a profoundly human sense. The uniqueness of each individual is miraculous. Every single person contains within them an entire world of dreams, fears, memories, and hopes. A whole lifetime. And we know this—not abstractly, but intimately. We feel it about ourselves. And at our best, we feel it about others too.
So why do we forget?
My conclusion is this: we’ve been taught to forget. Or at least, we haven't been taught to remember. From early on, we learn to see others as background characters in our personal story. Our culture celebrates individualism, competition, and dominance. Even entertainment normalizes violence. Think of the video games where human lives are reduced to “targets,” and killing them earns you points. Points?! It’s absurd. It's unconscious. And yet it's woven into how many people escape into fantasy.
And it’s not just the games—it’s the language we use. Soldiers are “neutralized.” Collateral damage is “unfortunate but necessary.” We speak in euphemisms to conceal the horror. Orwell was right when he warned us in 1984 about doublethink: “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies... to forget whatever it was necessary to forget...”
This isn’t just individual confusion—it’s institutionalized murder. As a society, we’ve found ways to legitimize the killing of others, especially when they are labelled “the enemy.” One of the biggest tools for this is nationalism. The idea that “my country,” “my flag,” or “my way of life” is somehow superior—so superior, in fact, that it justifies killing those who don’t share it.
Isn’t that the rationale behind almost every war?
My bit of land, my inherited myths, my tribe—they matter more than yours. And if you disagree, I’ll kill you. Not personally, of course—I’ll outsource that to someone in uniform and call it honour. But the act is the same. It’s murder, dressed up in ritual and rhetoric.
And what’s truly sad is that this mindset not only devalues the lives of others—it cheapens our own. If we don’t see other lives as special, how can we believe our own is? If we’re all just cogs in a machine, or actors in someone else’s script, then anything becomes possible. Even the most dreadful things.
But there is another way.
There are voices—quiet but clear—reminding us of what it means to be human. I think of Prem Rawat, a teacher I deeply respect, who speaks not about religion or politics but about the importance of inner peace and understanding our own humanity. In one of his talks, he said: “The day you begin to see the value of your own life is the day you will begin to see the value of all life.”
That rings true to me.
We don’t need more ideologies. We need more awareness. We need to reawaken that part of us that knows life is a miracle—ours and everyone else's. Imagine what might change if we actually lived with that awareness day by day. If instead of seeing others as threats or tools or competitors, we saw them as fellow travellers through this astonishing, fleeting journey of life.
Life is short. Too short for hate. Too short for war. Too short for justifying the unjustifiable.
The craziness is never justified. Not when we pause long enough to remember what it really means to be human.
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