Adam’s Peace

Note: This is the conclusion of a 4 part series. The introduction is titled Peaceful Virtues, and has links to the rest of the articles in the series.

To recap the series, we talked about virtues that lead to peace. These virtues include Honesty, Acceptance and Forgiveness, Awareness, and Responsibility.

This is a road-map that I’ve found that has led me to my first true inner success. This is only the first of many successes that I’m sure to accomplish in my life, and each additional success will require modifications to these virtues.

There are two appropriate analogies that I could use. One would be climbing several flights of stairs, and the other would be climbing different mountains. Out of those two, it seems that climbing different mountains most closely matches the process.

In each post, I’ve explained how each virtue builds upon the last one. What I didn’t explain is that each virtue builds upon the others no matter what order you put them in.

Virtues Building Other Virtues

Honesty is the foundation for all of the virtues. It is what ties us together with reality and the rest of the universe. Naturally, the other virtues are built upon the foundation… Yet, the other virtues also build Honesty. Acceptance leads to understanding what is in your past, which leads to being honest about who you were. Awareness leads to understanding the world right now, and just like Acceptance, this leads to being honest about who you are now. Responsibility puts order to our future and utilizes our imaginations. Again, this also leads to honesty, by being true to who we want to be.

Acceptance, of course, is built on the foundation of honesty, yet it ties directly with Awareness, giving us an anchor and context so that we can tell what events happening right now mean. It also leads into Responsibility, by showing us what has worked in the past, where we have learned the hard lessons, and giving insight into what we should do next.

Awareness, while naturally being built upon honesty and building it as well, gives us the power to use our memories and imagination. It is while we are being aware that we can accept our past and be responsible for our future.

It follows that Responsibility gives us a purpose… With Responsibility, we have a reason to be Honest, a reason to Accept and Forgive, and a reason to be Aware.

I gave each of these virtues an arbitrary order, putting the foundation first. I did this more because it is impossible to describe all four virtues together, than because any one should be built before the other. When we are building the house, we see the foundation being poured, followed by the frame, then the electrical system, then the walls, and finally, the carpets and paint… Yet, the lumber is cut before the foundation is poured… Without that lumber existing first, or at least without being certain that the lumber will arrive, it is futile to build the foundation. The wires for the electrical system are built before the foundation is poured as well, and the carpets and paint are also created first.

And, interestingly enough, the plumbing is put in place both before and after the foundation is poured. It becomes part of the foundation, then is contained within the walls, and finally, as the sinks, toilets, and showers are installed, it extends out of the walls. The plumbing is built upon throughout the process of building the house.

None of these pieces, by themselves, are the house… Just like none of these virtues, by themselves, ensure peace and success. We can not take on the virtue of honesty, our foundation, without also pursuing the virtues of Acceptance, Awareness, and Responsibility. Without combining the virtues, each one is useless.

Building the House

Making concrete for a foundation is easy… Simply mix the right ingredients with water, pour it on the ground surrounded by a wooden barrier, and smooth out the top. Time will harden it, you’ll be able to remove the wood, and you’ll have a foundation. A lot of the work is done automatically, simply by letting time take hold. Honesty works the same way: Figure out what it means to be honest with yourself, set limits, and start being honest. As honesty becomes a habit, it becomes harder and harder to be dishonest, and you can remove those limits.

Making the frame for the house is a little more complicated. For our analogy, the frame is acceptance. First, you need to have the lumber… Since we all have memories, we already have all of the lumber that we need. Next, we need to anchor the lumber to the foundation. In terms of our memories, that means being honest with what has happened, which can only be done by accepting and forgiving. We also need to anchor the frame to itself. This is a process that takes time… Just as each piece of lumber has to be nailed to its neighbors, our memories have to be associated with each other.

There is a trick in building frames, however, that greatly speeds up the process. Instead of anchoring the lumber to the foundation first and building up the frame from there, most walls are built laying flat on the ground, then are tilted upright and anchored as they’re completed. Roofs are often built in factories well away from the construction site, and simply anchored to the walls and neighboring roof pieces… The roofs can be seen as an analogy for formal education… They’re pre-built for a wide variety of circumstances. Religions also serve this purpose, with their various mythologies providing common points of reference.

The wiring… the power for the house… can be put in when the frame is stable enough. Yet, the wires themselves aren’t built at the same time as they’re installed. We all have experienced moments of awareness, where we suddenly realize that we’re not thinking, just observing and acting. We already have all of the wires for our house… we can provide as much or as little power as we want. We simply have to turn on the switch.

The drywall (gypsum board, etc.,) keeps us from walking through the frames, giving us privacy and structure as we live within the house. It removes chaos, allowing us to plan and have purpose as we live within our house, just as responsibility gives us purpose.

Gathering the Materials

Now, all of this can’t be done in a day, and it can’t be done all at the same time. Before we can build our house, or combine all of our virtues together, we need the tools and materials. Simply combining all of the materials together takes time… We need to figure out what honesty means to us personally before we can apply it, just as we need to know the ingredients in cement before we can mix it. We need to figure out how to accept and forgive, and we have to practice, before we can start using acceptance in our daily lives. We need to recognize awareness before we can expect to expand those moments of awareness. We need to know the tricks of personal development before we can apply them and be responsible for our lives.

It has taken me nearly two years to gather all of the materials together, yet I was at a disadvantage: I didn’t know what virtues I should work on, and it took me a long time to realize when I had practiced the right virtues enough to put them together.

Once I realized that I had all of the right materials sitting at my feet, it was a simple task to put them all together… Yet, just looking at a pile of wood beams, cement, wires, and drywall didn’t mean that I thought I should build a house… Looking at honesty by itself, I don’t think about inner peace… I think fairness in dealing with other people… business and trade. Looking at acceptance by itself, it doesn’t seem to lead to inner peace, it seems to lead towards political power. Awareness leads towards action, and responsibility leads towards money.

Now that I have put them together, it seems obvious how they fit, and how perfectly they apply to inner peace. As separate parts, though, it is hard to image the whole process.

Climbing Mountains

Back to the analogy that I mentioned earlier.

I see this as simply the first of many successes. Each success can be seen as trying to climb to the tallest mountain. Sometimes, when climbing a mountain, we have to travel back down because a path that we thought would be easy was really just hiding a cliff that we can’t climb. Backtracking and finding a different path is common, especially on larger mountains because these cliffs are more common.

Once we reach the summit, we gain a clear picture of the world around us. We can see into the valleys around us… but more importantly, we can see how high the other mountains around us extend. Our normal, human reaction is to want to climb to the highest point… Yet when we reach the highest point of this mountain, we often find other mountains that are even higher.

That’s where I am right now. I can see the path that I took, and I know that I made a good climb… but I also see how much higher I can go. In order to get there, though, I have to climb down the mountain I’m on.

Fortunately, I don’t have to return to the valley I started in. Instead, to get to the next highest mountain, I can walk along the ridge between mountains, still staying quite high and conserving my energy for the next climb. I expect to do this many times… To get to a peak in my development, then seek the next peak.

Each mountain has its own terrain… Each one needs a different map, although many maps will have the same qualities. The details will differ, but the general shape of a mountain doesn’t change, so experience climbing one mountain will help in climbing its neighbors.

Perhaps future mountains will need completely different approaches. After all, climbing a hill is a lot different from climbing a glacier-topped mountain… Yet, people who are just starting to climb mountains should not attempt the snow-capped ones until they have attempted the ones local to their area.

I am putting a mark down right here, and I am saying that this is the map to the first mountain. It is a two-year climb for the unprepared, perhaps faster for those who have studied the map and know what to expect. It is a huge victory, but now, I am going on towards taller mountains.

A novice programmer was once assigned to code a simple financial package.

The novice worked furiously for many days, but when his master reviewed his program, he discovered that it contained a screen editor, a set of generalized graphics routines, an artificial intelligence interface, but not the slightest mention of anything financial.

When the master asked about this, the novice became indignant. “Don’t be so impatient,” he said, “I’ll put in the financial stuff eventually.”

– The Tao of Programming

A lot of work can be done without a purpose, but what does that work accomplish?

I’m very guilty of this, even after finding a purpose to my life. Before I found a purpose, though, I simply did not have any direction… I went wherever my circumstances took me, not choosing to steer my own life in any one direction. After I found a purpose, I have found that making goals and plans comes much more easily, and it is also much easier to stick with those plans.

Having a purpose also gives me a benchmark for when to cut out old goals and plans, and compare society’s definition of success against my own definition.

There are several ways to find a purpose, but I’ll just be sharing the way that I used to find my own. Some people have reported using this method successfully in under 30 minutes, while others have had to spend a few hour-long sessions using this method before finding a purpose. I used this method for two 15 minute sessions, then one 30 minute session before I defined my purpose as “To bring peace to everybody.”

How to Find Your Purpose

This method is actually very simple… Find a place where you can write undisturbed, then write down as many ideas for a purpose as you can, one on each line. If you’re doing this on paper, bring plenty of sheets.

The way that you’ll know if you found a purpose is you will start crying after or while writing it down.

Don’t be afraid to write down things that you absolutely know are not going to be your purpose… Often, if we try to ignore an idea, it will keep popping up until we have dealt with it, distracting us from finding an idea that is closer to our purpose.

Also, it helps to write down different variations of your ideas, to sort of create a gauge of where you need to go. If one idea feels good, but doesn’t make you cry, then narrow the scope down, or broaden it, or even apply it to different groups of people entirely and see how you feel about that.

Finally (on the subject of finding a purpose), please keep in mind that my purpose is extremely short. Most purposes that I’ve seen other people come up with are very detailed, two to three sentence specific purposes… By comparison, mine is extremely broad, vague, and open-ended… I’ll never fully accomplish my purpose, whereas most other purposes can be accomplished and maintained.

Living Your Purpose

Now we get into the sticky part of the process… When I first found my purpose, I reworked this site, cleaned out my life, and devoted a lot of my time to finding out more about peace.

What I failed to do, though, was to set aside any firm goals and create any plans necessary to reach those goals. My purpose is broad; I want to reach everybody and let them know that peace is both possible and desirable.

Of course, I’m not naive enough to think that I can personally talk to everybody in the world… Neither do I think that everybody will want to listen to what I have to say even if I could talk to them all. From the moment I decided on my purpose, I realized that it was doomed to failure.

Because of this perspective, I modified my primary goal. I understand the principles of a ‘viral’ idea… That is, one person has an idea, shares it with one or two other people, and if those people like this idea, they’ll share it with one or two other people as well. Eventually, the idea will spread across the world. With this in mind, I planned to find a small group of people who would listen to my ideas, and I set out to find peace in my own life, so that I could share what I’ve learned.

Unfortunately, after reaching this beginning goal, I stopped trying to push harder, finding more people who I could spread a message of peace to. RSS subscribers slowly trickled in as word-of-mouth spread, and I’ve seen the people who visit this site touching on the topic of peace on their own sites. What I really need, though, is to reach a ‘critical mass,’ where I can reach enough people each year that they’ll turn around and copy me, inspiring still others to copy them.

I don’t think that I can do this only with a blog. I’m brainstorming ideas for future additions to this site, and I’ll welcome ideas from others as well… Perhaps a bulletin system where people can mention peace-related activities in different areas, or a forum… Peace isn’t only about me, it’s about everyone.

The key to living a purpose, no matter how broad or specific, is to make attainable goals, plans to reach those goals, and to take time regularly (perhaps each month) to review those goals and revise the plans.

Friday’s 30 Day Trial Updates

I have stopped my 30 day trial on waking up early due to health concerns. This past week, I’ve been getting constant headaches, and the only recent change in my environment has been waking up at 4am. I’m not completely certain that the headaches are caused by waking up early, so I decided to take a week off and return to waking at 5:30am, and if the headaches disappear, then I’ll experiment more to see what my threshold is. I made it three whole weeks with waking at 4am, though, which is a wonderful testament to myself that I have the willpower necessary to make other changes. My willpower didn’t fail, it was simply concerns over my health.

After waking up at 5:30 this morning, however, I am happy to report that I don’t have a headache today.

I have started two more 30 day trials though. I discussed my financial planning previously (which will take a bit longer than only 30 days to find any real results), and I am also starting an exercise routine.

My finances are largely unchanged, although this pay period will have more surplus than last pay period, allowing me to create a buffer zone as I anticipate an “extra” paycheck in April, due to the number of ‘pay months’ (two two-week pay periods) and calendar months being different throughout the year. While I don’t expect any large results until this extra paycheck in April, I still plan on setting as high of an emergency savings as I can, both before and after April.

Also, despite wanting to have a more active role in dolling out our money, my wife went ahead and paid our bills that were coming due these next two weeks without me being there… I suppose it’s not appropriate to ask someone else to break a habit only for your benefit.

As for the exercise routine, my current plan is to spend time lifting weights on every odd day, and ride an exercise bicycle every even day. Currently, I’ve set aside a block of time about 45 minutes after I eat dinner to do my exercising, which is the ideal time to build strength (as opposed to exercising before eating breakfast in the morning, which is the ideal time to lose weight). Yesterday, I was surprised by just how out-of-shape I had become since leaving the Army… I did a full body workout, and did one set of each exercise for each muscle group, until I neared muscle failure. (Just starting out, I don’t want to reach muscle failure, because that can cause a lot of damage to untrained muscles.)

My arms lost the most relative strength in the four years since I last exercised regularly… I used to be able to do around 75 push-ups in under 2 minutes. Now, I’m quite certain that I can do around 20 in the same amount of time, if I fall over in exhaustion immediately afterwards. My abdominal muscles have shown deterioration as well… I used to do over 85 sit-ups in under 2 minutes, which is considered very fast. My speed isn’t what I was most concerned about, though… I used to be able to do sit-ups indefinitely, sometimes doing over 300 repetitions before getting bored. Now, I can do 35 before the burn gets too great to continue.

I’m certain that the speed of my legs has decreased, although with my bad hip, I won’t be testing how fast I can run. Just as with my abs, I’m more concerned with the endurance of my legs. I can walk continuously for eight hours, with the limit being my hip, but when I get on the bicycle tonight, we’ll see just how much my legs have deteriorated. At my fastest, I used to run 2 miles in just over 12 minutes, although I would be happy to travel that same distance in under 20 minutes now.

Question of the Day

Well, there really isn’t a question for today… Rather, an open-ended invitation to share your experiences with this method of finding your purpose, or perhaps a different method of finding a purpose, and if you already have one, feel free to share the purpose you’ve selected previously.

Today is the Fourth of July, Independence Day for citizens of the United States.

Two hundred thirty one years ago to the day, July 4th, 1776, thirteen of the British Empire’s colonies declared themselves to be a sovereign nation. Well, sort of. A small group of people who had some political power in each of the colonies, and who were also supporters of terrorist groups such as the Sons of Liberty and the Patriots signed a letter intended for the British Parliament which declared the thirteen colonies to be sovereign nations. Before this day, there were minor terrorist acts, such as the assault of soldiers in Boston with rocks hidden in snow balls. This led to the soldiers acting in kind, firing upon their attackers and killing eight, creating what is now known as the Boston Massacre. Also in Boston, the terrorist group, the Sons of Liberty, conducted financial espionage by dumping the contents of a government subsidized shipment into the harbor, ruining an entire boat-load of tea… enough tea to supply the town of Boston and the surrounding area for years.

These terrorists were protesting laws which were passed in Parliament. Because colonies did not have any official representatives in Parliament, the people who were affected had no say in these laws. The problems were not that the laws were unreasonable… indeed, a one-cent tax on official documents, adjusting for inflation, would be the equivalent of a person paying $10 (usd) to have a marriage certificate filed. Most official documents cost much more than this, when a person considers lawyer fees. The taxes were not outrageous… they were very fair and quite easy to pay. The problem was the way that these taxes were levied against the colonies.

Without direct input into the government, these people who had been living under a democracy for their entire lives were suddenly finding their freedoms taken away, without their consent. It was the principle of the laws, not the specifics, which sparked domestic terrorist groups to form. In response to these acts of terrorism, the British government began sending more soldiers to the colonies in the American continent, and because of the lack of government housing, these soldiers were housed in the homes of civilians. This took away more freedom from these British citizens. In order to disrupt the terrorist plottings, the government decreed that people would not be able to meet in large groups, except in church during normal services, taking even more freedom away. In 1776, every major town had an overflowing presence of soldiers, with strict orders to be suspicious of everything. Commerce slowed to a crawl, and even the staunchest supporter of their mother country was feeling the oppression and loss of freedom which they so recently enjoyed.

This is what prompted the Declaration of Independence. It wasn’t a document that was supported by the official local governments of the colonies… in fact, it was a pretty private document until the British troops got wind of it after it was delivered in London.

Open war followed the Declaration, except that, instead of using standard, ‘gentleman’s’ tactics during the war, the colonists used insurgent tactics, such as hiding behind hills, then running away, as well as sending in people who didn’t wear uniforms to set up bombs next to military buildings. The only army we had was a general, a few other officers, and a bunch of people who showed up to attack, then ran away before the British soldiers could turn around. There was nothing for the British to fight, but plenty of ways to be killed, so the regular soldiers of the British Army had no choice but to walk away.

What stuck with us from the War of Independence was the idea that a government can change from nurturing and protective to a stifling security state in a matter of a couple of years. At first, the colonies tried to form a nation of very loosely organized States, much the way that the United Nations works today, but as each state printed their own form of money, commerce across state lines was riddled with problems. Each state formed their own armies, but then these armies started to march against each other. Finally, in 1787, eleven years after the Declaration of Independence, representatives of each state met in secret to debate about how to fix the central, weak government.

What they decided, however, was to get rid of that weak government and create an entirely new government. After four months of heated debate in a very hot building, they finally created the Constitution of the United States of America, the current framework for our system of government.

It isn’t a perfect history… There were a lot of mistakes and misunderstandings. People fed their egos and distrust dealt a heavy blow to one empire and almost destroyed another empire before it even began. The steady voice of reason won out in the end, but even that could not create a perfect government, simply a flexible government. I definitely prefer this version of history to the one that I learned about in elementary school… the imperfections make it more human and more real. George Washington was a slave owner, and rather that vilifying him, it makes him more human… He was a rich man, used to luxury, yet he gave up luxury in order to lead one of the least disciplined armies the world has ever seen, all in the name of liberty. He was elected as our first president after the Constitutional Convention, yet he had matured enough, or perhaps had become disillusioned enough, that he didn’t pursue a third term in office. Thomas Jefferson was a deist, militantly opposed to the idea of Christianity being our ‘founding’ religion, or of there being any religion named as our official religion. Benjamin Franklin was an inventor and political satirist who slept through most of the Convention.

What is amazing to me is that all of these strong personalities were able to reach an agreement at all. The one unifying idea was that of liberty… The government should never take away people’s freedom unless those people give it up on their own. The Bill of Rights, the first ten changes to the Constitution, were both the Constitution’s greatest strength and weakness, because it granted people those things which they desired and needed the most… but it created the impression that if a right wasn’t listed in the Constitution, it could be taken away.

The First Amendment is the one which I hold most dear to my heart. This amendment covers the freedom of speech. I could never demonstrate it as beautifully as Penn and Teller demonstrate it nightly in their magic act in Las Vegas. So, instead of trying to explain it, I’ll show it. Please take five minutes to watch their closing ‘trick,’ which is as much showmanship as it is a salute to the Constitution itself, and the nation which follows it.

RSS subscribers, please watch it on YouTube by following this link: Burning a Flag (Penn & Teller)

I don’t post videos often. In fact, this is the first time that I have ever posted a video. I’m posting this now because it is one of the most important videos, among the most touching and most profound that I have ever seen. If you haven’t already, please take the five minutes to watch it.

Penn and Teller do something which would create an outcry of rage in any “red-blooded” American if it weren’t done on a stage. Yes, it is a trick… but it is ambiguous. Could it be possible to burn a flag out of love? Would I be able to burn a flag?

Seven and a half years ago, I made the following sacred oath to my country before my gods.

I, Adam Adair Bryce Alexander, do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.

The order of those words are important to me, and determines how I interpret the oath. In making that oath, I swore first to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and swear true faith and allegiance to it. As long as I could continue to support and defend the Constitution, then I would follow the orders of the President and my commanding officers. If I could not do both, then the Uniform Code of Military Justice allows me to make a judgment call, to refuse to follow an order which I deem is unlawful. Of course, the risk of judging an order unlawful is that a court would then decide if that order is lawful or not, and if it was lawful, then I would be placed in jail.

What is most important to me, though, despite any risk of jail time, is following the oath as I understand it. My first allegiance is to the Constitution, to the form of government which it describes. My allegiance is not to the President, I only followed his orders. I lived for five years being held to that oath. Despite no longer being an active duty soldier, subject to the laws of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, I still honor that oath. It is the deepest oath that I have ever made, and I can never willfully break it.

While in the Army, I had to ask myself many deep personal questions. Am I willing to die for my country? Am I willing to kill for my country? Am I willing to do anything and everything necessary to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, though it may wreck my body or warp my mind?

Fortunately, I may never know the answer to the most horrible of those questions. I have never looked through the sights of a rifle at a living person. I have never looked at radar returns on my computer screen, passed on intelligence, and seen those dots disappear. Never-the-less, I have trained other soldiers in how to use their rifles properly, coaching them on how to breath, and to pull back on the trigger slowly so that the recoil surprises them. I have passed on tricks and fieldcraft that keeps people hidden and silent so that they can survive. I have trained people on reading radar properly, how artillery and bombers want to see information, and how to predict where those little yellow dots will be so that they can be stopped. I know that my knowledge lives on in the Army, and I know that the people who have inherited my knowledge are in combat situations. The language is sanitized, but it all means death… either for a soldier who I didn’t train well enough, or for someone else if my training was ’sufficient.’

There is, however, one question that I know the answer to, absolutely. I have run this scenario through my mind so often that I feel as though it has already happened.

In the military, there is one little-known and even more rarely practiced tradition. The flag is considered a living body of the United States. Just as it would be considered an atrocity to drag the body of a person through the streets to cheer their death, so too would it be an atrocity to drag a flag through the streets, to have it stepped upon, spat upon, and mutilated by the people who hate it. Burning a flag intact is just as atrocious as burning a man alive. If a military base were ever to fall into enemy hands, it is the responsibility of the last soldier to give the flag a proper funeral. To lay a flag to rest, first, the field of stars must be cut away from the stripes. This symbolizes separating the soul from the body, and marks the ‘death’ of that flag. Next, the stripes are burned, just as a body is burned in a funeral pyre. The field of stars is left untouched, and any desecration by the enemy afterwards is ineffective, as the soul can not be damaged.

So, to the question, can I burn a flag out of love? Yes. It is possible to burn a flag lovingly, and I would be willing and able to do it, so long as my tears do not extinguish the fire. I would never ask to do this horrific task, but if I saw no other alternative, then I would take the lead so that I knew that it was done right.

In case you didn’t know, as it is rarely sang, the words that Penn Jillette quoted at the end of the video make up the second stanza of The Star Spangled Banner. Just as I could not express the First Amendment any better than Penn and Teller, I could not give the background of The Star Spangled Banner, a song which still brings tears to my eyes, any better than Isaac Asimov does in his short article, All Four Stanzas.

Please, on this Fourth of July, take the time to explore your own nationalism, no matter what nation you are a citizen of. Consider your own nation’s history and origins, and reflect on the lives of the people who have brought you the liberties that you now enjoy. Listen to your own national anthem and allow the pride to swell into your chest, until it reaches your throat and you fight back tears. Then, look around at your community and explore the different ways that you can increase the liberty of those around you. The only certainty that I know, is that in every free nation, someone gave their life so that you can enjoy the liberties that you have today. I’m not asking anyone to give their lives. I’m only asking that you live your life freely, so that I’ll know that my troubled conscience is a worthy price to pay.

I think that it would be appropriate to close with the original Pledge of Allegiance, stripped of its politically hateful terms added as an affront to the U.S.S.R. in the 1950’s.

I pledge allegiance to the flag, and to the republic, for which it stands; one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.