For me, I want to gain a state of life where I never forget about the world however good I feel at the moment or how bad I feel at the moment, but I always want to be aware in which world I live and with the question what is my step for peace.

This is an essential thought, especially the sentence “all the suffering of the world, including your own, was caused by human beings, thus it can also be overcome by human beings”. We have the intelligence to find solutions.

One of the main research questions of our times is how do we study and learn about the external structures of war and the structures of war within us. Two days ago I was talking with a great peace worker, Rueven Moskowich, about how he found the courage to say that the structures we see being played out in the Middle East right now are more or less the same as fascism. So often we immediately say “We can't compare it!”, however it is not about comparison. The extent of suffering is not to be compared. But we do have to look at the structures. In every war the structures are more or less the same, and we must have the courage to see that and to study the structures, also within ourselves, and then create solutions. So the research is focussed on how we can break the structural cycle of violence? How can we create trust among human beings?

One of the main elements is to gain the ability of non-identification with our own preoccupations. Instead we gain a state of observing ourselves. We are our main study object because we can find all the human structures within us. Therefore, the deeper we are able to understand these structures in us and find solutions the deeper we learn about humankind in general.

To believe in peace we need to develop research centres where a comprehensive knowledge for peace is investigated and researched. Our specialty is the human knowledge, finding out where the core of healing among human beings is. It is also very important to gain knowledge about ecology and technology. How do we live with the nature? But our main focus point is the human question – social sustainability. It is one of the main points because if we create a culture where human beings can open their hearts again and allow themselves to be touched by the world they will naturally have the impulse to find solutions for animals, for nature and for the planet as a whole.

Some of the main questions we deal with are - How do we create trust? How can peace be realized? It is an experiment which needs each student, each participant to take these questions completely seriously, everyday, in every moment.

Being a peace worker shall become an acknowledged and well-known profession in the world. It is the profession we need the most at the moment. Educational structures need to be created for young people where they can learn the knowledge: What can we do in the world?

If I look to the world there is a complete twist of truth and values. Look at how many young people, after finishing school, go into an education of war – it is a complete twist of values. Why do young people go into the war education? On television and in the movies the heroes of our times are always the guys with the big gun. I remember when I was at school the cool ones or the heroes were always those who had the power over the others. Or if there was a small animal it was the cool ones who killed the animal. If one would say “stop, that’s a living being, don’t kill the animal", you were the loser. In fact it is those who are standing for the protection of life and for the soft parts of life that are the real heroes. It would be a new picture of a hero?

The peace movement, in that sense, has to become much more strategic. The consciousness has to rise globally. Sami Awad said “if you convince somebody to put down his/her gun you empower him/her”. As long as we believe we can fight the bad we won’t find the solution because the structure is still the same. So a vision of a global peace movement would also be that we create new movies, new pictures of heroes, where heroes are those who stand for a perspective.

Imagine that at least half of the young people who go to the army after school were, instead, to go into an education for peace. Going into crisis areas, seeing the situation of the world and directly helping and putting their power into something useful. Receiving an education and the tools to begin realizing their visions, fulfilling their dreams, asking those questions that one never got an answer to at school. How to deal with love, for instance? What do I do if I am shy? What is my destiny? Does something like this exist? Where is my place in the world? Where can I put my power in a positive direction? Imagine that young people were educated in this consciousness of the world and this human knowledge - what powerful people they would be! Learning how to create peace instead of how to defend, to make war or handle a weapon. What is the inner power we need to gain in order not to use weapons any longer? What is the inner equivalent for that feeling of having a weapon and feeling strong?  

Spiritual education is also a main element of our work - gaining a greater understanding of the universe that we live in. Here we are also often completely twisted in our values. For instance, I go to a supermarket and think that is the reality, instead of sitting for half an hour in front of a plant and just being overwhelmed with that miracle of life. What is this plant? Who created it? What is the similarity between that plant and me? What is the core?

There is something much, much greater than what we often think is reality. I believe every human being is guided. How do I learn to listen to the inner voice, to guidance? How do I open the channel to that?  A large part of the study in spiritual education is on archetypal peace cultures, both historically and in the present, because a lot of peace knowledge exists in the world, and also within us.  In former peace cultures, for example, children were raised in a way where they kept contact to nature as a source of power. It is an important research question in how do we educate children in a way where they don’t lose that connection any more.

And lastly, there is the practical education - permaculture, self-sustainability, the solar-power village, new technology that no longer abuses the earth. How is a peace model organized? It cannot just take old structures of organisation, therefore researching new structures of self-organisation is very important - an organisational structure that leads to creativity instead of bureaucracy and institutions. Self-organisation can only happen if each individual in a community finds his/her place and is a self-thinking, self-responsible part of the community. 

An ability to withstand conflicts is very important. Not trying to push them away, not breaking apart by them, but gaining strength through the conflict. If we stay connected with our intelligence and the wish to learn, each conflict can serve as a step towards insight. As long as we are not able to solve our conflicts within a community we will not be able to find solutions on a political level. If I am in a conflict and don’t have the courage to solve it, maybe I become resigned, judge or blame others, instead of understanding what is the real issue, I don’t believe in political solutions or in a global peace. But the more I take the steps towards global peace, the more I believe that it is possible.

Creating peace models means to understand the structures of conflict and find solutions for them, and it also means to understand the structures of healing and the structures of love. Healing or Life has a completely different logic and we can study that and gain a lot of strength from it. The possibility of healing exists in every moment. It is a great miracle that if my body is hurt, immediately the whole organism starts to heal the place that is injured. It is the logic of life and healing.

A realistic peace strategy needs to come from a communitarian intelligence. Everything in the world exits as a community. Even our body is a great community. Our body is a model for cooperation that can only function if each part of the body knows its place. A large part of the research then is how to build up a community, how does each human being find his/her place in the whole? We need to find new ways of revealing our intelligence. We need a deep trust for that. Trust is created through truth. Normally we meet each other with masks and a lot of our intelligence is put on “navel-gazing” – we always circle around our personal problems, or try to pretend to be different from what we are. If it is possible to create a space where human beings don’t have to pretend something, but where we can become true again then a lot of our energy will be released to be gathered for a global and common vision.