Okay. So now you're steeped in peace. Nothing can disturb your reverie, right?

Wanna bet?

No matter how much at peace you think you are, there's always more. There's always a deeper peace waiting.

Finding your state of inner calm is important. In fact, it's going to be essential for you to begin the next step of our journey together -- actually dealing with the things that steal your peace.

Perhaps nothing in your life does. You are like a saint, living with such equilibrium that it doesn't matter to you if your world is collapsing around you.

Traveling the way of peace doesn't mean withdrawing from the world and all of the situations that steal our peace. The deepest levels of peace are attained only by engaging the reality that life serves up and doing the best we can to find and keep it.

Too often, though, we don't, instead content to "work on ourselves" and pretend the rest of the world has nothing to do with us, much less the peace we seek. Wrapped in a protective blanket of denial, isolation, and avoidance, we find an uneasy peace that is all-too-easily disturbed.

While such actions may allow us a relative calm amidst the outer storms, sooner or later the search for lasting peace will demand we deal with them.

For rarely do these things go away on their own. Instead, they keep growing in number and volume until they become like the squeaky wheel that will give us no peace until we fix it.

We all know what happens by then. The problems often escalate in scope and complexity, and demand much more of our time, effort and resources to deal with.

That's where our world is today.

Situations that have been cooking for years are bubbling up all over, now getting to a point where we're forced to do something about it. Their threats are so great that many of us are throwing open our windows and screaming, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more."

So how are we to find peace in times like these, when the world around us is falling apart and screaming for our attention to fix it before it's too late?

For a long time you've experienced the pain of dealing with a world that makes life hard, that requires conflict and struggle as the tools of daily existence.

You've had to make many difficult choices just to get by and carve out a life that has worked for you, albeit not always as you would have liked.

Along the way, it's exacted a heavy toll. Perhaps on your health. Or finances. Or relationships. Or maybe just on your peace and happiness.

Yet, something within you has changed. The pain is no longer the focus on your attention, though it demands it from time to time in an ever-constant reminder that world is still there, with all the challenges it brings just to survive within it.

This is the season for bringing light into dark places. So why not shine it into your own innermost recesses, where the seeds of conflict sprout and grow?

What are those seeds? Fear and desire are big ones, but less in their own right than for how they affect how we live our lives and trigger responses to the world around us. Misperceptions. Misunderstandings. Confusion. False images. Faulty communication. Expectations. Judgment. Unclear or conflicting intentions. The list is long and far beyond our ability to cover in a few paragraphs.

Perhaps the most insidious, however, are the set of characteristics that make up our personalities and the awareness with which we direct our attention. For together they determine what we will focus upon and how we will interact with that aspect of reality presented for our consumption in any particular moment.

Who says baseball's our favorite pastime? Sure, the World Series is in full swing, and the Fall Classic will soon serve us up a new champ to hail. But even there, something's missing without the Damn Yankees to hate.

Without them or someone similar to raise our ire, it's just not the same. It sucks all the fun out of it. After all, it's not just about rooting for your guys. It's just as much about pulling to see the ones you hate do badly.

I can't give you peace.

No one can. Not Buddha. Not Mohammed. Not even Jesus.

Their godliness may have made them deserving vessels into which we deposited our faith and belief in something more than the struggle of the moment, from which we can draw hope, strength and direction through life's storms.

But they could not wave a magic wand and have peace suddenly spread across the land or fill the hearts and minds of men (or women).

If you ask me, people don't want peace. They want solutions to their problems. For so long as those problems exist, they don't think they can be at peace.

Moreover, the common way of dealing with those problems is through struggle and conflict. In other words, peace is the last thing on our minds.

If we're to create peace in our lives (or world), perhaps we should focus more on what we can do about the challenges at hand.

Every situation is unique, as are the individuals within it and the issues they face in their lives. Therefore no one-size-fits-all solution should be expected to give us a way out every time.

Nevertheless, there are some things we can try that will give us a good start.

If you're tired of all the fighting that mars our world and steals our peace, perhaps you'll try some of these declarations on for size:

1. I release my need to get my way or impose my will on anyone;
2. I refuse to use the actions of others as cause to argue, prove I'm right, or fight to defend myself.
3. I vote for people and platforms that use peace as a means and not just as a desired outcome.

Today I hope you will allow me to share some thoughts on a topic that is quite elusive to many of us – peace. I am not referring to the peace of nations, though the cloud of international strife hangs over our world, threatening to grow darker with each passing moment. No, the peace of which I speak is that which pervades us all, if we will but call upon it to come into our lives.

Peace. Pax. Pas. By so many names it is known around the world. Yet so few of us truly know peace. Yes, we have periods without personal conflict, but truly, is that peace? Do those times mean we are at peace within ourselves? Or are those moments we think of as peace just temporary lulls in the storms of the outer world?

A discussion on the conflict in the Middle East recently raised questions in my mind about the seemingly endless amount of time it takes to resolve disputes through war, especially where there are substantial cultural differences. I had to ask myself, 'if war works so well, why does it never end?'