Beyond The Bridge of Hope is Oneness

By David Wick

Hope: “to want something to happen or be true and think that it could happen or be true”

In 1984 the International Day of Peace was frequently a hard sell as we in the Pathways To Peace team prepared for the first large scale celebration of Peace Day in a major US city. Even in San Francisco, birth place of the United Nations, this was a new and unknown event. What a huge difference 30 years later as Peace Day 2014 saw tens of thousands of events, and hundreds of millions of people around the world engaged in Feasts for Peace, marches, school programs, quiet gatherings, and musical productions in both many small and major cities. There was even a world-wide unveiling of the Ode to Peace composed by Frédéric Chaslin and performed by the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.

Of great significance to me is the growing presence and added emphasis on participating in personal and group silence, showing up for prayer and meditation, the development of a growing understanding and practice of Subtle Activism. With a growing number of NGOs there is an honoring and accessing the inner being, while manifesting the Peacebuilding activities in the outer. However, what is happening today is tremendous and beyond what we had hoped for “back in the day.”

“Peace is both an innate state of being, and a dynamic evolutionary process,” states the Pathways To Peace guiding definition on Peace. It is clear to me that Peace and Oneness describe the same state of being and the engagement of both our inner and outer is so essential. We live in the physical world which is bound by time and space and the challenge of duality. We must have a compass to find our way through the brambles and thickets. This is our growing sense of oneness, experiencing it, and boldly naming it as the reality it is.

Robert Muller, former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, once said that the great human achievements over the last few centuries have been mainly in the domain of matter and mind and that we are only at the very beginning of exploring humanities moral and spiritual capacities. I certainly have found myself awestruck by the bounding development in our technologies and handheld devices, and then wondered how can we do the same in our social lives and global relationships? How can we put that same creative force in developing the Culture of Peace?

As is often said, as human beings we have more similarities than we do differences, but we tend to focus on the differences. I and others believe this is changing as we have a greater understanding and experience of our Oneness and are not afraid to say so. As Sant Kirpal Singh, Spiritual Master, said, “Be good – Do good – Be one. Our mission is to fill the human heart with compassion, mercy, and universal love, which should radiate to all countries, nations, and people of the world and to enable each one to love God, love all, serve all, and have respect for all, as God is immanent in all forms. The goal is that of oneness. This is the way to peace on earth."   

Peace begins within, and our hope is that others will engage in a Peaceful way of life. For me, this is happening, as is seen in the spread of the International Day of Peace, the growing Culture of Peace Initiative, and the celebration of Oneness on October 24th. I believe Peace and Oneness are the same and showing up in so many ways. We are moving beyond hope, manifesting our deeper nature of Oneness that humanity demands, and cries out for. It’s Time!

David Wick has over 30 years of executive and management training and organizational development consulting experience, and has held important positions within Sun Microsystems, Stanford University, Levi Strauss and the European Foundation for Management Development (efmd). He has designed extensive international training programs, and has received accolades in both the business and Peacebuilding arenas. In 1983, David helped launch the United Nations NGO, Pathways To Peace (PTP) which had assisted the adoption of the UN’s International Day of Peace in 1981. David has been a leader in organizing the celebration of the International Day of Peace since 1984, and currently serves as a Director and PTP Vice President. While working at Stanford University, in 1985 he founded the ten year-long PTP Peace Within Organizations program and in 1995 co-founded the visionary project Peace Building Through Business which led to being a leading member of a five year international think tank on the future role of business in the 21st Century. David is the Team Leader of the global Culture of Peace Initiative (CPI), a UN-designated "Peace Messenger Initiative", of which Pathways To Peace serves as the Secretariat. David also works in the Public Diplomacy area through placing foreign exchange students in high schools and with host families in Southern Oregon, lives with his love Irene Kai and Storm the cat.