The Hebrew word for peace is “shalom,” which derives from the root “shalem,” which means “whole.” Peace, quite simply, is the awareness that we are whole, and the eradication of all those deceptions in our lives that swarm around us and try to convince us otherwise.

The torment and angst of life is disconnection, division, and individuality. We feel alone and alien. We see ourselves as small and insignificant, hopelessly flawed, and irreparably broken. “Shalom/Peace” is the consciousness that God is within us and that we are within Him; that He is the fundamental and solitary truth of us and of all creation. The world that we inhabit is a realm of concealment that hides the reality of God’s wholeness. Our task is to penetrate the concealment, to illuminate and eliminate the darkness. When we do so, we will experience the peace and euphoria of reuniting with everything we thought we had lost and lacked. The sense of alienation, the agony of not belonging in a cold world that does not know you or care about you, all of this will suddenly fade away, and we will experience the ecstatic intertwining of the billions of souls that are ultimately singular and undifferentiated.

When we realize that we are whole and one, there are no boundaries or limitations. We flow through and with everything as we are all kindred and synergistic. There is no fear, or trepidation, or bias. There is no need to explain oneself, or justify, or beautify. We need nothing, and we lack nothing, because we have everything, and we are everything. There is no tension or awkwardness, no self-consciousness or defense. There is no need to find the right words or wear the right clothes. There is no vanity, or jealousy, or envy. There is only amity, and empathy, and community in its truest sense.

We come to understand that we are inextricably co-mingled with one another. We are one soul, one being. Peace is not simply an alliance between us in which we agree to do no battle; it is the recognition that we are fundamentally one, and that any conflict between us is only a battle with oneself.

Pnei Hashem, p.164