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In 1995, at Lancaster, Johan Galtung taught us two kinds of peace: the absence of war, and the presence of justice.
There are three kinds of peace. The peace of treaties, which silences the weapons. The peace of justice, which repairs. And a third, beneath both: Fundamental Peace.
“What remains when fear unties is Fundamental Peace: not the end of weather, but the sky that holds the storm.” The Mind That Makes the World · “Fundamental Peace”
We measure GDP to the decimal. We almost never measure peace inside a person.
A sentence of mine
What the UN taught me: change walks on two legs.
Read the words
Every question I have worked on started somewhere specific. The first one started in a house in Madrid.
Card of the week · Meta Pet 1 — "From Entropy to Syntropy". Shadow → Gift → Essence. Koan: "If entropy becomes syntropy, what was the chaos for?" Affirmation: I transform entropy into creative flow.
A glimpse of peace is easy. A retreat, a good walk, a quiet Sunday. Staying there on a Tuesday is another matter.
“Fundamental Peace does not lower your craft; it removes the threat that your worth depends on it.” “The impossible standard that was never about excellence”
Both peaces that peace research names are about the world. Galtung's two words: negative peace, the absence of war; positive peace, the presence of justice.
Read the words
Most organizations do not have a training problem. They have a transfer problem.
Card of the week · Meta Pet 7 — "Virtue is its own Reward". Shadow → Gift → Essence. Koan: "If virtue is its own reward, why do you seek recognition?" Affirmation: My virtue shines through all my actions.
In 1997 I was posted as an international observer in Prijedor, in the former Yugoslavia. My job was to watch an election after a war.
Read the words
Five papers, one question underneath all of them: what actually brings a human being back to peace — and how do we measure it honestly? 2026 has been a research year.
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The Making of a Question
All 22 chapters →Every question I have worked on started somewhere specific. The first one started in a house in Madrid.
Most organizations do not have a training problem. They have a transfer problem.
Public policy treats happiness as a sum. Contemplative traditions treat it as a path. I have been standing between the two since university.
Being born in Spain gives you a bone-deep understanding of what a civil war is.
In 1995 I spent my days on two very different scales.
The conflict you can see is rarely the conflict you are in.
If peace is a skill, someone has to teach it. That was my first job.
In 1997 I served as an international observer in Prijedor, in the former Yugoslavia, two years after finishing my MA in Peace Studies.
After weeks of listening in Israel, our compass came down to one sentence.
I left national diplomacy after my peace studies. Years later I was a diplomat again, without a flag.
My first dissertation was about how symbols divide. My corporate career asked the opposite question: can a symbol include?
A single visit gives you an impression. Twenty-five give you a relationship.
The most useful classroom I sat in kept moving.
Every way of working rouses something in other people: energy or fatigue, courage or caution, trust or self-protection. The only question is whether we notice what.
Organizations begin long before they are registered.
An idea becomes real the first time other people walk into a room because of it.
Some of the most durable things an organization owns were not named by its leaders. They were named by its community.
Every organization has a sentence for "we are doing well". The interesting part is what that sentence is counting.
Some concepts are built at a desk. The one my work now rests on arrived in meditation.
In May 2025, in Dharamshala, I shared the mission of the World Happiness Foundation with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Most of us only notice our breathing when it fails us: before a difficult presentation, in an argument, at three in the morning.
Meta Pets · card of the week
See all →Card of the week · Meta Pet 1 — "From Entropy to Syntropy". Shadow → Gift → Essence. Koan: "If entropy becomes syntropy, what was the chaos for?" Affirmation: I transform entropy into creative flow.
Card of the week · Meta Pet 7 — "Virtue is its own Reward". Shadow → Gift → Essence. Koan: "If virtue is its own reward, why do you seek recognition?" Affirmation: My virtue shines through all my actions.
Card of the week · Meta Pet 12 — "A Pure Heart". Shadow → Gift → Essence. Koan: "A pure heart has no walls. What are you protecting?" Affirmation: My heart is pure and open to all of life.
Behind codependency there is a sensitivity that has not yet chosen itself. Card of the week · Meta Pet 19 — "The Future Human Being". Shadow → Gift → Essence. Koan: "The future human being is here now. What are you waiting for?" Affirmation: I embody the future human being of compassion.
Just one. Card of the week · Meta Pet 23 — "The Alchemy of Simplicity". Shadow → Gift → Essence. Koan: "Simplicity is the ultimate alchemy. What are you complicating?" Affirmation: I find the profound in the simple.
Its antidote fits in one word: attention. Card of the week · Meta Pet 33 — "The Final Revelation". Shadow → Gift → Essence. Koan: "The final revelation reveals: there is no final revelation." Affirmation: The final revelation unfolds within me now.
Is your fantasy pulling you away from what is coming, or anticipating it? Card of the week · Meta Pet 41 — "The Prime Emanation". Shadow → Gift → Essence. Koan: "The prime emanation emanates. From where?" Affirmation: I channel the prime emanation of source.
Stress asks for more motion; this card asks for the opposite. Card of the week · Meta Pet 52 — "The Stillpoint". Shadow → Gift → Essence. Koan: "At the stillpoint, everything moves." Affirmation: I rest in the stillpoint between worlds.
Card 64 of 64 is not an ending but a dawn. Card of the week · Meta Pet 64 — "Aurora". Shadow → Gift → Essence. Koan: "The aurora ends the night that never was." Affirmation: The aurora of my awakening illuminates all.
Conflict is not the opposite of peace; in this card it is its shadow. Card of the week · Meta Pet 6 — "The Path to Peace". Shadow → Gift → Essence. Koan: "You found the path to peace. Who was walking the path of war?" Affirmation: I walk the path of deep inner peace.
Music
Read the words
Page of the week
“What remains when fear unties is Fundamental Peace: not the end of weather, but the sky that holds the storm.” The Mind That Makes the World · “Fundamental Peace”
“Fundamental Peace does not lower your craft; it removes the threat that your worth depends on it.” “The impossible standard that was never about excellence”
“The treasure we bring home might be a more careful way of belonging.” Mindfulness, Diving, and the Sacred Meaning of Water
Disillusionment is not always a breakdown. Sometimes it is the first rung.
“The work is not to silence anxiety but to retire the alarm that no longer matches the room you are standing in.” “Hypnotherapy for anxiety — the subconscious learns calm”
“What becomes possible for others because of the way I lead?” Lead with Heart: Building New Paradigms for Human Happiness
“The whole of it rests on the unwitnessed good of people nobody was looking at.” Two Hundred and Six · a Nine Paths to One novel
Three things you are not asked to be, and three you are.
“Stillness becomes a place you can return to instead of a wall you bounce off.” “Restlessness: the body that cannot find a chair”
One guest nobody invited.
From the Journal
See all →Most conversations about violence start too late: at the war, the strike, the scandal.
Most knowledge work runs on one kind of attention: the tight beam. Deadlines, inboxes, back-to-back meetings.
"Hypnosis is not mind control. A hypnotist cannot make someone do anything against their will or ethical beliefs."
Hope is often treated as waiting for conditions to improve. I think that is the wrong definition.
"Behind every choice, even those that result in harm, there is a positive intention."
Most ocean policy is framed as damage control. I think that frame is part of the problem.
Friday was the International Day of Friendship. In most workplaces it passed unnoticed, which says something.
Most of us are optimised for certainty. Awe breaks that optimisation, and leaders need more of it.
The most common barrier I see in university classrooms is not lack of talent. It is social anxiety.