The peace and joy Jesus pointed to are not legislated, mandated, or even obtained. They are allowed. This peace will not be found outside oneself, nor secured through doctrine or control. It does not arise from fixing a broken world.
Jesus lived as a testimony to the peace and joy that non-dual understanding reveals. What he pointed to was not a belief system, but a recognition — carried in words that continue to ripple through time.
From a non-dual perspective, peace is inherent. It is ever-present — here before judgment, before the impulse to make things right, before the sense of a separate self striving to become whole. What obscures this peace is not fault or failure, but our insistence on not seeing what is already true.
This is why Jesus could say, “The kingdom of God is within you and outside of you.” When separation is seen through, inside and outside are no longer divided. What is discovered within is recognized everywhere.
Peace is not a reward. It is a gift revealed in recognition — the quiet knowing that beneath all misunderstanding, peace has always been present.
When the illusion of separation dissolves, it becomes clear that we are already whole, and that this wholeness is peace.
We are all in this together — not as many struggling to become peaceful, but as peace revealing itself through the many.
Christmas, then, is a time to simply remember our innate, God-given wholeness.