Markūs Mars

Replacing Prejudice With Curiosity

In our quest for simplicity, we often overlook the intricate complexities of life. Audible Peace is an invitation to embrace these complexities, fostering a deeper understanding and genuine respect for our shared experiences. We live in a world where the allure of easy answers often overshadows the truth, leading to disconnection and indifference. Audible Peace serves as a vehicle to bridge this gap, encouraging an honest reflection on the present moment.

We aspire to feel well, heard, happy, and respected. However, the foundation of feeling is being. This subtle shift from a desire for mere perception to a quest for authentic reality opens a path to truly being well, heard, happy, and respected. As much as we tend to shy away from the fact that nothing is permanent and sometimes even admire going back in history, it can be very uplifting to find out how our daily actions, conversations, and supporting each other's accountability contribute to complex, internal, and external problem-solving as the interbeings we are.

Interdependency sometimes gets mixed up with codependency in our modern-day age of hyperindividualism. The tale of absolute independence seems inevitable in a capitalistic worldview. However, while it is important not to become dependent on those who exploit us, we must understand the nature of interbeing and how we interdepend on our choices and actions. The outdated idea of “I do me" and "you do you” still seems all too omnipresent. However, remaining open-minded to providing and receiving truthful outside perspectives helps us avoid the pitfalls of tunnel vision, allowing us to improve our shared reality collectively.

Markus encourages looking beyond the surface and engaging with the truth in its raw form. This approach is not about fostering discomfort but looking deeply at our shared reality to co-create a solid foundation by building a more authentic and equitable world. Embracing the slight discomfort of expanding the mind is like embracing the slight discomfort when learning a new yoga pose, stretching sore muscles, receiving a deep tissue massage, or learning a new skill.

Asking and being asked questions often trigger suspicion and judgment instead of curiosity. Today's hyperindividualism and the growing McMindfulness movement often distort our perception, teaching us to be individually okay with the status quo, even though unhappiness is often rooted in complex socioeconomic circumstances. Participating in cultivating fairness through awareness beyond the individual becomes increasingly important.

The foundation of Audible Peace is to meditate on replacing discomfort with curiosity. It is not an escape into personalized alternate realities but a shared journey of discovery, reflection, and transformation that sparks mindfulness in our daily choice-making process.