How To Find The Peace That Already Dwells Within You.

 

I would like to introduce you to some new ideas intended to help us transform these disturbing times on earth into something of great spiritual benefit. If one has any sensitivity, then one must ask: Why is there so much hatred everywhere? What has happened that human beings are so willing to destroy each other, and at the same time feel so justified for the terror they champion? How is it that fear rules the day and drives the world to an edge that it manages to extend with each passing hour? Why can’t there be peace on earth?
But to these same questions we must add one more a probing inquiry not so easy to entertain because it begins with turning around one’s outwardly pointed finger of judgment. We must ask: What is my role in this madness? Am I really just the spectator I imagine myself to be, innocent of the sickness I see everywhere  or am I part of the ignorance whose pain seeks to destroy peace?
We must not fear such questions, as fear is ignorance actuated. The truth is, and always has been (in its simplest spiritual equation), that we are the world we see; we are each, within, microcosmic versions of the global conflict going on around us. We despise the day that deprives us of our happiness, mentally crushing anyone blamed for our loss. And we are never wrong in our judgment. So we see, the Wise teach truly: The inner does determine the outer. There cannot be peace (on earth) until one’s heart is at peace. A mind at peace punishes neither itself nor anyone else.
The work to understand these truths begins with no longer trying to create an imagined peace, but with awakening to what it is within us that believes it already knows the true nature of peace.
Any awakening implies the sudden realization that one has been asleep to another order of reality. So it is true with our wish to awaken to what is wrecking us. And just as a friend might gently nudge us to help bring us out of a nightmare, there have been truths sown into this world whose purpose is to show us where we are asleep to reality and living out a bad dream.
We first meet these timeless and eye opening truths in the form of new and higher self-knowledge such as follows: We cannot make ourselves peaceful, any more than we can make silence. Silence already exists in any space once we stop making noises in it. The same holds true of peace. Real peace is already in place, and we need only stop creating conflict to realize its grace.
Simply stated: We are not at peace within ourselves because we are at war within ourselves. And because we have yet to learn how to enter this interior battle, armed with the one force that transforms dark fires into mild Light, we do not comprehend the actual nature of this internal conflict. Again we meet the need for new and greater self-knowledge, beginning with this Key Lesson.
Until we realize that continually identifying with our own conflicting desires about how to win peace of mind is like using a cannon blast to light a candle, we will only remain at war within ourselves all the while blaming the world around us for its insensitive inability to grant us that imagined peace we so desperately seek!
It was said by Christ, which should be self-evident, that “A house divided cannot stand.” The problem is, we are not conscious of this division within us, so that we are virtually unaware of our own conflicting desires. This inner struggle continues unabated because the sensation of a pleasure promised by one desire outweighs the pain of its secret opposition.
The obvious note here is that a pain masked by a more prominent pleasure does not end their conflict, and the misery in the soul that suffers this battle remains intact even if the physical body isn’t conscious of this continuous conflict. Let’s illuminate, by example, a few of these conflicting desires and end their power over us. Our peace will follow as sunlight after the passing storm.
One desire we all share is that we want to be loved and approved of by everyone everywhere. To accomplish this we believe we must be worthy, which requires our becoming a bigger “success” than whomever it is that is seen as competing with us for this craved attention. What other choice have we given the importance of our task but to step on a few people on our way to the top?
Can we see how our initial desire causes conflict and actually creates an effect the very opposite of the one it intended at the outset? Living in fear that we won’t win the approval we seek, we have no choice but to do whatever is necessary to accomplish our end. So we hurt others by running over them to reach our goal. We destroy the very love and respect we wanted on our way to winning it!

By: admin