Artwork: Goxwa Borg
Peace is born within the silence of our minds. As Martin Luther once wrote, the mind is a war zone and we struggle for peace there first. It is always there.
Tragically, too often peace is lost when we are distracted by fears, worries and the million other thoughts that bombard us. They overtake us. While we fight them, struggle to gain control over them with the use of alcohol or drugs - prescription or otherwise - to dull their power to inflict emotional pain, they ultimately cause us to suffer. This is Buddha's definition of suffering and its root cause. There is another way to peace and relief from the suffering for which all the great masters and teachers as Buddha, Christ, Krishna and the Yogis advocate. That way is simple. We can all do it. We all do it every day, yet too many of us just don't know it. The masters invite us simply to breathe and enter the rich, palatable silence within. Christ calls this an inner kingdom, a vibrant and beautiful place of encountering the divine knowing.
Breathing slowly amid incoming thoughts, yet mindfully hearing them, even briefly lingering with them before departing again into the silence, we begin the way into the "kingdom within." Breathing deeply, inhaling, exhaling while directing the mind, as a plane slowly lifts off from a busy airport, softly an inner space is finally reached. Imagine the deep silence of space outside the earth's orbit. While the same thoughts or even more thoughts and worries attempt to reach the mind as heat-seeking missiles would search and destroy the peace, once the outer ring is reached, it's too late for the invasive thoughts. We've reached the quiet inner plane of mindfulness where thoughts cannot enter or contaminate the peace. Eventually, the outer mind - often called the ego or "monkey mind," dims into the distance.
Tragically, too often peace is lost when we are distracted by fears, worries and the million other thoughts that bombard us. They overtake us. While we fight them, struggle to gain control over them with the use of alcohol or drugs - prescription or otherwise - to dull their power to inflict emotional pain, they ultimately cause us to suffer. This is Buddha's definition of suffering and its root cause. There is another way to peace and relief from the suffering for which all the great masters and teachers as Buddha, Christ, Krishna and the Yogis advocate. That way is simple. We can all do it. We all do it every day, yet too many of us just don't know it. The masters invite us simply to breathe and enter the rich, palatable silence within. Christ calls this an inner kingdom, a vibrant and beautiful place of encountering the divine knowing.
Breathing slowly amid incoming thoughts, yet mindfully hearing them, even briefly lingering with them before departing again into the silence, we begin the way into the "kingdom within." Breathing deeply, inhaling, exhaling while directing the mind, as a plane slowly lifts off from a busy airport, softly an inner space is finally reached. Imagine the deep silence of space outside the earth's orbit. While the same thoughts or even more thoughts and worries attempt to reach the mind as heat-seeking missiles would search and destroy the peace, once the outer ring is reached, it's too late for the invasive thoughts. We've reached the quiet inner plane of mindfulness where thoughts cannot enter or contaminate the peace. Eventually, the outer mind - often called the ego or "monkey mind," dims into the distance.
Quieter now, having lost the power to distract, thoughts sound more like a distant radio in a neighbor's garage. It becomes easier to tune into the interior plane and rest in that quiet. Time seems also to disappear. While thoughts will return occasionally, we can steer our minds away from them, concentrating on a word or thought-feeling, which keep our minds on course by pushing consciousness deeper into the silence. This may be a bit of a process for a while, but eventually, the thoughts dim and peace is reached. As a cool breeze and warm embrace from a lover, we are overcome by peace. The longer we remain in the silence, the deeper the peace. It can last the entire day until we return to the silence.
Rapt in peace, now we respond to daily life with a calm we didn't have before. Decisions are made with more clarity, mindfully and intentionally on behalf of retaining that peace. Love becomes an easier choice to make. That place of peace we'd encountered and lingered in earlier in the day is recalled throughout the day. Small minor thought corrections are made throughout the day to retain that inner peace. We find ourselves often turning away peace-sabotaging thoughts. This is just the beginning of entry into the presence of the Divine, the peace of Christ.
This is the peace of Christ that surpasses all understanding. It becomes an experiential even intuitive knowing rather than a deductive theologically rational understanding. You don't need a college education to enter the peace of God. All you need is the unwillingness to be swamped and controlled by the world's cacophonous control and predatory mind-sweeping any longer. This is freedom, ultimate freedom. The thoughts are generated by the world's reach into your mind.
The great masters and yogis call us to still our thoughts for just a while until we gain control of our minds - and consciousness - through that mindful awareness. Then we can choose what we want to think about and what we want to avoid. Once we can do this, we can think with our bodies, sense how thoughts make us feel. Does a thought make us feel lighter, happier, more inspired, more motivated, calmer? Or, does it make us feel tense, frustrated, slower, sadder, apathetic, somehow dimmer? As we regain the power of choice over our thoughts we learn to choose to release our power into all the choices we make. This is what it is to be a powerful being.
Jesus said we are all sons and daughters of God. He said we could be like Him, if we so chose. He did not ask us to worship him, He did not come to create a new religion. He came to teach us how to unplug from the world's control by stilling our minds until we could gain control of them and make more conscious and loving decisions, including reaching for a more enlightened dimension far beyond this one. When we enter into the divine presence, we can become instruments of peace and that will change our lives and the world. We can become troubadours of peace, ambassadors of love by gently impacting life itself with our peace.
Maybe, we can bring a little bit of heaven to earth with each breath. Maybe, we can just imagine a world as one, at peace.
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