By Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking
Peace is a popular theme in New Thought. There are Peace Poles, Interfaith Peace Conferences, prayers for peace, and a general desire for Peace. Peace is an attribute ascribed to Spirit and is evoked as a Truth to be revealed. Horse feathers!
The natural state of the Universe, the natural state of Spirit is chaos, by comparison Peace is death. “He looks so peaceful.” “She is at peace now.” Peace is the death of war. War is action, challenge, disruption, transition, revolution, evolution, growth and destruction; chaos.
We are at war every moment of our lives. We eat, breath and circulate blood in a war to stay alive. We are living expressions of Spirit with freedom of choice that generates infinite new experiences within It. To evoke peace invites stagnation. The 19th century American abolitionist Fredrick Douglas declared, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
We meditate seeking tranquility ̶ peace, to connect with Spirit. We enter into an unnatural state seeking our natural state. We are confused. Our human mind is obscuring our own vision. We are, to quote the ancient sages, “Barking up the wrong tree.”
Our efforts are better spent recognizing our chaotic nature. It is our differences that push us forward. Those “others” spout a different view and we are called upon to defend our own. In science this is peer review. In their defense we must look more closely at our own views and persuade ourselves that they are valid truths and not just accepted beliefs. Simultaneously a seed of doubt is planted and a door of opportunity for a mutation of belief is created.
Embracing the chaos, our true Spiritual self weighs the evidence. Our human self makes choices. We can choose to hold firm to our original view, more convinced of its validity. We may slap ourselves in the head thinking, “How could I have been so blind?” If we allow, we engage in conversation with the other and develop areas of agreement that allow for a continuing discourse on our non-aligned ideas.
One definition of peace is to be free from disquieting thoughts or emotions. Boring! Our human existence is predicated on our continuous evolution of ideas. An evolution that carries us generation by generation, epoch through epoch from purely physical entities surviving through physical strength eventually to purely Spiritual entities evolved back to our source energy. Emotions and discomfort fuel change by challenging the status quo and tipping the table upon which we have perfectly arranged our lives spilling everything onto the floor in disarray. We clean up the mess, but some items are broken and discarded and nothing goes back just exactly as it was, made different if for no other reason by the fact it has moved.
We humans are at once fragile and resilient. Our bodies are easily damaged and our egos can be crushed with a single word, but a healthy body quickly rights itself, and a healthy ego recovers a little wiser and more flexible. Our bodies follow tried and true methods to recover. Bones are reset, wounds bandaged, medications applied and the physical laws of nature activate our natural healing processes. Our egos usually need a little more work. The resiliency of our ego is dependent on our beliefs and those can be deeply rooted in misinformation.
Our illusion of peace is one such belief. To be free of conflict is intolerable; our nature is to grow, inaction takes us nowhere. Spirit created an entire universe for us to explore and gave us freedom of choice to drive us into it. Conflict, within our own minds or with others forces movement, change and growth.
Substitute “tranquility” for “peace” and we move closer to an attainable goal in alignment with Spirit. Tranquility is living in harmony with our Spiritual nature recognizing its chaotic basis, its requisite constant evolution. By changing our belief, our definition of perfection, our egos are pulled back from their blind insistence on their own destruction. Recall the lesson of the roadrunner and coyote cartoons where the bird paints a tunnel onto a mountainside and the righteous coyote slams full speed into his false belief.
Slamming ourselves into one mountainside after another is the desperation that leads many to seek peace through spiritual enlightenment. Ironically our false idea of peace keeps our true goal of tranquility, like the roadrunner, just beyond reach, and like the coyote we redouble our efforts concocting new and wilder schemes that take us farther from our truth.
Walt Kelly’s Pogo famously stated “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” We accept false ideas and ingrain them into our beliefs. We defend our beliefs without questioning them. We seek out a peace that does not exist and are blind to our true chaotic nature. We slam into another mountainside and blame the roadrunner for our misfortune. We have met the enemy . . . .
Death comes soon enough. Our lives are a gift of free expression whose only charter is to provide beliefs for Spirit to act on. Our experiences reflect our beliefs and our freedom to choose allows our beliefs to change from moment to moment. The Spiritual intelligence that flows through each of us guides our choices if we agree to listen. By transcending the chatter of our egos and embracing the chaos of infinite possibility the right Word (Divine inspiration) drifts like a falling snowflake landing on our tongue just in time to create the right action to move us forward.
A state of security and order is the goal of tyrants and dictators. Their idea of security, their idea of order, is not peace; it is the death of any dissention or original thinking. Chaos is not anarchy, there is order in chaos just as there is order in the Universe. There is a “dark matter” not yet fully understood that scientist agree plays a part in the universal order. A power greater than we are, that we can use when we stop barking up the wrong tree.
Learn more about Spirit, Spiritual Mind, the One Mind, Spiritual Law, Universal Intelligence, The Science of Mind and the power within you at a Center For Spiritual Living near you or online starting at CSL.org or CSLFTL.org.