by Rev. Glenn Neil Stocking

Imagine a scene more than one hundred thousand years ago, the Neanderthal are quickly dwindling and homo sapiens are succumbing to increasing drought and climate fluctuations. On the Euro/African continents the human experiment teeters on the brink of extinction. Over the arctic regions of prehistoric North America and Siberia a train of atmospheric low pressure cells form and strengthen; warm moist air siphons northward on the back side of a late season high stalled near North America’s Atlantic coast. Drawn up into the bitter cold arctic air the moisture turns to snow. Over the planes of Greenland molecules of water crystallize and conjoin dropping and ascending or drifting as updrafts and outflows of storm gusts mindlessly propel the budding snowflakes.

Our lives are the out picturing of a million variables every day. World politics, local politics, family and career politics; some we participate in actively, some shape our experiences without our knowledge. From our experiences, we form our beliefs; ideas become planted in our minds. There is no grand plan at play, just an endless series of random reactions to unseen forces.

Earth’s climate patterns are changing and the northern latitudes are cooling. Snow falls regularly now and where it had melted away in summers past it now lingers into the next winter becoming buried under the new season’s deposit of random snowflakes. Millennia pass and the snows are compressed into massive ice formations that become rock grinding, land shaping machines.

Our Homo Sapiens ancestors empowered by their evolved larger brain have reasoned solutions to their impending doom. Humans are on the move seeking more hospitable lands and developing tools to work the lands in hand; agriculture provides year-round sustenance by allowing humans to make food where nature has been miserly in its provision. Humans recognize their insignificance in the overall bigger picture; surly some powerful super intellect is driving all the natural occurrences unfolding around them. They recognize a greater intelligence and ponder their relationship with it.

The ice spurred on by nothing more than simple physics moves downhill where it eventually encounters the sea. At land’s end the ice is suspended briefly between the familiar land and the promise of the sea. Released into the sea the ice assumes a new identity, becoming an ice berg. Its new-found freedom has a price however, and from its first moment the ice berg begins to pay with its very life.

Our intellects evolved along with our growing brains. We developed an ego, a sense of self that assigned value to our own existence and demanded justifications for our decisions and actions. The hunter who ranged into another tribe’s domain, or the farmer who siphoned off more than their share of water justified their actions by convincing themselves their families depended on them to do whatever it took to provide the means of survival. In time, mere survival evolved into surplus, and surplus into profit and the Lord saw the profit and said it was good! Well actually, it was the ego of humans who said it was good, but by this time mankind was convinced that it was the very picture of God, so any popular human endeavor was by extension endorsed by God. Human ego was supplanting human recognition of its Spiritual nature, a blindness that has altered human history and threatened our very existence.

Relative to the land locked glacier an ice berg is a free spirit travelling along its merry way; having its grand adventure. It is however, anything but free. The berg never chose a short life floating free in the warming ocean waters. It succumbed to conditions it had no control over, broke off and floated away into warmer waters.

We often succumb to our egos in a similar fashion, leaping into regrettable decisions seemingly due to forces beyond our control. We differ from the hapless iceberg though in that we have the power of choice. We are faced with millions of variables each day and fortunately most of them allow hard wired responses; we turn left at the intersection and go to work, order ice tea with lunch because we like it and its endless refills. A few times each day we really need to show up; our value is questioned, our principles challenged. These are the key choices; does someone else define us? Are principles negotiable? Answer: No to both questions.

Ironically, we really are the very picture of God, we have simply reversed the relationship in our common consciousness. God is not human. Humans are God. It may be easier if we change the name, many say Spirit or Higher Power; there are dozens of other names, but the nut is that this thing is infinite therefore we are of it, in its image. It does not know anger, shame, doubt or any other human condition except through us. It is Love.

All the misery and strife we encounter and observe is the result of our collective belief in duality; a world of us versus them, a vengeful god, and limited resources. One hundred thousand years ago, a snowflake fell onto an expanding ice field; an idea onto a fertile mind. The snowflake grew into a glacier, the glacier calved an iceberg; the idea grew into a belief, the belief became a definition of self.

The iceberg drifted until one fateful night its path led it into a collision with history. The arrogance of man in the form of a ship, indestructible, racing into its destiny. Was it the fire in the coal bunker, the nature of its steel, inadequate design or just bad luck? Or was it just because a snowflake fell one hundred thousand years ago, and set into motion a cascade of random events that hundreds of people are now cast into a watery grave?

Many of the ideas we plant grow into greatness, and some few lead us toward destruction. We are blessed with the knowledge of the Universe to guide us, and the power of choice to adjust our course before colliding with certain ruin. The iceberg survived that night eventually dissolving back into the sea ignorant of the chaos it spawned, unaffected and uncaring of the heartache and loss in its wake.

Spirit provides for us as we believe with identical engrossment, ignorant of its effect, only certain in its end; to give to us without question. Aware of our power we are responsible to guide it in harmony with Spirit; to choose love, as Spirit is love. In harmony, we sing, without it we screech. One hundred thousand years ago, we teetered on the edge of extinction and became aware of our potential. If it seems we are once again headed over a cliff, be still within the chaos and remember that we are more than snowflakes drifting in the wind.

Learn more about the power of ideas and how Spirit acts on your beliefs at CSL.org and CSLFTL.org.

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 19^th 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.