Peace

Terrible acts of violence, breaking out in unexpected places, from unlikely people, with no apparent reason. Is the world going mad?

No, the world is getting subtler - manifesting a more inward level of our own consciousness. The dense outer shell that we've been calling "the physical plane," or the "earth," is now dissolving into the astral, where our most powerful images and feelings are stored. For some people, this dissolution of matter into a subtler realm of consciousness is so confusing, they cannot tell whether they are in a dream or waking, whether their acts are happening inside them or outside. They are the ones who act out this violence.

There has always been violence. The lower astral plane is a realm of passion, full of beauty and terror, romance and cruelty. It is where our most powerful emotions are linked to intense imagery. That realm and this physical world are part of the same spectrum of energy, and the two realms are fusing on the spectrum. Things that used to be acted out inside, as fantasy, wis,h or dream, are now manifesting in the external realm. The veil between the worlds is very thin.

This means that the deeper cause of the world's violence is interior, not in the earthly realm. Therefor the solution to the problem must also be interior. It will not do much good to redesign the world's economic systems and political institutions, because the violence is pouring forth from the emotional plane of energy, particularly where those emotions are linked to intense images.

So the solution is the bring peace and stability to the lower astral field of human emotion by generating vibrations of compassion, joy, and gratitude. Uplift human consciousness wherever you can by focusing on Beauty. Bring Beauty into your awareness, your thoughts, your feelings. Radiate Beauty.

Before we can vibrate this peace to others, we must repose in the authentic non-violence of our own heart: not a concept of non-violence, or a discipline, or a hope, but the direct experience of who we really are. We are each a field of immensely powerful peace. But we do not experience this essence because our awareness is distracted by stressful images from the past and projected images of the future. The more we attach powerful emotions to these images, the more we feel the need to act them out in order to discharge the negative energy.


Practice: the Inner Work of Healing the Outer World

The solution to this dilemma is definitely NOT to keep repeating the stories of the past, and projecting them into future, in the childish delusion that, by telling the story over and over again, it might finally get a different outcome!

The solution is to DE-LINK the emotion from the story, DE-LINK the feeling from the image. Let the story and its images go, then sink into the feeling itself, the raw emotional energy, without labeling it. This stress can be released in the present moment, as pure energy; but it will never be released if we pack it into the images of a story and pretend that it is in the past.

As soon as we de-link the emotion from the image, the emotion becomes available as living consciousness, heightened awareness, and limitless possibility. The energy no longer has to be tasted as fear, or anger, or sorrow: it is free to be used in any way we choose, and its essential nature is bliss.

Thus we transform our negative emotions into bliss, first by delinking them from the images of the past, then by feeling them as present energy in the body.

The body is not a barrier to spiritual liberation. The body is the field of liberation. For it is precisely as sensation in the body, directly embraced at the present moment, that ancient karmas of anger, depression, lust and greed, get dissolved.

And this dissolution of emotional stress in our own energy-body automatically dissolves the stress in the atmosphere around us, healing others too.

Remember that, though we appear separate as physical bodies, in subtler levels of the energy spectrum we are waves in one vibratory field. Our thoughts and emotions interpenetrate.

It is most important at this time to practice meditation, to meet in satsang, to chant together in healing-sound gatherings, and unite hearts in moments of deep silence. This "work" will do more to generate harmony in the field of human consciousness, and thus eliminate violence in the world, than any other form of action.

The world is not healed by our anxiety, anger, or sorrow about it? The world is healed from deep within the heart, when we repose in the causeless Radiance of joy.

Om shantih shantih shantih!