Peace is a quality of the soul. And like all real spiritual qualities, peace is not achieved or earned by our efforts. It is given through grace, like the peace Christ promised his disciples: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you: not as the world giveth give I unto you.”
Because our culture has lost an understanding of the ways of grace, we tend to identify peace with effort. Most of us struggle for peace, thinking we can attain it through striving. Outwardly we seek peace through the resolution of conflict. Inwardly, too, we hope to resolve our conflicts, working to bring the warring factions of our psyche into balance. In meditation we strive to find peace beyond the activity of the mind.
We might achieve some sense of peace this way, through effort and struggle. But real peace is an aspect of the divine, and in the words of the Sufi master Bhai Sahib, “How can there be effort with divine things? They are given, infused.”
Peace that is given has a different quality precisely because it comes without effort or struggle. It is not a resolution of conflict, either inner or outer. It does not belong to the dimension of struggle, but to the dimension of the soul. It cannot be born from conflict because it is an aspect of the oneness of our true nature. In oneness, how can there be conflict? If there are not two, where is the need for resolution?
Real peace is a quality of pure being. The peace that Christ left with his disciples, the peace “not as the world giveth,” is in all of us. It is part of our essential nature. But like many qualities of the soul it remains hidden, overlooked by our perceptions and ways of relating that are so grounded in duality, conflict, and self-interest.
Traditionally peace has been transmitted on an individual level, from master to disciple, as Christ gave peace to his disciples. But at this critical time in our evolution, this is no longer enough. All of humanity needs to have access to the peace of the soul, for this peace belongs not just to each individual, but to the soul of the world. And if we look around us we see the world needs this peace; life itself needs to be nourished by its own higher nature in order to recover from past abuse, and to thrive. The spiritual work of the time is to help the soul of the world awaken, to help the qualities of life’s true nature nourish the whole www.thedivineclinicfoundation.org
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