Sick of peace yet? 🙂
Sweetness and light can be sooo annoying.
You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. If you didn’t feel annoyed, or possibly even threatened, by anything that went before in this series, you may find your peace capacity tested over the final days of this series as we set out Peace Pilgrim’s 4 Preparations, 4 Purifications, & 4 Relinquishments.
What she says next sounds incredibly simplistic.
Please, we want to say, it can’t be that simple.
I think that’s true, and not true. It could be that simple if we just did it, but nooooo. So for 99.9% of us, it’s not that simple. If it were, we would all be doing it and there would be peace on earth. Ha. So maybe saying it is easy, but doing it is hard. She keeps telling us that, but excuse me, I didn’t hear you.
As you read these first two of what she calls The Four Preparations (just wait until we get to the purifications!), I suggest keeping a few things in mind:
l. It worked for her.
- It took a long time.
- It was hard.
- She thought it could work for anybody.
- It’s the same as, or very close to, almost all other “peace paths.”
- She’s saying it the best way she knew how, and directing it to an audience of millions of people of varying degrees of sophistication and intelligence. (Sometimes I have to laugh, thinking she may have had to simplify it the most for sophisticated people.)
I have taken mercy on you and have edited a bit to shorten it.
From Steps Toward Inner Peace. Reprinted with permission.
NOW, when I talk about the steps toward inner peace, I talk about them in a framework, but there’s nothing arbitrary about the number of steps (or their order). This is just a way of talking about the subject. Just take whatever steps seem easiest for you, and as you take a few steps, it will become easier for you to take a few more. In this area we really can share. None of you may feel guided to walk a pilgrimage, and I’m not trying to inspire you to walk a pilgrimage, but in the field of finding harmony in our own lives, we can share.
Some preparations that were required of me.
The first preparation is a right attitude toward life.
This means – stop being an escapist! Stop being a surface-liver who stays right in the froth of the surface. There are millions of these people, and they never find anything really worthwhile. Be willing to face life squarely and get down beneath the surface of life where the verities and realities are to be found. That’s what we are doing here now.
It is through solving problems in accordance with the highest light that we have that inner growth is attained. Now, collective problems must be solved by us collectively, and no one finds inner peace who avoids doing his or her share in the solving of collective problems, like world disarmament and world peace. So let us always think about these problems together, talk about them together, and collectively work toward their solutions.
The second preparation has to do with bringing our lives into harmony with the laws that govern this universe. (She means things like The Golden Rule.)
We are our own worst enemies. If we are out of harmony through ignorance, we suffer somewhat; but if we know better and are still out of harmony, then we suffer a great deal. I recognize that these laws are well-known and well-believed, and therefore they just needed to be well-lived.
So I got busy on a very interesting project. This was to live all the good things I believed in. I did not confuse myself by trying to take them all at once, but rather, if I was doing something that I knew I should not be doing, I stopped doing it, and I always made a quick relinquishment. And if I was not doing something that I knew I should be doing, I got busy on that. It took the living quite a while to catch up with the believing, but of course it can, and now if I believe something, I live it. Otherwise it would be perfectly meaningless. As I lived according to the highest light that I had, I discovered that other light was given, and that I opened myself to receiving more light as I lived the light I had.
So. . .
Does any of that appeal to you?
Does any of it irritate you?
Does any of it make you fearful?
Does it accord, or not, with your experiences?
What do you read between the lines?
Express yourselves, any way you like.
Thanks a lot.
SCHEDULE UPDATE: Instead of extending this into next week, I’m going to get it all in tomorrow, with maybe a wrap-up on Friday. So tomorrow, we’ll have all 4 Preparations, Relinquishments, & Purifications.
