The last twenty years or so, spiritual/new age authors have sent this message
to readers: "You have something broken about you and I can fix it."

Now a newer, truer message must be heard: "You are here to deliver a beautiful gift to
the world - and it's a gift that benefits everyone. Remember it, and get on with it."

IT ALMOST GOES WITHOUT SAYING that Peace, when defined spiritually, has nothing to do with absence of war or conflict resolution. Peace is not a relative term when being used by a spiritual practitioner. Instead, Peace is a state of being.

The phrase given to us by Jesus, "the peace which passeth understanding," offers some great insight into the state of being to which I refer. Something that "passeth understanding" is something beyond mind, beyond thought, beyond separation. That oneness or wholeness which is beyond separation is the Peace of spirit.

From The Invisible Garment:

If you have Peace in your invisible garment, your main objective in life is to reach a state of consciousness that allows you to live beyond duality, polarity, and separation. You are constantly seeking a place in your heart-mind that allows respite. Your only goal - your only desire - is to be in full relationship with your soul. It may be hard for you to integrate this longing with the harshness and demands of mundanity. Whatever your challenges are in life, your biggest challenge is to allow the peace that passes understanding to flow in your body.

Of course, Peace does flow in your body, in the form of blood. Do you "understand" blood? Does anyone? Does the mind tell the blood to flow? Doesn't the flow of blood, the nurturance of your cells, pass understanding? The good news is this: Peace flows through you in every moment. The fact that you're not conscious of it means that it is that very "peace that passeth understanding." If you have Peace in your invisible garment, you also have a desire to bring the expression of Peace to consciousness.

Every mystical tradition teaches that the world is a spiritual being and that we, who look like individuals, are actually microcosms of that greater being. Sufi teachings state that Peace resides in the "heart of the world." They further indicate the heart of man contains a window into the heart of the world. In other words, by virtue of the fact that we are alive, that our hearts are beating, we have access to Peace.

Most people interpret this Sufi teaching about the "window" within the heart to be a metaphor. Scientists, however, explain it more literally. A new science field called biomagnetics studies the comparative frequencies between the earth's magnetic field and human heart's magnetic field. They have learned that when the earth's field is disturbed (for example with a strong earthquake) the heart frequency of the people directly involved is also disturbed. Joseph Chilton Pearce discusses their experiments and conclusions at great length in his book The Biology of Transcendence. He states, "We live in fields within fields of a holographic electromagnetic display where all information is somehow present within every minute part of any particular frequency... with our human heart being the genesis of our personal yet uniquely shared living world."

In other words, the world has an electromagnetic frequency, which metaphysical systems call "the heart of the world." A healthy human heart also has an electromagnetic frequency which mirrors and attunes itself to that of the earth. And those frequencies create holographic fields which intertwine. The human heart, because it is aligned with the frequency of the earth, serves as a window into the "heart of the world."

This implication can be found in almost every spiritual system. Meister Eckhart, the 11th Century Christian mystic stated it thusly: "When God becomes Eckhart, Eckhart becomes God." Sufis speak of this electromagnetic field in terms of color, stating that personalities take on the color of the frequency of God that they embody. Swami Muktananda, the famous yogi says, "God dwells in you as you." And the primary admonition of the Jewish culture is "love the lord with all your heart."

It seems that whether we look at the studies of modern scientists, or the words of philosophers and spiritual leaders, the arrow points toward Peace residing in the heart (and in our system in the blood) - the heart of man, the heart of the world.

Aramaic scholar Neil Douglas-Klotz points out that the words that mean peace in Aramaic (shalama) and Hebrew (shalom) stem from a verb that means to be whole, fulfilled or complete. This same word also means to surrender or to die. And of course, to "die" means to go beyond the mind - that which passeth understanding. The greeting "shalom" then, invites the greeted to go beyond mind, into the Peace that resides there.

The common use of the word peace invokes an idealistic set of circumstances. Peace as a spiritual principle invokes quite the opposite. It summons us to align with the electromagnetic field of the heart of the world - to experience our origins so thoroughly that we bypass the beginning of our personal story, and indeed the story of the universe. When we access that state of being, the external circumstances cease to control us.

My husband and I were speaking recently about his experience in Viet Nam. We rarely talk about it, for like most veterans, he has put those memories in a special "box" in his repertoire of memories. But as we watch another war unfold on our television sets each day, he has opened that box ever so slightly. I asked him if he used drugs to self-medicate and avoid the reality of his situation when he was there. (Many Viet Nam vets did just that, I have come to understand.) He replied that while he used drugs several times while he was there, he found that being high would amplify the danger for him. I asked if he found a technique to get him through the most terrifying moments. He said that when he was awakened in the night by bombs exploding and gunfire blasting all around him, being still and listening to his heart is what did it for him.

He's not a spiritual practitioner. He wasn't really talking about meditation. But somehow, his inner wisdom showed him access to the Peace that passeth understanding in those moments of extreme danger. Ironically, the circumstances of war actually pushed him into Peace.

And this brings us to the crux of this discussion. Peace isn't stagnant. Peace flows. If the blood in your body stopped flowing, the cells would die. So it is with the spiritual energy called Peace. It must continually nourish the body of humankind. One doesn't "find peace" and then sit blissfully by while Armageddon occurs.

Modern-day mystic, Andrew Harvey, is the architect of a movement called sacred activism. He proposes that each individual must marry the sacred passion of the mystic with wise, radical action in the world. He calls on people to become drastically conscious of their choices in their every-day world, and that they make those choices based on the deepest wisdom they can access. His suggestion for activism is profound: that you look in your heart, and find what it is in the world that breaks your heart. Then get to work in that field. If animal treatment breaks your heart, go to work as an animal activist. If the war in Iraq - or war in general - breaks your heart, then become am anti-war activist. If the state of the environment breaks your heart, then join the millions of others who are waking up to the solutions for this crisis.

The most important part of the teachings of Peace connect directly with Dr. Harvey's call for sacred activism. When Peace begins to flow through you, your actions are rooted in the wisdom of life force, not in anger. When Peace works its way into your consciousness, your choices spring from a deep passion for social and ecological justice, not from reactive frustration. When Peace activates in your body, the mystical aspect of your personality merges completely with the rational side of your existence.

Peace is not absence of war or conflict. Peace is a level of consciousness that is not affected by circumstances, but that instead informs and influences you, your choices, your actions, and your experiences.

One Last Message

Now that you've contemplated all the thirty principles, you have the challenge of understanding the interweaving of the twelve (approximately) that apply specifically to your life-contract.

This body of information is a little complex on the surface. It feels like you need to learn and memorize and pay a lot of attention. Yet, it's really fairly simple when you sink into looking at your own principles, because they speak to you and through you so directly.

If you'll try the following suggestions, you'll gain valuable insights, not only to your personal history, but to the way the principles have used your life to express themselves in the world.

1. Make a chart of the principles that apply directly to your life. My book, The Invisible Garment, shows you how to do that.
2. Pull out the essays that apply directly to your life contract and put them in a separate binder or folder. Add them to your Invisible Garment Workbook if you have one. This is why we marketed the workbooks in three ring binders. You can add plenty of pages.
3. Concentrate for a certain time on each principle (perhaps one per day, or one per week) in the beginning. Read the essay on the principle. Read in The Invisible Garment how that principle interfaces in your contract (i.e. the "sun principle" has more influence in your daily life than your "Uranus principle." Both are important, and it's important to know how they interface as well as how they are different).
4. Make a journal entry in this workbook every time you see one of your principles showing up, either in a personal choice that you make, or in the external world.
5. Devise a visual tool to help see how the principles overlap in your life. For example, you may want to start a montage of images. Every time you see one of your principles at work in your life, cut out a picture (or draw one) and paste it onto your montage. This kind of right-brain exercise is invaluable for studying your patterns.

Soon your own principles will become your best friends, your greatest support systems. You'll learn to trust that you're making the "right" choices because you can feel and see the principles working through you. This practice will widen your world perspective, too, and your compassion for other's choices, even though they're not the ones you would make, will grow.

Thank you for being who you are, for doing this work, for awakening to the need for each person to know his or her life purpose.

Finally, please send feedback to me and to the members of Generosity Incorporated via our blog. We want to create more and more easy, gentle ways for people to study with us. All your suggestions are valuable.

Many many blessings.
Connie Kaplan

© Connie Kaplan, 2007

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