At the core of every human being lies his search for peace. Where it is looked for varies. And yet no one has ever found within the world the freedom and the safety, the rest and comfort that his hope has promised. At least not more than for a lucky moment, before the loneliness, the pain, the endless sea of problems seemed to sweep him away again from the beautiful shore he just had reached. Conflict seems to draw you from outside yourself, and hurl you from one unmerciful event to the next. And this, regardless of your efforts and good will. Let us say in honesty: If there really was peace to be found where you have been looking for it, you would have already found it. It was not your searching that was lacking.
Let us not keep wasting time in fruitless searches round and round. Let us admit we have not been able to find real peace, freedom and harmony in this world.
Let us be quiet now and ask for Help in prayer. Let us retire from our self-dependence, that has brought us nothing but loneliness and despair, and turn our minds to God, our Creator and declare our dependence on Him and let His Love guide us safely and surely away from conflict and death in all its forms. And let us trust that He will do so, if we let Him.
An Invitation: The hope of finding inner peace in endless conflict is the story of this world, over and over told by anyone who enters here and goes his way from birth to death with friends and enemies upholding his identity of himself. He does not realize that what prevents him from his peace of mind is not outside himself, however strongly it appears to shatter his quiet and his rest. He does not see that his wish to live within the limitation of the body has robbed all hope of peace from his mind, and made him powerless before the weakness of the body. He forgot that he is not a body and could never be content with the littleness that the body offers, that isolation is not joy, loneliness does not satisfy, that accumulation of meaningless things is not what life is, and that a mind trapped in a body is not where freedom lies.... He does not remember that he cannot really be alive going toward death, and that sickness and sacrifice is not God's will for him, but only happiness.
How can you really find peace by separating yourself from your Creator, your Love, your eternal Home, your Brothers, your Innocence and Perfection and your SELF?
Peace is union if it be of God. And it is your union with the eternal love of God in you, for which you are longing.
All your striving, your working, your searching, and your hoping is to find the peace and freedom, that somewhere deep inside you, you remember. You know of comfort and of safety, of rest and surety, of being loved and honored as you are, of such deep and tender peace that it could never be shaken or disrupted. You have a memory of this that is unalterable. And yet you seem so far from it, so cut off, so left alone… And so you try to satisfy your inborn need for peace in different places…and the bleak world outside yourself seems to be your only friend, regardless of the pain that it has always brought to you. The future seems to be the safest time for hope to be rewarded, for present pain and boredom cancel out the hopes you raised before and placed upon the moment, that now you have reached, without your hope fulfilled. And so you go about proclaiming: “If only this… would change, I would be at peace…”. And yet with every change of circumstance you still are not at peace.
There is no peace except the Peace of God.
The peace you look for is not an attribute of this world, it is not circumstantial. It abides deep within you and is not hidden from you. You have looked everywhere for it but where it is. Be honest now. And stop the endless searching within the causal loop of your self-identity. God is not lost, you are. He did not do this unto you. He loves you still as perfectly as you love Him underneath all false accusations and mistrust. The moment that you turn your mind to Him and open your heart, He will lift you up into His Arms, that always have been open for you.
Decide now to return yourself to Him to whom you belong. And let Him who created you totally free and in peace, restore the memory of peace eternal and true freedom to you, in love and tenderness. “I want the Peace of God... It is this intent we seek today Uniting our desires with the need of every heart The call of every mind The hope that lies beyond despair The love attack would hide The brotherhood that hate has sought to sever But which still remains as God created it With help like this beside us, can we fail today as we request the peace of God be given us?”
-A Course In Miracles - Workbook Lesson 185 No concept will ever satisfy you, but only your own tangible experience of Peace restored to you for real. Ask for this experience now. You cannot fail. God is with you and all the living Universe is trembling to give you what is yours forever.
The Peace of God can never be contained. Who recognizes it within himself must give it. And the means for giving it are in his understanding. He forgives because he recognized the truth in him. The peace of God is shining in you now, and in all living things. In quietness is it acknowledged universally. For what your inward vision looks upon is your perception of the universe.
