Published: Monday 15th of January 2024
More About Peace
As a young boy I sang in the choir of my local church, and every week I heard the vicar mention the peace of God that passes all understanding. There was no explanation of what that peace might be, and I assumed it was some sort of blessing that only God could give as he (or she) saw fit. Later, after becoming a student in the classes run by Gladys Franklin, I learned that God is not an all-powerful being with a will, but is a name given to the creative power in the atmosphere. This creative force comes to life in every feeling we take up and hold in our mind. Good, harmonious feelings add light to the soul, which can be thought of as the God within each of us.
A while after starting the classes I had the following experience out of the body. My inner self came to rest in a place that I intuitively knew was on a much higher level than the earth. My eyes weren't functioning, I was blind, but that didn't concern me. I felt an incredible sense of oneness, an overwhelming feeling of peace welling up inside, which even now I am incapable of finding words to describe. Someone was speaking, but when coming back to my earth body I sadly had no conscious recollection of what was said. All I know is that peacefulness was in the place itself, and only the peace I had within myself at that time made it possible for me to be there.
The experience put me in mind of a passage in the Bible [Corinthians 2, 12:3–4]. It's where Paul of Tarsus is caught up into paradise, either in the body or out of the body he's not sure. Whilst there he hears unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Then it would have been unlawful to speak of anything outside of the religious beliefs of the time. Even today anyone who talks of other planes of life, or of how the soul is built with light, can be frowned upon or ridiculed.
Our earthly understanding is that peace means being free of disturbance. But my own experience taught me that the peace of God is something we can actually feel for ourselves. Of course in our everyday life it is nigh on impossible to maintain that level of peacefulness. This is partly because the atmosphere about the earth is a mix of good and bad feeling, and it needs a real effort to keep the bad at bay. However, being sincere in wanting to learn how to get rid of disruptive feelings and not blaming others for our lack of peace, we can gradually develop an underlying sense of peacefulness day by day. Endeavouring to use this feeling behind everything we do and say will give peace out to others and enlarge it in our own aura. That makes it a natural part of the self — something we need never look for on the outside.
Author: Colin