Peace vs. Sensation

The sanctuary of the heart is the location of peace. It is into the spiritual heart that you move to discover peace. God will speak to you through your heart. God will bring peace to your life. And you will know happiness and you will know love. There is nothing else so worth knowing. – John-Roger

This article by John-Roger was first published in the Movement Newspaper, July 1978.

When you are searching for inner peace, you are looking to discover a quality that is often difficult to define and difficult to pinpoint.

In MSIA, we work from a base of certainty. We check things out to see if theories are workable realities or just theories. There are spiritual actions that, if followed, will bring about specific results. They are set in their pattern and in their timing, and no one can move them ahead or behind their proper timing because they are part of spiritual law. So when we look at the concept of “peace,” we want to look at a quality that goes beyond theory and moves into reality.

“Peace” is not stillness. It is balance. That balanced quality is not still; it is very active. There is no stillness found in the outer world. But there may be balance found in the world. In the inner kingdom, when you move to the power source of beingness, you find happiness and joy. It is a dynamic type of joy, an active expression of happiness, and within that happiness is peace. It may not be a jovial or raucous happiness, but it is one of the warmth of your own consciousness united with the knowingness of your Soul. And when those two aspects are one, happiness is the natural result.

When you seek out in the world for happiness or peace, you are moving into patterns of self-denial because you are, in actuality, saying that peace does not reside naturally within yourself, so you must seek elsewhere for it. When you come from a consciousness of lack, lack will be the result. When you go into the outside world seeking peace, you are looking for sensation. Sensation, for a short time, can assuage the yearning for peace. It can distract you momentarily, but it’s not long before the sensations of the world will stupify your physical senses; and you will find yourself automatically retreating back toward yourself and you will find yourself yearning for peace.

There are many people who have successful businesses, great wealth, live the “good life,” and have all the security this world has to offer…and what they would like more than all of that is peace of mind. They’ll say, “If only my mind would leave me alone so I could gather my strength and feel good inside myself. I’d give anything.” That peace is your natural state, but if you look out into the world for sensation, you can obscure that peaceful quality within.

When people fight, they are attempting to bring harmony and balance into the situation. They are attempting to find peace. That’s why they’re fighting. Tradition has told you that if you yell louder than the other guy, you’ll win. If he’ll just shut up, you’ll win, and then you’ll have peace and contentment. Have you found out it doesn’t work that way? You make your point, he shuts up, and then waits for his chance to get back at you. And he’ll do it when you’re most vulnerable; he’ll attack your weakest area, and he’ll destroy that which you thought was your peace.

When you seek for power in this world, there will always be people coming along behind you to usurp that power. They will take the power from you. But if you have established peace from within your own consciousness, NO ONE can take that from you. They won’t even be able to find it, and they certainly won’t be able to dislodge it.

When you awaken each morning, it might be nice if you ask for the peace of God to be with you and all you touch that day. If you are one with God’s consciousness, no man can come against you. If you ask for this attunement each day (and it doesn’t matter what words you use), it will change the quality of your life. You may find yourself talking less. Often to find the peace within, you become quiet verbally so that you can hear the voice of love from within that will temper all associations in the outer.

Sensation is the other end of the spectrum. It is the opposite of peace. The reason that so many people find themselves in an endless search for sensation is because they must confront themselves if they move inward to find the peace. That’s what makes the quality of peace and love so difficult to find. You decide you want to find peace, so you tune within and you find all the troubles you’ve had — the hurts, the pain, the disturbance. So you think, “I’m not going to do that; that hurts.” And you go back out into the world. You bum around, run around, makes excuses to get the car and go here and go there. And yet, when you finally stop, your irritation is still with you.

We often tell people to sit still and do something, not to sit still and do nothing. Sitting still and doing something means that you are looking within for balance. When the emotions surge on you and you have fear, you look at that fear. You trace it back within you to find the source. If you remember a hurt from the past, you follow that hurt and find out what happened that caused it. Then it can be cleared from that level. When the Light of God becomes manifest in your consciousness, you will also experience illusion. They go side by side. You will experience both, and there can be great confusion in that.

If someone asks you what it is like in China this time of year, can you tell them? Maybe you’ve not been to China, but you’ve seen pictures taken this time of year, so you tell people that. But tell them that you’ve seen pictures. Don’t lead them to believe that you know from your own experience. Or, if you’ve talked to someone who has been there, you might say that you heard from someone who had been there that it’s nice this time of year. But again, don’t try to make them think it has been your experience. If you have been in China, you will be able to tell them much more completely what it is like. You will be able to tell of secrets that would be unknown to you if you had only seen a picture or your friend’s experience. Someone else’s experience is always a reflection. Your own experience is your reality.

The physical world is always a reflection. Your inner world is the reality. The physical world is represented by the sensation. The inner world is represented by peace and happiness. And love. As you tune to that inner world, you will find that you begin to experience peace. The emotions will subside, the mind will become more quiet. And you might find that from deep within your beingness you open yourself to receive that which is of God. You might feel the Spirit touch to you; you might hear a voice whisper, “Be still and know that I am God.” And you will know that you are awakening to your Self more and more.

You are a son of God…whether you are in a male or female body. You are a child of Light. The Soul that is your truest identity resides naturally in love and in joy. If you look to find the Beloved in all those around you, you will find the Beloved within yourself. If you see disturbance out there in the world, it is a reflection of the disturbance in you. If you see something you don’t like in another child of Light, it is because that same place exists inside of you…so you recognize that. All of your experiences, all of your relationships are to reflect you back to yourself so that you can learn to know yourself in greater and greater ways. This life and all its experiences are for your upliftment and to assist you in your journey home to God.

Baruch Bashan