Guiding Thought
Prepare your mind for Peace. Prepare your mind to recognize that above all else, you want the Peace that passeth all understanding. Today, offer only this, in humility and gratitude to your Divine Self: be willing to let the Peace of God be what it is, and accept yourself as you are meant to be.
Reflection
Lita
I get the preparation component. I am good at it, or so I believe, and yet I find myself staring face to face my lineage of religious baggage of unworthiness. How dare I align my own being with Divinity? How dare I really ask for what I want! This spiritual growth stuff supposed to be hard, hard work. I need to escape my body, this material world.
No! No, this spiritual work and even the preparing my mind for peace are meant to be simple and soft. I keep getting reminded of this in my work as a massage therapist. I often forget, and then comes the “aha”. Back off, soften and voila: the tissue beneath my hands opens. It is as simple as that; so little effort can bring about a big release. And very often there is little to no discomfort with this way of work.
Mary Oliver in the opening stanza of her poem Wild Geese:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
My body is the gateway for the preparation of Peace. I have only to soften. I am humbled each time I stumble upon my own forgetting and then grateful for remembering how simple the process is.
SusanWithPearls 
Prepare your mind for Peace. Prepare your mind to recognize that above all else, you want the Peace that passeth all understanding. Today, offer only this, in humility and gratitude to your Divine Self: be willing to let the Peace of God be what it is, and accept yourself as you are meant to be.
Reflection
I began with three questions today:
Q1. How do I prepare my mind for peace?
Q2. Do I want the Peace that passeth all understanding above all else?
Q3. How am I meant to be?
Something that continues to fascinate me about the Guiding Thoughts is that they very often provide the answers to my questions, even as they raise the questions.
Here are the answers I was provided with today:
Q1. How do I prepare my mind for peace?
A1. With an attitude of humility and gratitude be *willing* to let the Peace of God be what it is.
This means I don’t have to KNOW what the Peace of God is…I don’t have to feel it…I don’t have to give it…I don’t have to have any answers about Peace at all. My only job is to be WILLING to let It Be. And that willingness is what prepares my mind for Peace.
Q2. Do I really want the Peace that passeth all understanding above all else?
A2. Normally, this would not be a question. I’ve worked at this a long time and attaining the Peace that passeth understanding has been very important, as it represents such faith and confidence in God, that nothing within can be shaken. Yet, today this is a question. My thought was: couldn’t there be other things I want ABOVE ALL ELSE? Couldn’t I want enlightenment, or transfiguration, or Purity, or Divine Perception above all else? If I want Peace above all else, am I limiting the other things I could have/want above all else? And the answer became: accept yourself as you are meant to be. Because…A3 gets to why this is the answer here…
Q3. How am I meant to be?
A3. I am meant to BE the Peace of God, which passeth understanding. And this does not limit me, because I Am an expression of the Divine, which is infinite, and One. Peace is All I Am, in Oneness, AND I am also everything else completely, totally, fully in Oneness.
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Day 16 Peace – Mary
Prepare your mind for Peace. There are two times a day when I do this consciously; when I prepare for meditation, and when I prepare for sleep at night. I’ve not considered the possibility of maintaining my mind in a state of continuous preparation for Peace. What would that look like? Can you “prepare” for Peace? Or, would your (my) mind simply go to a peaceful place and BE at peace? I can recognize that I WANT the Peace that passeth understanding, but how will I know when/if I’ve achieved it? Seems like even asking the question, “is this IT?” would make it not “IT”. Werner Erhard, creator of the “est” personal growth trainings popular in the 70’s and 80’s once said “understanding is the booby prize”. When it comes to Peace, I obviously don’t fully understand!
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Journey of Peace day 16 – Reflection
No analysis needed. (Don’t overthink this!) This is what comes up for me: Where did our inner critics come from? I know I’m not the only one with a strong inner critic. As I begin to recognize that critic, I can soften up on myself a bit. I think if it wasn’t for the critic, there would be less effort required to accept myself as a radiant, perfect as I am, human being. I do recognize there is value in my inner critic, but perhaps some of the harshness has lost its value at this phase in my life. Don’t be so hard on myself. I acknowledge my self-critic, and value its desire to make me a better human being. I get that. And it is time to grow, to blossom, to be unashamedly who I am, with all my imperfections. The time for beating up on me is past. Let me accept myself as I am, and open myself to the Peace of God.
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