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Praying
Peace
by James F. Twyman
 In
the summer of 1995 I had the chance to spend
twelve amazing days in the mountains of Bosnia
with a community of mystics who called
themselves the Emissaries of Light. This book
is not meant to go into the details of that
journey, but needless to say what I learned
when I was with them left an indelible mark on
my consciousness and will forever influence
the way I relate to the concept of peace. They
said to me: "Our role is not to bring peace to
where it is not, but to reveal peace where it
is hidden." This one sentence became the
foundation of my ministry, and as I began
traveling to the areas of the world where
peace was more than obscured by centuries of
hatred and violence, I learned that they were
not just words at all, but a powerful reality.
Peace, the Emissaries said, is not
something that can be understood with the mind,
but must be experienced with the heart. Try to
grasp it and it is gone; try to write words to
describe peace and it vanishes like the wind.
The Emissaries of Light said that peace is
always present, that it is the simple truth of
our existence. The question then becomes, "Where
does violence come from? Surely good and evil
exist side by side." The facts seem to prove
this theory, for everywhere we look we see
division, separation, and the need for peace.
How can peace be the foundation of a world such
as this, where children starve to death everyday
and ethnic wars rage for centuries? Isn't it our
job to resist these evils and to actively fight
against injustice? This, after all, is what we
have always been told by all our heroes, all the
men and women throughout the ages who have
helped turn the tide of social discord.
Or did they? Certainly there is a legacy
of social activism, those who have "fought the
good fight" and resisted the disciples of
violence and fear. Yet even among these people
there are different modalities of action, and
what works for one may not necessarily work for
another. Martin Luther King promoted a
non-violent revolution to ensure equality for
all people regardless of their color or race,
and Malcolm X shared his passion for peace. And
yet these men did not always agree upon the
appropriate method to bring about this end. King
was a proponent of the Gandhi school of
peacemaking, while Malcolm X confronted
injustice with a different attitude. Same goal,
different formulas.
Mother Teresa was once asked why she never
participated in the anti-war demonstrations
during the 1960's. She simply smiled and said,
"I'll never go to an anti-war demonstration, but
as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be
there."
The Emissaries of Light are an example of
a different school of peacemaking. They existed
in the secret places of the world, like the
mountains of Bosnia, working on the inner planes
to bring about change on the outer. They never
protested or raised their voices at all. They
recognized that there is a deeper law where
fundamental change is really made, and once this
shift in consciousness occurs, then the outer
world falls naturally into place. The question
they asked is a simple one: "Is it better to
work on the level of effect, or on the causal
level where the effect is born?" This is really
the essential question of this book.
(Praying
Peace by James F. Twyman, with Gregg Braden
& Doreen Virtue)
So what does it mean to work for peace on
the causal level? If their earlier statement is
true, that peace is the foundation of reality
itself, then it is toward this foundation that
we must turn to find our answer. The Emissaries
believed that reality is born in the mind and
then extends into the world of form, not the
other way around. Peace, then, can only prevail
when the fearful patterns that allow conflict to
exist are released, and this release must occur
in the place where the conflict was born, which
is the mind. How many times have we seen
progress made in one area of the world or
another through the use of what we'll call
'exterior peacemaking', only to be replaced by
another level of discord? If you are tired of
the furniture in a particular room of your
house, what sense does it make to move the
furniture around? It may look different, but the
real problem has yet to be addressed.
From the Emissary perspective it makes
more sense to remove the furniture and start
over. If the chairs and sofas don't match the
wallpaper, then find furniture that does.
But does this mean that we're to discard
'exterior peacemaking' altogether and sit in our
rooms meditating all day? Not necessarily. The
point the Emissaries made was that we cannot
possess true wisdom until we address the problem
where it really is, not where it seems to be.
Then we will likely be inspired to act, but we
will act from a new place, from a wider and more
enlightened perspective.
Once again, Mother Teresa was a brilliant
example of this. She did not run around the
world with her fists clenched, filled with
anger. She held the quiet space of compassion,
and she extended that compassion to everyone she
met. And when a particular situation required
immediate action she did not hesitate for a
moment but got off her knees to serve. And yet
her smile never faded, especially when she held
a dying man or woman in her arms. She was not
fooled by what seemed to be happening, because
her mind was so focused on what she knew was
there. She saw holiness everywhere she looked,
and that holiness became the foundation of her
world.
Mother Teresa understood the difference
between praying for something to happen, and
'Praying Peace'. Her life was a prayer, but it
was not confined to the traditional definition
of the word. She did not look upon a world that
required peace, but on a world that was already
healed. She didn't think that she was in
Calcutta holding a dying child; she knew she was
in Heaven holding the infant Jesus. And yet, her
hands and her feet were in constant motion, for
she realized that looking upon the 'real world'
didn't mean denying someone's pain. "Give
everything," she often said, "even when it
hurts... especially when it hurts," but don't
lose sight of the Vision of God that heals every
ill and brings peace to every mind.
So what do the words 'Praying Peace'
actually mean? Let's begin by defining a more
traditional form of prayer, that of asking for
something that we believe we do not already
have. This is called a 'prayer of petition',
which begins with perceiving a particular lack,
and then believing that there is a God out
there, sort of a spiritual Santa Claus, who can
give it to us. There are a number of problems
with this kind of prayer. Primarily it
establishes and maintains a kind of spiritual
dependency that we can never fully transcend. It
is also the ultimate act of separation, the
ego's need to be less than or separate from our
Creator. The idea that we are One with God is
seen as the greatest blasphemy, for we can never
depart from the level of a servant, never enter
into true communion with the Divine. To do so
would really invite trouble, because then we
would have to be responsible for what we create.
There is actually a technology of prayer
that has been practiced for thousands of years,
but which was lost to the West seventeen hundred
years ago. I had suspected this for years, but
it wasn't until my friendship with Gregg Braden
deepened that I learned the actual details. In
his book
Walking Between the Worlds Gregg focuses on
the teachings of many ancient traditions and
shows how these cultures possessed a very
advanced understanding of the 'Science of
Prayer', much more advanced than our so-called
modern churches claim to possess. I began to
appreciate this science on a whole new level,
and Gregg's passion for the material began to
rub off on me.
To the ancients, prayer was much more than
asking for what they wanted. They knew that the
mental decisions they made were only one part of
a whole system that activates the creative power
of prayer. The mind, they believed, is like a
map. One can interpret the territory by reading
the map, and can even determine the best route
to take in order to arrive at a particular
destination. But the mind cannot move the body
to that destination. It needs help, like a car
needs gas in it. Then the mind can work with the
vehicle, directing its path, and so complete the
journey.
In other words, a prayer that is centered
only in the mind is a very weak prayer. It has
no gas, and it is completely unable to move a
person to the ultimate fulfillment of their
dreams. Other elements are required, ingredients
that when combined create an alchemical
reaction. This is the basis of the science that
mystics from every tradition have mastered and
taught for centuries.
So what happened seventeen hundred years
ago that made us lose this important technology?
I personally don't believe it was a malicious
decision that caused this information to be
buried for so long. I like to think that it was
due to ignorance, the belief that people weren't
ready for such a powerful system.
In the fourth century the leaders of the
Christian Church came together in Nice to
determine an official doctrine that would be
accepted by everyone. Some texts were adopted
and others were rejected. The texts that
conformed to the current version of Christian
theology were bound together in a book that they
ultimately called 'The Bible', and the others,
dozens and dozens of rare manuscripts, were
destroyed. If it had not been for the foresight
of a few monasteries that buried these texts, we
might never have realized what we had lost.
Soon after World War II, discoveries were
made that rocked the world of Biblical scholars.
In 1945 a peasant at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt
uncovered a clay jar containing a library of
thirteen papyrus books bound in leather, which
are thought to have been buried by a Gnostic
community. And then in 1947, among the mountains
beside the Dead Sea in Israel, Bedouin nomads
accidentally found a cave where quantities of
holy texts had been hidden by members of the
Jewish sect of the Essenes from the Qumran
monastery nearby. They included the so-called
Isaiah Scroll which is very different from the
canonical Book of Isaiah.
Many of the Dead Sea scrolls are
fragmentary and, through ignorance of their
value, some of the Nag Hammadi papyri were
burnt. Nonetheless, for the first time since
these books were marked for destruction, the
modern world has regained a wealth of resources,
and an insight into the mystical teachings of
our ancestors. Many of these books were hidden
from public view for decades, such was the
transformative power of the contents. Only
recently have most of them been released, and
the contents have shocked the world.
The Gospel of Thomas from Nag Hammadi,
containing the sayings of Jesus, is still ruled
heretical by the Vatican.
The wisdom of the Essenes, a mystical sect
centered at Qumran, was far deeper and richer
than most theologians had expected. It is now
commonly accepted that Jesus himself was likely
an Essene master, and many of his lessons and
parables came directly from Essene teachings.
But it is their contribution to prayer that we
are concerned with here, and their contribution
was vast.
This ancient community developed a system
of prayer that was more reliable and scientific
than anything we have today. It is possible that
this wisdom was hidden from us because it was so
powerful, and the goal of the early church was
to establish the priests as intermediaries
between Divinity and the people, something that
would have been impossible if the people had
been so empowered. And yet the real question
here is not whether we were ready to harness
this power seventeen hundred years ago. The
question we should be asking ourselves is -- are
we ready now? Because now is the time that the
information is finally made accessible to us.
To begin answering this question, let's
look at the Essenes' fundamental teaching
regarding prayer. The title of this book,
Praying Peace, sums up the
basic principle upon which every other principle
of prayer is built. As Gregg Braden says, "We
must become the peace we seek." In other words,
the way to enhance any experience is to come
into conscious resonance with that experience,
or to vibrate at a similar frequency. In this
sense the word 'Pray' means: to become, or to be
like. If you want to experience peace, become
peace. We are then able to experience ourselves
as the source of prayer, rather than the
beneficiary.
This idea is so foreign to our
conventional understanding of prayer that you
may be lost at this point. Think of it this way:
When you pray 'for' something to happen, then
you are focusing on the fact that it is not
there already. This is the way most of us were
taught to pray. The two main words the soul
hears in this case are 'not there', and so this
becomes the real prayer. The soul resonates with
'not-thereness', and therefore does nothing to
attract the desired state.
But when we 'Pray Peace', what we are
really doing is feeling as if the peace we seek
is already there. We feel the completion of the
prayer rather than the lack, and the soul
responds accordingly. It begins to resonate with
peace, drawing into its sphere the experience of
peace, since this is what the mind has focused
on. The prayer is answered automatically because
the soul has followed an established code,
attracting the state that has already been
'felt' rather than the experience that has been
resisted.
As simple as this formula is, it has been
the subject of suspicion and debate for nearly
two thousand years. The idea that we are
powerful spiritual beings has threatened the
institutions that were meant to guard our Divine
evolution. Why? Simply because the survival of
an institution is sometimes more important than
the truth upon which the institution was
founded. Therefore, the truth must be hidden,
unless we mature to the point that the
institution loses power. After all, we often use
religion in the same way that we use a business
-- to gain power and prestige. If people begin
to realize that they are one with God and that
no intermediary is required to experience our
Divine Inheritance, then the institution will
need to change its form, and this is the
greatest threat for anyone who wants the
institution to remain unchanged.
The ancients spoke about a time when all
this would change, when the water would rise so
high that the levy would finally break, flooding
the whole valley with Light. Many people believe
that we have now entered that prophesied era
when peace prevails at last, and there are many
signs that seem to affirm this theory. Most
cultures have legends and stories about what
will happen during the 'Great Shift', and these
legends are being fulfilled at an alarming rate.
And the release of these ancient texts
corresponds with this as well, for how could it
be a coincidence that sacred libraries buried
for nearly two thousand years would be unearthed
not more than two years apart?
Could it be that we are finally ready to
realize our incredible power, and use it to
create a world based upon the laws of love
rather than the rules of fear? Has the time
arrived when we begin to consciously implement
the most powerful force in the universe?
And yet some of us may still find reasons
for hanging back. It may happen that, as
individuals, we are suspicious of our power.
Perhaps we once unleashed it in a fit of anger,
and seeing its devastating effects, have
foresworn its use. We have been afraid that we
lacked the purity to wield it without our
imperfections creating unintended side effects.
Will the experience of praying peace, of
becoming peace, take us safely past this
threshold so that suddenly, amazingly, we
perceive ourselves as pure?
 This
article is excerpted from the book
Praying Peace
by James F. Twyman, in
conversation with Gregg Braden and Doreen
Virtue, Ph.D. It is reprinted with permission of
the publisher Findhorn Press,
www.findhornpress.com
Info/Order this book. |
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