Thinking is shown as a barrier to shalom, yet contemplation is the broker of Presence. Steve Wickham
Thinking here means engaging the mode of consciousness that divides everything into categories, classifying, comparing, and cataloguing everything and everyone in order to determine their place in orbit around the ego. In the last episode of Awestruck, we called this objective consciousness and discovered that it was the primary shroud preventing us from seeing the divine.
This mindscape, we’ll call it, has one primary orientation: preference. Things and people become good or bad, accepted or expelled, embraced or eschewed. In such a state, peace is impossible to attain, because something unwanted inevitably invades, producing anxiety, frustration, impatience, and in general a constant state of annoyance. This internal cauldron boils over into fruitless strategies to achieve ego-centric stability.
Contrast this approach to acquiring peace with that of contemplation, a mode of consciousness that shifts the focus from rational analysis to the transcendence of wonder. In this state, the gravity pull of the ego gives way to the levitation that exists only in the spirit.
Here we find shalom, where gratitude eclipses greed. Anxiety dissolves in divine trust. Annoyance gives way to joy.
And shalom is not just something we seek for ourselves. Anyone experiencing peace inherently longs to see it spread to others – and works towards that end.
Achieving shalom is an act of creation, and the creative forces that give birth to it are inherited from the divine creator. Today we look at how to create peace – in ourselves, in others, and in our world.
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