The Mountbattens and Gandhi: Power meets peace
Thank you to Suzi for hosting our appeal for me.
I’ve been misconceiving peace.
Given that I’ve experienced it and Michael wants me to write about “peace as you have been describing it,” (1) let me correct that impression.
Or, rather, just come up with a more useful and accurate way of seeing peace.
If it were love or bliss that we’re talking about, I’d breathe it up from my heart. But peace has not yielded to that. That’s the root of my misconception.
Not all divine qualities seem to present in the same way, follow the same channels, etc.
I already know that peace is like standing on granite – and we mystically share that same solid-as-granite quality.
It’s like granite as long as we identify with the body, which most of us do. Once we differentiate between the two – body and spirit – as I did in my 1977 out-of-body experience, (2) we disconnect from the body and peace becomes the more gentle experience we think of it as.
The experience of peace is one of confidence. We know who we are in the matter. We know we’re not willing to go to any lengths to force an outcome and not willing to retreat from the truth. We stand firm in the center, in the heart.
Below it all, we accept that, if something happens, it happens because the Divine Mother wills it.
Divine Mother: I know very clearly, Sweet One, as do you, if it is not [in] my Plan, then it will not occur. …
Make no mistake, … Love will win because that has been my Plan always. (3)
Align with love and we’re now going with the flow of the river of life.
When we know ourselves as independent of the body, peace becomes more of the gentle experience we’re used to thinking of it as.
Let me focus only on the experience of peace as standing on granite.
Let me say at the outset that I can experience peace and yet not be squeaky clean. But it may lead to me overclaiming what I’m capable of that relies on my being in peace. That may lead to what we could think of as a short-circuit, the failure of a part in the process, or something else similar.
The “spiritual teacher” who blows up or has sex with their students comes to mind. We used to call that being “halfway up the mountain.”
The fall from grace of this guru or that seemed to be the flavor of the month when I was growing up. That included one man claiming to be a full and complete Incarnation of God, who was just another pedophile.
I was red-pilled before we had a name for it. (4)
Peace sees the settling of all internal issues and accounts. It’s like a fresh start. What we do with it, like everything else, is up to us. We can start perpetrating again from the word “go!” Or we can choose a life lived in godly ways.
I’ve made that commitment myself – to live in godly ways – no matter how little I can reach the bar. I know the divine qualities – and the enlightenments that open the door to them – are the reward of all existence. (5) For me, if we want to know God, one step in the process is to be like God. To be godlike.
What was it Matthew said?
Matthew: Your ‘travel ticket’ is the absorption of light that comes automatically with living in godly ways. (6)
Seems like the opposite to where we’re hanging out these days as a society.
And as long as we remain peaceful we feel ourselves having tremendous strength. Not physical strength. Moral strength. Given the deep state’s purposeful “woke” culture, anarchy, and nihilism, we may feel out of touch with moral strength.
Great. But, in my opinion, it’s definitely time to get back in touch with it.
Footnotes
(1) Archangel Michael: Your job is to participate and to lead in a worldwide peaceful revolution, for peace the time is now. …
And we do not mean an absence of war. We mean the presence of peace as you have been describing it. (Archangel Michael in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, Feb. 18, 2011.)
See “The Peace that Passeth Understanding,” July 18, 2017, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2017/07/18/the-peace-that-passeth-understanding/
(2) In 1977, I had a lucid dream that I was on the other side and watching some men be rough with a friend of mine. I intervened but they could not hear me. I fell back through space and into my body. It was then that I realized I was not my body.
(3) Divine Mother in a personal reading with Steve Beckow through Linda Dillon, April 30, 2019.
(4) Synchronistically, I came across Jeff Foster’s discussion of the very same thing.
Friends, I saw behind the curtain.
[https://tinyurl.com/4cp59cmn]
For about 15 years I spent time behind the scenes with spiritual teachers and gurus, some very famous, some with very large followings. I shared meals with them, travelled with them, sat in their homes long after the audience had gone and the applause had faded. I saw them when they no longer needed to be “on”.
There are names I will not name and details I will not share, out of basic human decency. But I will say this.
Every single one of them disappointed me.
Every single one.
And I say that now with love, and with deep relief.
Let me explain.
I saw them get triggered and defensive. I heard them complain about participants and organisers. I saw anger, rage, and at times abuse, directed at staff and partners, petty arguments over money and status, jealousy, lying, extra marital affairs, unprocessed trauma. I saw the strain of trying to uphold an image, of having to be “the awakened one” in every room they entered. I saw the exhaustion and resentment that simmered underneath.
I spoke with their spouses, their children, their parents, who confirmed the gap between their public image and private reality. I came to know the flawed human beings behind the masks.
And then I watched them walk onto a stage and speak beautifully about compassion and unconditional love and unity and consciousness and going beyond being triggered and “the ending of all suffering” and stuff like that.
I saw many of them misrepresent their lives on stage. Even lie about things I had just witnessed with my own eyes.
At first it hurt. I had projected wisdom onto them. I had wanted them to be more integrated, somehow above the human mess the rest of us live in. It felt like disillusionment, even betrayal.
But that disillusionment slowly turned into relief, as they all fell off the pedestals I had placed them on. Thank goodness.
Spiritual teachers are human, as we all are. Flawed, reactive, tender, sometimes generous, sometimes petty. Sometimes at peace, sometimes angry, triggered, frustrated. Sometimes compassionate, sometimes not.
Seeing that gave me permission to stop trying to live up to an image myself. I no longer felt the need to hide my imperfections or doubts in order to look “spiritual”. I could be more honest, more embodied, more real.
Over time I noticed that the teachers who denied and hid and repressed their humanity often caused the most harm. What gets split off does not disappear. It goes underground and finds other ways to express itself, sometimes destructively, in its longing to be seen and loved.
The very few spiritual teachers I could truly trust were the ones who could admit, without drama, “I get triggered.” “I feel jealous.” “I need help.” “I doubt and forget my own teaching sometimes.” There was humility there. They could own their vulnerabilities. No pedestal, just a human being with a sensitive nervous system, a history, and an open heart.
The real gift of being disappointed was this: I stopped searching for perfect teachers, and I stopped trying to be perfect myself. It made me kinder. More open. More forgiving.
And more aware of how easily we worship an image and miss the flawed human being inside. We do it to each other, and it is not kind on any level.
I am so grateful for my experience of seeing behind the curtain. I think it helped me heal.
And if any of this unsettles or disappoints or upsets you, it may be worth asking what image just cracked, and whether that cracking is actually an opening into something more human, and much more honest.
What I found behind the curtain was not enlightenment, but more humanity.
– Jeff Foster
(5) Krishna: The reward of all action is to found in enlightenment. (Sri Krishna in Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, trans., Bhagavad-Gita. The Song of God. New York and Scarborough: New American Library, 1972; c1944, 54.)
(6) Matthew’s Message, Dec. 21, 2008, at https://matthewbooks.com.