Your All-Knowing Center

Behind every desire, whether it’s health, supply, or relationship related, the two conditions we seek are freedom and peace. Unfortunately, we often fail to experience either because we make both contingent on the achievement of some other thing. I’ll be free when I make that last payment. I’ll be free when I ditch this job and get a better one. I’ll find peace when I meet my soulmate, or when the world starts getting along.

When Jesus spoke of the truth that sets us free, and a peace beyond that which the world offers, he was articulating a principle of the complete soul. The soul is always free and at peace. We may argue that we are shaken to our core, but we’re really saying we’ve been shaken to our center of focus on the more surface values of the self-image. We’re imprisoned by the fear of losing something that is empowering, not to the soul, but to the self-image.

The soul is not threatened. The soul has no need of money, a healthy body, or the companionship of another. Remembering this, we move from the life and death struggle of the self-image to our free and peaceful center. We find our true point of strength. We also discover the straightest, clearest path to resolving these surface ripples that we mistakenly believe have the power to rob us of our freedom and destroy our peace.

Sound impractical? It’s not. I was recently confronted with a situation that, at first, appeared to have the power to enslave me in doubt and fear and rob me of my peace. I have been at this juncture many times and I have observed the futility of succumbing to the appearance. However, in every case I have eventually rediscovered my point of strength, my soul, and I have worked through each situation to a successful conclusion. This time I started at the soul level, holding my peace from the strength and freedom of my soul.

The valley of the shadow of death, those seeming dark moments in life, are never experienced at the soul level. Only the senses-driven self-image makes this plunge. It’s not a requirement, it’s only a really bad habit. The self-image has created a list of required items for freedom and peace. When these are threatened, our spiritual ideals fly out the window. We then compound the problem by calling these inner skirmishes lessons for the soul. But it’s not the soul that’s in need of learning. It’s the self-image trying to imitate the soul that keeps affirming this spiritual insult.

We cannot teach the self-image how to be free and peaceful. We can use the challenge before us now to remind ourselves that any fear we may feel is but an indication that we are not consciously centered in the soul. We were not given a spirit of fear. Nothing in the world is greater than the eternal core of our being. Freedom and peace are the present and unchanging condition of the soul. We can keep telling ourselves we have much to learn, or we can move again to that all-knowing center of power that is our soul.