Beloved Students:

I greet you with a wish for peace at this time when so many are confounded by the lack of peace in the world. May you walk gently with yourselves as you negotiate the difficulties, which abound for so many and cause such deep suffering. May you truly know inner peace at this time.

How can you experience peace when so much of the world around you is embroiled in struggles and wars? How can you hold peace when your times abound with threats of biological warfare, as well as nuclear warfare? Many around you are absorbed in fears of terrorist invasion of one ilk or another, and your leaders give you no real hope for freedom from these threats. Indeed, they often seem to present you with the opposite, as if wanting to convince you there is no peace to be found in the entire world. How shall you establish yourself in everlasting, all-embracing peace?

Some of you are discovering the precious gifts your daily meditation practice can produce that allow you to know peace - even if only, at times, for brief periods. If you persist with your meditation, you will push through all the resistance and come to a point that is perpetually still, deep within yourself. This still point, once cultivated, will remain with you in all situations, speaking more loudly (in its own quiet way) than all the turbulence and chaos the world can throw at you. The trick, of course, is to persist until you break through. The barriers and walls that you experience come not from the objects of your projections but arise rather from your own side of the equation. In view of the current conditions in your experiential world, what better time than the present to dedicate yourself to seeing through them?

What is really meant by this business of "seeing through" your projections and resistive points? It is a fact that most people do not ever challenge the perceptions of their own minds. A thought arises, a meaning is projected out onto the experience, and in most cases, the idea of challenging that perception of meaning never occurs to the mind that projected it. You may have noticed that in listening to other people speak, often you may wonder how they ever came to the conclusion they are expounding upon as if it were a truthful reality for everyone in the entire world. As you listen, you may challenge their notion or concept in your own mind, and in certain situations, you may even challenge them outwardly with your own ideas and conclusions. You may find yourself expounding what seems completely true and obvious to you in much the same way you experienced them speaking to you.

While it may seem obvious that their way of perceiving the matter is flawed, it may never occur to you to challenge your own mind in a similar fashion. If an idea occurs to you, it must be true - or so your mind would like you to believe. Your mind (like everyone else's) has convinced you that whatever it presents (based on your past experiences and beliefs) is the "right" or "normal" way of seeing it. After all, your mind has steered you this far through the murky waters of life, and why should you begin questioning its functional aptitude at this point?

Here you are, tripping along your spiritual path, and your Teacher asks you to question everything you've accepted as "real." How crazy can that be? Your mind is your friend, right? Your ego is your best ally, isn't it? And just look at all the things you know you know! What possible good can come of questioning these matters? It sounds like a lot of work, and you can't be sure you will come to any different conclusion in the end, anyway. Look how hard you've worked to get where you are in life, and what guarantee is there that all this questioning will make your life any better? Besides, some of you say, you are just now getting to the point where life is bearable. Why would you ever want to risk losing your comfort zone? And for what? (Does this paragraph sound like I've been listening in to some of your "internal" thoughts?)

In truth, you can only answer this line of mental questioning by asking a couple more questions: Do you experience personal suffering (at any level)? Do you enjoy suffering, or would you rather find out if there were something else to experience?

These two questions generally make the mind a bit uneasy. After all, if you negotiate your way into emptiness, how will it ever again convince you to take anything personally? What if all the energy that goes into feeling upset, or depressed, or hurt or angry could be freed up for your mission in life? What if you found that even the experiences you hold meaningful in your life are not what they seem to be? What if you could actually experience Divinity flowing through yourself and everyone with whom you have contact? What if you ran your mind, rather than its running you? Ponder these questions daily and you might just discover that when the ego dissolves away, what's left is something so vast it defies explanation; vast enough to hold the entire world in an ocean of parapersonal love.

If making this plunge speaks to you in the depth regions of your soul consciousness, please join our group focus for August by studying the audio lecture entitled This Tape is Empty. For those of you who have taken the Way of Wisdom seminar, it will provide good follow up to that work. For those of you still to take this seminar, it will help prepare you for the two-day experience. Enjoy!

Continue sitting for 30 minutes daily to facilitate our joint work for Earth at this time. Begin by sitting quietly with your eyes open, gazing at the floor some two to three feet in front of you. Follow your breath for 15 full breath cycles. If you lose track of the count, simply start over. Put your attention on your nostrils, taking notice of subtle differences in the sensation of each breath. When you complete the cycle of breaths, close your eyes, and feel yourself to be in the presence of your Spiritual Teacher. Make the feeling as real as possible, engaging as many of your senses as you possible can. Feel true reverence and respect for your Teacher, and allow yourself to be fully appreciative for His/Her assistance in your life.

See yourself sitting before your Teacher. As a show of respect, see your Teacher seated higher than you. Think of some quality of the Teacher's that you would like to manifest more fully in your own life. Bow before your Teacher as a sign of respect to the Teacher and the quality you are cherishing. Be aware of your Teacher's love streaming to you, and feel deep appreciation for this gift. Now see yourself making a physical offering to your Teacher - something that the Teacher would know came from you. As your Teacher receives your offering, feel a loving smile coming to you from this Precious One. From the loving smile, feel yourself nudged to make a deeper offering - perhaps your promise to meditate daily and dedicate whatever good thing(s) that comes from your meditation to your Teacher.

Begin to review your life for the past 24 to 48 hours. Think of your most negative moment, and notice whether it was due to your thoughts, your words or your actions. Let yourself experience some genuine remorse for this, and then make a promise to your Teacher that you will not do this again for the next 24 hours. Next, think of a moment of kindness that you generated in that same period. As this memory arises, try to feel joy at your own goodness. Promise yourself that in the next 24 hours you will look for more opportunities to create goodness and kindness in your life.

Next ask to see the Teachings in every aspect of your life. In difficult situations, ask to see the Teacher's face on the face of those who try your patience, those who tempt you to fall into any degraded activity, as well as those you serve in love and kindness. Now ask your Teacher to stay with you for the duration of the next 24 hours. In the palace of your heart, create a room for the Teacher that is quiet and filled with love and reverence. Visualize the Teacher descending through your Crown Chakra on an energy flow that brings the Teacher to rest on a special throne in your lotus heart. As the Teacher becomes settled there, ask Him/Her to be a witness to your life in all respects. Ask Him/Her to know your every thought, word and action. Ask Her/His help in seeing your own thoughts, words and actions, that you may continually increase the purity of your motivations.

Now, invite the Teacher to bring before you the face or name of someone who is suffering. You need not know the particular way in which this individual is suffering. When the person's name/face arises, see a dark, oily or tar-like substance in his/her body or aura. Recognize this thick substance as his/her suffering. Know that you are a vehicle of transformation, and offer to help this individual. Breathe in the dark substance and drop it down into the transforming fire of the heart. As the heart fire transforms it into white or clear light, return the light for the darkness on your exhalation as a blessing.

Next, see before you an image of those you consider your family. Breathe in the tar-like substance, the representation of their suffering, and, dropping it down into your heart center for transformation, return it as a blessing of white or clear light. Begin to experience yourself as truly an agent of transformation for your loved ones.

Next, bring to mind an image of your community. See the dark substance interwoven in this larger collective family. As a service of love for your community, breathe in the thick, dark substance that represents both collective and individual suffering. Breathe it in with every pore in your body. When the heart fire has transformed it, return it as white or clear light, creating a healing, cleansing influence in this collective field.

Do the same visualization with your country. Breathing in the seeming limitless levels of suffering that arise from so large a field, let the fire in your heart transform that darkness into white or clear light. As you return that light, feel thankful for the opportunity to serve so many people by your meditation.

Finally, do the same visualization for your country, and then for the entire world. Let yourself feel gratitude for the opportunity to render this much-needed service to Earth and all Her inhabitants.

When complete, open your eyes half way and for the remaining time of your meditation, gaze upon an image of your spiritual Teacher. Let your eyes fully take in the Teacher, recognizing His/Her image stands for the qualities you wish to manifest in your own life. With each breath, draw those qualities into yourself, receiving them as a gift from your Teacher. Appreciate your Teacher's example, as well as your own opportunity to serve Earth by meditating thus. When your time is complete, let yourself arise with royal dignity, both feeling and knowing yourself to be purified by the work you have just accomplished. Take from your meditation the recognition that you are a transformative being, who consciously activates transformation in, and for, all beings.

Walk in love, creating more joy, more love, and more wisdom to the transformation of both your own life and the lives of others. Take time to feel appreciation for your enemies and those who most challenge you.

Djwhal Khul