Peace Begins Here – Rev. Aimee Daniels
This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
DESCRIPTION
Peace does not come from changing the world, but from remembering the stillness within us. As we deepen in spiritual practice, peace becomes a lived experience rather than a distant hope. When we root ourselves in awareness and the truth of our divine nature, we learn to navigate life from the calm center. We invite you to join us as we cultivate the inner life together and become instruments of peace in our world.
SUMMARY
The summary is as follows:
Rev. Aimee Daniels emphasizes that peace comes from within, not from external circumstances. She cites various spiritual teachers who teach that true peace is an inner state, not dependent on the outer world.
Rev. Aimee encourages the audience to cultivate inner peace through practices like meditation and mindfulness. She emphasizes that peace and love are the truth of our divine nature, and we should set the intention to embody and manifest peace in our lives and in the world.
The talk concludes with a guided meditation to help the audience connect with their inner peace and manifest more peace in their lives.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Aimee Daniels:
Good morning. Thank you for humoring me by singing that song. I saw 10,000 maniacs about a month ago at a small venue up in Michigan, and I have been obsessed with that song ever since. And this week Rich is like, is that song making it into this week at Cityside? I’m like, oh yeah. But what I love about this song is it says that you’re blessed by something, right? You’re touched by something that will bloom through you. It’s really a lot like what we teach. And you might feel ray of light come across your face. That too. So these are the days when this month together we’re going to practice living in peace together. No small thing, but living from the spirit within this presence that is always with us. This presence which is never an absence that is always guiding us and directing us, and it’s always unfolding and it’s always loving us. So this is where peace begins. It begins in and as us and through us.
So there’s a story about an old monk who was renowned for his deep peace and people traveled from very far away to learn from him. And so one day a visitor arrived and she was expecting to find him up in a temple on the top of a mountain. And she got there and he was working in a bustling marketplace full of noise, full of crowds, full of chaos. And she walked up to him and she said, master, I’m confused. How can you possibly maintain your peace in a place like this? And the monk smiled and replied, peace does not come from the absence of noise and activity. Keep peace comes from having a quiet heart in the midst of them. And that’s what we’re seeking to cultivate this month. So peace is not something we find only when life cooperates with our plans for it.
It’s not always, the world doesn’t have to be calm, circumstances don’t have to go our way. We can still experience peace because it’s an inner state that we cultivate and it’s being still in thought even when life feels loud to us. And I think we could argue even more when life feels loud to us, that’s when we want to embrace the stillness and we embrace the presence instead of embracing reactivity, which I think that can be super challenging right now. Not to be reactive, but we remain rooted in our divine nature. And that’s the piece that we’re talking about. So as Gordon read to us from James Allen, true peace is not found in the ever-changing world of conditions. It’s discovered within the silent sanctuary of the heart. And what I love about this book, by the way, is the simplicity of this book. He talks a lot about practice, he talks a lot about discipline. That what we do every day is what we create. We know this. So we want to cultivate stillness. We want to be a calm presence in the world.
And also just to recognize our outer world is a mirror. Whatever we see in the outer world, whatever we believe to be true, that’s what is true for us. So if we see peace in the world, then we experience peace in the world. Or if we believe there’s peace, I think I said that backwards. If we believe there’s peace in ourselves, we see peace in the world because it is just a reflection of what we believe and the way of peace is love. That’s a good checkpoint. Like am I practicing love? The way of peace is love. Love for myself too, by the way, right? In that. So this idea, peace comes from within. This is on every spiritual path. I could have put 10 quotes up here, they wouldn’t all fit. So I just picked two. First one comes from the Buddha, peace comes from within.
Do not seek it without. The second comes from earnest Holmes. We must become the embodiment of peace if we desire to see peace manifested. And it’s this idea that peace is an active consciousness. It’s not passive, it’s active. And the that’s the consciousness we’re seeking to cultivate is the consciousness of peace. Peace as an act of consciousness. And the first step to doing that is stillness. Stillness is always the first act of peace. And remember these snow globes, there’s a snow globe up there. If you don’t remember what those are, what happens when you shake a snow globe, everything gets cloudy. And that’s kind of the trap of our outer life. We’re sort of in the snow globe that got shaken up. It gets shaken up by other people’s opinions about us, our opinions about ourselves, what’s going on in the world, whether people approve of us.
But when we pause, the flakes settle, and then we can come to this place of clarity and peace becomes visible again. Lao Sue said to the mind, that is still the whole universe surrenders. So stillness is the first spiritual act of peace. And we’ve heard this before, right? And oops, I jumped ahead there. Okay, maybe not. Hold on a second. Sorry. I’m having trouble with my clicker here right now. I went back, not forward, okay, in his book, be Here. Now Ramdas taught that presence is the doorway. So presence is the doorway that we walk through to find peace.
And the Buddha also talked about presence. The Buddha taught a long time ago. And what’s interesting about the Buddha, we were talking about this in the healing circle the other night, he found his enlightenment basically when he stopped trying, when he surrendered, he had been trying everything, walking around, begging, being an acetic. He tried everything and then he just kind of got tired and he took a break and he had a meal and rested, and then he went and sat under the Bodhi tree and that’s when he had his enlightenment. And so we want to take that as a lesson for ourselves. But the Buddha taught five different meditations. And I’m just going to talk about the first one and the last one. The first one is the meditation of love. And this is the idea that we are cultivating love within ourselves and we are sending it out to the world.
So that’s the first meditation the Buddha taught. And the second or the last one actually that he taught was called the meditation of serenity. And this is really about may there be peace within me, may there be peace in my community, may there be peace in the world, but just this idea like inner meditation or contemplation as James Allen might call it, that then we are sending out an intention. And so we have the ability to decide where we want to focus our attention and our intention. And actually Mike, I’ve said this before, Michael Beckwith teaches this as a way to think about meditating. So when we sit down, our intention is to cultivate our spirit. So when we meditate to cultivate a connection with our spirit, and that’s our intention, but we place our intention, our attention, excuse me, on staying connected. And his instruction is to have your inner eye point towards your third eye.
So our intention is to connect with our spirit. Our attention goes to our higher self, for lack of a better word. So we simply close our eyes. There’s a lot of ways to meditate, but I want to say when we think about silence, I think that meditating in the silence, just if you don’t want to sit too long, set an alarm or something like that. I actually think meditating in the silence is very powerful. I do sometimes use music like soft music or binaural beats or something like that. But I think the silence is very helpful. And me, when I used to run, I used to do longer runs. I stopped doing that a while ago. But I always found at first that it was very hard. The first 20 minutes I was just like, my body didn’t want to do it right? And you’re going through it and you’re like, this is painful and whatever.
But then you reached the point and it was usually about 20 minutes in, I would notice my mind and my body settled. And I think that meditation is the same. And so if we want to call anything into our life, we want to start with the stillness, right? Because we want to get out of our head. I don’t know about anyone else. I had it happen this morning. I sat down to meditate and the silence. And my head at first was really going through all the things that needed to happen here today or whatever. And then I was just kind of like, okay, peace, be still please. And then I started to settle and then I was in this lovely energy that felt bigger than me. But my point in sharing that is we all need to just be patient. We just need to practice.
And if you’re having a, there are good days and there are bad days with meditating. There’s some days where you’re just like zen out. And there are days where it’s a little more challenging, but we need to do it. And so James Allen tells us there’s an unavoidable tendency to become literally the embodiment of that quality upon which one most constantly thinks. So he would say to us that we should, as we sit, we should notice those places within ourselves where we need to realize truth. So it might be a grievance that we have. It might be hatred or anger, but to notice when we’re sitting if anything comes up, and then to call in a spiritual quality is essentially what he’s saying. So if I am feeling anger, then I need to call in the quality of forgiveness or love. If I’m feeling that I’ve been wronged again, I want to call in forgiveness. Whatever that quality is that helps to lift you up. And he says, shares this idea that we all have an inner dialogue. What happens is when we meditate on the higher spiritual quality, then we begin to shift that dialogue. And many of you have probably experienced that. I think it’s also true in prayer, by the way. Let’s say we’re not experiencing peace and we meditate or pray for peace. What happens? The energy shifts. That’s what we do when we practice.
So the idea is we want to cultivate our inner lighthouse. And I can’t think of any quote better than Jesus. I said this morning, I’m like, I’m going to activate a couple people. I’m going to say Jesus a couple times. But Jesus said, my peace I give to you not as the world gives. Does anyone know that? Who grew up or was part of the Christian Church? And so what does this mean metaphysically? It means inner divine tranquility. It’s like the Christ consciousness, you might say like the shalom energy. Whatever your idea of the higher self spirit is, that is what this is talking about. And we find this through our spiritual connection. And when we know that we have this piece available to us, it lessens the fears that can come up in life. And this is divine peace. It’s not worldly peace. So divine peace is the piece that we can always experience within worldly peace is temporary. And so our goal spiritually is to move from that divine peace and to also to hold our heart. The other idea behind this metaphysically is our heart is the creator. So we create through our heart. We might say here, we create through our intention or through a spiritual quality that we put out there, but it’s this idea that the heart center is where we are creating from. So my peace I give to you not as the world gives. It’s just a great reminder.
It’s not that someone’s going to wave a wand and there’s going to be peace for us. We’re cultivating it. So some of you may know this story. In the 1940s in Asia, they found this mud or clay covered Buddha and someone moved it and it cracked. And they realized that there was a golden Buddha in there. And what had happened is many centuries before they were being invaded and the monks thought, oh, we’re going to cover this thing up, and they ended up covering it with mud, they forgot about it. Nobody even remembered that we was Golden Buddha in there. And I think it’s we’re a lot like that. We have a golden Buddha in us, but we forget, right? Because we get all the mud and crap from life and it can cover up that part of us. That’s the divine. And so I love this idea and what are we doing when we’re cracking away?
Whatever is covering up our true self, we’re removing our fears, we’re removing comparison. We might be self-judgment or self-criticism. We’re removing all the things that make us, quite frankly think we’re not good enough to be divine. That’s an idea of the world. That’s not a spiritual idea. No, I won’t go. I was going to go off and pontificate for a second. I’m going to pause myself and just say, nobody else’s idea of you is who you are. And I think that’s a hard thing to learn. I think that’s been a hard thing for me to learn in my life. I don’t need to fit somebody else’s idea of me. God created me and I’m good enough just how I am. And I’m supposed to be different than you are. And vice versa. God created you and you’re supposed to be different from me. And that’s the beauty of this whole thing is that we’re different and there’s room for everyone to express within that.
Black elk says peace comes from within the souls of people when they realize their oneness with the universe. I love that peace comes from within the souls of people when they realize their oneness with the universe. So our peace is our divinity remembered. And when we can look at others and also see their oneness with us, that they are not separate. It’s very powerful. I had an experience this week, one of the groups I think I’ve shared. I have this business partner in one of the things that I do outside of Cityside. And we created this new group and I got into our first meeting and he did a lot of the work on this. I’m going to give him credit on it. I did very little of the work on this, but I had this experience of being in the room and realizing how different my worldview was from everybody in the room and specifically more spiritually.
And he looked at me and he said to me, are you okay with this? I said, you know what I want to say? If God put me in this room, that means I’ve got something to learn here. So yeah, I’m okay with it because they might be on a different path than I am, but it’s okay. They’re on a path. I don’t need to judge somebody else. I can just be in my own place of peace and I can learn from, wow, what are the practices that other people have that work for them? And what are they doing that we don’t do in their communities? So anyway, I just share that because I think it’s easy for us to walk out the door and start to create separation in our head. And I really want to encourage us to stay in this realization of oneness, not to see anybody else as in other, even when it’s hard. And I know sometimes it’s hard, stay off Facebook. It helps.
So cultivating peace in the present moment. So Eckhart Toll says, when you surrender to what is and so become fully present, the past ceases to have any power. The realm of being which has been obscured by the mind then opens up. And a great stillness arises within you, an unfathomable sense of peace. And within that peace, there’s joy. And within that joy, there’s love. And at the innermost core, there is the sacred immeasurable that which cannot be named. And I think that’s the hard thing about talking about God or spirit or the universe, whatever you want to call it. Ernest Calm said it. I think it is pretty good, but we really can talk about what looks like it, but we can’t. You know what? It’s a little esoteric, isn’t it? Right? But it’s the idea is that we need to experience it in this present moment.
And as I was studying the book and thinking about it, I was thinking about how it’s so easy to be in the past. When we’re in the past, we might be thinking about, oh, I feel guilty about this. I regret something that happened. I think a perceived wrong that someone else did to me or a perceived wrong. I’m afraid I did to someone else that I’m worried about. It’s so easy to be in the past. It’s also really easy to be in the future, to be worried about what might happen. But if you’re in the future, you’re going to be experiencing fear or maybe anxiety or uncertainty. And as we become present to what is in this now moment, there’s something much greater that’s happening and it kind of negates everything else. We’ve been studying Emma Curtis Hopkins in the Healing Circle. And one of the things that we talked about this month was this idea that humans are a hungry caterpillar and are clinging.
We’re like a caterpillar clinging to a leaf, and we’re always hungry, and we always want to be feeding ourselves, whether it’s physical food, whether it’s mental food, whatever. But our spirit is bigger than that. Our spirit doesn’t have any needs. Our needs are already met in spirit. And I think that’s what we experience. When we get into the present moment, we begin to know that who we really are is bigger than all of these. We might call ’em our costume self or our fake self. Like this identity that we put on in life that we walk around with. What we do for work. What’s our ideology? What circles of friends we’re in our spirit’s bigger than that. And we need to remember that all those things are not our true self, that our true self is the spirit. And you’re in the spirit when you’re in a place of joy, when you’re in a place of peace, when you feel like, wow, I can’t help but smiling right now, getting some smiles.
How? Come on, everybody put some smiles on. So we want to cultivate peace in the present moment through our meditation and through our practice. Emmett Fox says we should also cultivate simplicity. True simplicity is the master key of spiritual understanding. And I’m going to skip down here. The heart that’s fixed on many different things is never at peace. And it is to the heart at peace that the realization of God comes. And you think about how we live today, we’re all over the place, but what if we chose to make our life a little simpler? And what we’re really going for also is mental simplicity. So seeing the one presence everywhere in all things Jesus said in the Bible, if thine I be single, thy body will be full of light. So metaphysically, what does that mean? It means that having a single eye, the eye is a metaphor for spiritual understanding or perception or consciousness.
And this idea that if th i be singles means having a pure, focused, undivided intention or devotion that is God-centered, spirit centered, whatever your word is, not looking to other masters, as the Bible would say, there’s one master. That’s the spirit that created you. That’s the spirit that is living you. That’s the spirit that resides in you. So the idea is if our eye is single, our body will be full of light and we will feel lighter, we will feel illuminated, we will feel a greater sense of peace, and we will have access to divine wisdom. Like the song said that they sang for us, that you’ll see signs, right? You’ll know that spirit’s leading you if you slow down long enough to listen.
So the way of peace is the way of love. And it doesn’t come from the outer world, it comes from the source itself that is ever present within us. And we cultivate this through the stillness, through meditation. We focus our attention and our intention on peace. And we could start our day and end our day just setting an intention. Like my intention today is peace. Let me be peaceful in the world. Let me be loving in the world, right? And it sounds silly, but actually James Allen’s all about that. It’s pretty straightforward. It’s like we stay focused, we speak, and when we practice inner peace, we notice when we’re not experiencing it. And that’s our opportunity to do our inner work. And when we stay in the present moment and notice where our attention is, we can let God take care of all of it, healing the past, creating the future, and through cultivating our connection to spirit, we can see the divine in everything.
We can begin to tell ourselves to pause and to notice what’s going on around us. You ever have this happen where you go on a walk and you’re like, I never noticed that before. I’ve walked by that a thousand times. I never knew that was there. That’s the idea. It’s like when we start to look as we look for things, they look for us as we are seeking God, God is seeking us, and we cultivate simplicity by having this single eye. And most importantly, we practice love in action. And that is something that we can all do. And if you notice, now’s a great time of year to practice this too. You’re out, you’re shopping and the people who are helping you in the store, they are working really hard right now. Just be nice, right? Just notice, go around, be nice, put a smile on.
It lights people up, and we can do that every place in our life. But the most important place that we can experience peace is in our practice. And so I’m going to ask Greg to come back up here, and we’re going to do a little practice together. My clock thinks I’ve been speaking for 81 minutes. I know that’s not true. It’s when I plugged it in. So we’re going to do a little practice together, and this is a guided meditation. And what I want you to do here is just allow your mind to go where it goes.
And so I just invite you to close your eyes and just get comfortable in your seat, feel your spine, and just lengthen your spine a little bit. Roll your shoulders back, get comfortable, and let us take a deep breath in together, just breathing in and breathing out. Let’s do it again. Just breathing in and breathing out. And as you bring your attention inward, just notice that you’re sitting in a beautiful garden. This garden represents your life which you are cultivating in your life. And just look around and see all the beauty that is around you. See the light shining through in your garden. And just notice any color or texture around you. Notice what it feels like to be there. We’re just going to sit in that together for a minute
And just look around your garden and notice if you see any weeds in your garden, things that are troubling you, things that you believe should be different in your life, maybe beliefs you have about yourself, anything that you’re carrying. And if you see any weeds, I just want you to pluck ’em up with your fingers and toss ’em. Just weed your garden. Just release anything that you’re carrying that isn’t serving you, and just see it dissolving and moving away in this light. And now I invite you to turn your energy to your heart. And if it feels good, place your hands on your heart and just see your heart emanating light first, just within yourself, filling up your body with light and just feeling the peace and wellbeing that is present in this light. There is nothing to do but to sit in this beautiful light, this peace, this love, this goodness, just knowing the truth about your connection to the divine. Oh, and as you breathe into this, just ask your spirit what it wants you to know right now. What little nuggets of wisdom does your spirit want to call forth for you? Peace, joy, love, wisdom. Just ask your spirit what it wants you to know right now.
And I just invite you as we begin to move toward prayer, I just invite you to set an intention in your mind’s eye. What are you calling forth more of in your life? What does peace look like for you? What is your intention of peace? And we take all of these intentions, and we just know God’s presence in this very moment, this presence, which is never an absence, this presence of peace, love, harmony, grace, divine wellbeing, the goodness of life itself. And I know that I am one with this peace, this love, this wellbeing, this divine wholeness, this goodness and love of God. And as I know this for myself, I know this for each person hearing my words, I know that we are all one with this loving presence and power, this presence, which is never an absence, this infinite peace, this one life, this wholeness, this goodness, this grace, this love, this divine wellbeing.
So from this place of oneness, I just make a declaration of peace for each and every one of us. I know that peace is the truth of all of us, and I know that peace is manifesting now in our lives. I know that each of us makes the conscious choice and sets the intention to bring our attention to being a peaceful, loving presence in the world, to experiencing more peace and love in our own lives. And I know just God says yes to this. I know as we turn to God, God turns to us. So I know that peace is the truth, and we expand this piece beyond ourselves, out to our neighbors, out to our families, out to our communities, out to our countries, and out to the world. Knowing the divine within is the divine within and all. And knowing that peace and love are the truth, and just calling that forth and claiming it, peace on earth begins now. And it begins with each of us. And as we embrace peace, it goes out into the world and spreads in immeasurable ways. So I say yes to this, I’m grateful for this. And together we say, and so it is. Amen.