This is from Michael Walton’s book Peace River.

Peace River is an inner river, the river of life, the divine life stream, the stream of divine healing. Though to most of us invisible, it is nonetheless most real.

We are here to bring Peace River to the world. Human consciousness is vital to this. We are conscious Beings, and so what happens for us happens through consciousness.

The release of life in the human experience relies on consciousness. Not so much with the rocks and the trees, at least not with the same conscious choice we have as human beings. The tree is not going to stop being a tree, or the rock a rock. But life can dwindle for us as human beings if the processes of consciousness break down, as they have in so many ways for humankind. We are here to awaken conscious experience so that Peace River flows once again.

For us, as human beings, there are essentially three things we can think about, and they all deserve our thought. We can think about the world around us. We can think about our own human experience and the human experience of others. And we can think about the realm of potential and possibility that has yet to manifest in our life.

We usually have feelings that accompany whatever we are thinking about. So thinking and feeling go together, creating consciousness. The problem we often face is the human tendency to fixate on all the factors that demand our attention in the world. Of course, the world around us does need our care and attention. But when we become fixated on it to the exclusion of what is happening in our human experience and to the exclusion of the realm of potential and possibility, then Peace River is not flowing for us as a human being. When we become fixated on what is happening in our personal world, our financial world, our social world, even the natural world, excluding anything else, the answer to all the problems we see doesn’t come. There is no solution and no inspiration and no power to act in the face of the dilemmas of our world. And so, there is despair about all that is happening in the world.

We can also think about very human things—what is happening in our own human experience and what is happening for the people around us. How would you lead a creative, fulfilling life without an awareness of what you are feeling and experiencing, and what your body is undergoing? It is natural and healthy to have care and compassion for each other as human beings. And still, that too can become a fixation and an obsession, with constant self-concern. If it is that, to the exclusion of being aware of what is inspiring and life-giving, then there is desperation. There are human problems with no solution. How do I ever work it out with this other person? How do I ever come out of patterns of anxiety and fear, resentment, myself? There is no answer at that level without the third arena, where we open our minds to inspiration and to the very source of what could manifest in the world.

As Michael Walton put it so aptly, for the most part, those things are invisible. How do you think about invisible things? The things that might manifest, that might find expression and become embodied but have not yet? We all have the opportunity to develop the ability to think about such things. They are the very essence of the unfolding reality of our life. When they come into consciousness, we realize we could speak this word, paint that painting, sing that song, offer that kind act or gesture towards another person, because we have opened our mind to entertain the possibility of it. And with that creative thought, enthusiasm fills the emotional body.

What happens when we exclude that level of thought and all the feelings that go with it? Peace River isn’t flowing; we are just draining the lake. And then we are left with depletion and desperation. We are left to look at the problems of the world—politics, the weather, war, and disease. And there is nothing left but despair if we do not allow higher inspiration to come into consciousness.

For my Attunement Meditation blog this week, I found this quote from Uranda, where he addresses these things:

Restoring correct polarity to the proper patterns of Deity allows the individual to hold steady without regard to external pressures, and the mind does not attempt to take the ill condition, or the concept about the ill condition, simply to itself to try to figure it out and determine an answer. The mind becomes a channel through which the pressure patterns induced by the circumstance reach through to higher or inner levels of consciousness, whereupon the divine pattern of activity is instituted, movement begins, and it carries on out through the conscious mind into the range of action.

How profound! And what an apt description of what happens in the human experience. The mind fills with all the pressure of the external circumstances, whether it is a hurricane, pandemic, war, or any of the events of an individual life. Then the person tends to assume that their human mind, of itself, is supposed to come up with an answer. That is a great way to induce panic and despair because there is no purely mental answer for the world we live in. For instance, there is a technological solution for most of the problems we face in the world today. But without a spiritual solution to the human condition, they often aren’t implemented effectively or pervasively. And so technology, of itself, is not an answer to the world’s problems.

Uranda puts it so brilliantly, speaking of the function of the mind as a channel. It is common in spiritual circles for people to contemplate the possibility that the mind ought to be open so that the Divine could come through. Consciousness ought to be a hollow reed, as it is sometimes put. But how much awareness is there that consciousness is a two-way street? That divine intelligence finds out about the situation in the world in which we live because we become aware of it? And because we do not assume that we are supposed to fix it all by ourselves? We offer our consciousness as a channel that allows all the factors of the circumstance—and everything we think and feel about it—to be given over to a higher intelligence. Here, have it! It is yours! It is your world.

I did not create this world as a human being, and you didn’t either. I did not create the whole world, and I did not even create my little world. I cannot even claim to have created my own body. Here, have it! You made it—it is yours.

But that is not the end of it either, because Peace River flows both ways. There are all the factors of the world and all my thoughts and all my feelings about them to be offered upstream. But I am not going anyplace. I am still here. I did not release responsibility. It is just that, in humility, I have accepted what my responsibility truly is. I am here to offer up the world to higher consciousness and then be present and available for the inspiration of the answer.

That is this third thing to think about—the invisible answer, which is the very essence of what could express and be embodied through us as human beings. Let’s open to that.

What is that answer, in its essence? Love. Any answer that is not born out of Love is not an answer. And what is Love? There are all kinds of Love because there are so many ways it can be expressed and embodied. But in its essence, it is invisible. It has not yet manifested. It is this very essence of something so precious and so beautiful that makes it all worthwhile. And so, all true inspiration and all true answers are born out of Love.

All true answers also bring the essence of beauty. Another word for beauty is truth. Truth is beauty, and beauty is truth. Human consciousness is given the role of expressing and embodying the beauty of Love.

When there is the inspiration of the beauty of Love, there is life. Peace River flows. Indeed, we are here to be caretakers and stewards of the world in which we live. We are stewards of all the facets of it—for the people around us, for material things, our homes, for nature, and all the things of life. But something happens when we define a human life as all about caring for the world in which we live. It can leave out the very essence of it, which is the essence of life itself. It can leave out Peace River. So, our purpose is not only to save our world for whatever reason we think it ought to be saved. It is to be an expression of the beauty of Love, which is the reason for our world and for us in the first place. We might well ask ourselves, At what point along the way did I stop being that? Being the expression and embodiment of the beauty of Love creates Peace River, the river of life.

And then this question arises. It is the question of the Creator, which is the question of any true artist. How great could this be? How great a Love can I reveal and allow to live in my world? How beautiful could it be? How much life could I bring forth through myself and encourage in the world in which I live? How much?

The expression of the beauty of Love is ultimately practical. It is the solution for the world in which we live. Its expression requires that we open up our thinking so that we are not only aware of the world around us and how we feel about it. We open to higher ranges of intelligence. We share what we are witnessing and all that we think and feel about it. We give it over to the invisible source of all Creation. And so, the perfect answer comes, exactly right for the situation in which we find ourselves, taking into account all the factors of which we are aware.

Beautiful. The truly loving answer.

Our human heart swells to become the loving heart of the Creator. Peace River is flowing once again.