Doesn’t it seem curious that the condition of “resting in peace” should be reserved for those who have died? Why shouldn’t those of us who are alive in this world also have this benefit?
Perhaps we believe that worldly life is not or should not be restful, that one cannot live in that inner repose that we wish for those who have passed on. But as soon as one examines this, it seems arbitrary and worth a closer look.
Field training teaches that we only start living, in the fullest sense, when we are resting in that inwardly peaceful state that we call “alignment,” which is defined as friendly agreement between desire and belief. Now, we don’t live just inwardly, of course; we also live outwardly, among the conditions and circumstances of our worldly life. So there are, in basic terms, two forms of fulfillment and its expression: the inner, tacit, hidden form that David Bohm called “the implicate order” and the outer, explicit, visible, “explicate order.”
Now, living in peace requires that we rest in alignment, which depends on the release of our will and its practice of trying to make things happen. This is why the Course states that “the aim of practice is alignment, not manifestation.” The moment we’re exerting our will to make this or that happen, we are caught in the snare of contradiction, for we do not set out to make happen that which already is, and since belief is creative, the belief that what we want needs creating is tantamount to belief in its nonexistence.
The same holds true if we believe that what we want exists, but exists at a distance and so must be “attracted.” In that case, its distance from us is presumed, and this belief, too, operates.
The only way out of these mazes of contradiction that inform any strategic approach to conscious creating—that is, any approach that has the aim of altering worldly conditions—is to rest in the peace of alignment.
Trying to create something through an act of will, whether the venue of effort is inner or outer, turns out to be a failure method. As the movie War Games notes of such games, “the only way to win is not to play.” This is why Field training, while understanding and appreciating that outer things matter, sometimes greatly, directs us to set aside all concern about manifestation and take up the practice of alignment, leaving all else to the Field.
This last bit is crucial. Our worldly concerns must be delegated if we are to rest in alignment and in peace. Field practice, therefore, brings us into relation with something greater than our own will, and invites us to recognize that our creative life is a collaboration. Our part requires, among other things, that we release our will and all attempts to manage timing, the ways and means of fulfillment, and the form that outcomes will take.
Experience soon demonstrates to those who take up this practice its supreme value, for our resting in the peace of alignment and release is itself creative, moving through conduits of nonlocal efficiency from our inner to our outer life and shaping conditions in ways we could never contrive or anticipate.
Those who follow the path of effort and “making things happen,” whether by running around the world or through various consciousness techniques, may not at first appreciate the enormous creative reach and authority of our approach. They may be puzzled by its indirectness and deem it passive, even idle. And yet we have seen again and again that the power of our creative nature, paradoxically, lies in release of the will from a stance of alignment, just as the power of an arrow sent to its target lies in the aligned release of the bow string.
Resting in peace, mindful and willing to cooperate with whatever is before us to do, alert and ready, responsive but not initiating, we find ourselves in a great partnership. We bring our alignment to this partnership, and our Partner brings the rest. And we come to see that our willingness to rest in peace is a doorway to greater life.
source
