Blossoming in the Light by Judith Pennington.

In meditation recently, I asked my still, small voice how to deal with feelings of anguish and outrage over the U.S.-led war on Iraq. The answer came in one of the most beautiful and kindly messages that I've heard in 15 years of meditative writing. It began, "Allow each shard of glass to fall out of thy heart and bring the Father's love to each hole."

These lovely words brought a sense of comfort, but before I could heal myself as advised, their deeper meaning sprang to life. I spent an afternoon angry at someone who hurt me, and the next morning was amazed to find tiny shards of glass in my fingers. I don't know how they got there, and I can only read this as a physical teaching on how our own destructive emotions bring us grief. Indeed, these little wounds still hurt as I write these words.

The still, small voice of my soul brings me understanding in many ways, but only when I am listening and ready for its lessons; so it is for humankind, now that we are able to perceive the oneness of mind and body, thought and form, essence and symbol, and interpret their truths and meanings. I am taught that readiness takes time to ripen and that, despite the sting of learning, these are days of great blessings, as ideas long held in abeyance take form.

Today we are at last ready for peace and more than the peace that means not-conflict: a deeper, truer peace resting in our desire to be at-one with ourselves and to live as instruments of peace in service to the world. This peace was most recently planted by the Beatles, whose music brought Eastern religion and meditation here in the 1960s; by the inward focus of the "me" generation in the 1980s; and now, by science, which was once at war with religion and spirituality, and now is acclaimed for proving objectively what mystics have taught about God for thousands of years.

For example, the prophets of the Bible perceived the divine life force as light, and today, quantum science tells us that everything is composed of different frequencies of light. Nearly a century ago, Edgar Cayce, the "sleeping prophet," saw that our cells, tissues and organs vibrate at different frequencies and that what we think and eat creates in us either the harmony of health or the discord of disease: "Spirit is the life, mind is the builder, the physical is the result," Cayce taught.

Today it's easy to see that physicians will use finely calibrated light devices to restore our bodies and minds to the frequencies of health, while spiritual healers lay on hands to get the same or a better result. Thanks to Cayce's inner vision and to scientists who authored books like The Body Electric and The Secret Life of Plants, many people already understand that everything is the energy of consciousness in motion. We meditate to feel the currents of divine light flowing through our bodies and rising in frequency to awaken and evolve our minds into an expanded consciousness of pure love and creativity, empathy, intuition, healing and connection with the radiant energy of God.

To me, the light of meditation is the pathway to the evolved Christ mind of love and oneness; to others, it opens the enlightened Buddha mind; to still others, here is the mystical "ascension" into higher consciousness and, ultimately, the resurrection of the body. The belief system doesn't matter, only the search for what makes us better than we were before.

We are now able to understand what Jesus taught so long ago: that the kingdom of God lies within and is accessed through prayer and meditation; and that loving self, others and God with our whole hearts and souls amplifies the love, harmony and inner peace in us and the world. Yesterday this was religious hocus-pocus, today it's an electromagnetic fact known to brain wave researchers and neurophysiologists across the world. When we live in the currents of love and light flowing through us and all things, we steadily raise ourselves and the world into the Divine.

I see this as a blossoming, thanks to the lyrical imagery of my still, small voice. Just after the shards-of-glass passage came this assurance: "No one can tell the moment when promise flares into potential and potential into actuality, but when the blossoming comes, the fragrance fills the air and beauty abounds." In this symbol is the truth of what we can bring about in ourselves and in the earth, if this is our desire and intention. No matter what happens in the outside world, we can prepare for our blossoming and the Earth's by being as beautiful as we can be and by radiating the love of the Greater Love.

Let us rejoice in the beauty and wonder of this, for these feelings attune us to stronger and higher frequencies of Light than ever before and enable us to be all that we are meant to be. We are uplifted and, in this, shine the light of love upon the roots and seeds of peace growing in this new springtime on Earth. We cultivate it with nothing more than our faith and Love.

So it is promised, so must it be done.