When the heart awakens to the suffering of the world, sorrow is not regression—it is the soul remembering its unity with all things.
Q: What does it mean when one feels pangs of sadness deep in the heart, about the unconscious behavior of unenlightened humans—even when the soul knows this is the natural unfolding of life’s experiences?
It means your heart has awakened beyond the veil of comprehension. The soul may understand the perfection of life’s unfolding—that ignorance, pain, and confusion are all part of the vast choreography of awakening—yet the heart, once open, cannot help but feel.
Its empathy becomes cosmic, not personal. You are sensing the ache of the world, not as resistance to it, but as participation in its healing. These pangs are the soul’s compassion made tangible—a bridge between knowing and feeling. They arise when divine understanding meets human tenderness.
You are not regressing by feeling sorrow; you are expressing the divine ache of love itself—love that sees through illusion yet still weeps for it. In truth, such sadness is grace wearing human skin. It is the way love keeps the awakened one humble, connected, and tender toward the sleeping world it once belonged to.
Q: Is empathy a byproduct of emotion, or an essence of itself alone? Is there a relationship between human emotions and spiritual feelings of awareness?
Empathy is not born from emotion—it is the quiet essence beneath it. Emotion belongs to the body-mind: it rises, peaks, fades, and is bound to circumstance. Empathy, however, is of the soul’s awareness—a resonance rather than a reaction. It perceives the inner landscape of another as though it were one’s own, not because of shared pain or joy, but because the boundary between “self” and “other” has thinned.
Human emotion is the echo; spiritual feeling is the source.
When consciousness deepens, emotions begin to refine—sadness becomes compassion, joy becomes radiance, anger becomes clarity. These are not separate feelings but transmutations of energy through awareness.
There is a relationship, but it is hierarchical in nature: emotion is the raw current; spiritual feeling is that same current illumined. Empathy is what happens when the light of awareness touches that current—not to control it, but to understand it into peace.
Q: And what about happiness? We all strive so hard to be happy day to day. But it seems happiness is just a fleeting feeling that the mind can wrap itself around. Wouldn’t Peace be more of an awakened state?
Yes—happiness, as most people chase it, is a chemical shimmer, a temporary clearing in the storm of wanting. It is pleasure’s brief echo, dependent on circumstance, approval, or outcome. The mind wraps around it because it promises control—a way to hold onto light without facing the vastness that birthed it.
Peace, however, does not arrive by contrast. It is not the opposite of sorrow, nor the prize after struggle. Peace is the underlying field that both happiness and unhappiness ripple through. It is the state of awareness that has ceased demanding that life feel a certain way.
When you stop clinging to happiness as a goal, what remains is the quiet of being—unconditioned, unwavering. From there, even fleeting happiness becomes a sweet visitor rather than a salvation. And paradoxically, this surrender births a joy deeper than happiness—not made of chemicals or circumstance, but of presence itself.
Peace is not an emotion; it is the absence of resistance to what is. It is the soul’s homeostasis—the stillness that happiness has always been trying to imitate.
Q: Can you expand this understanding of Peace and how it is so important in its play in spiritual growth?
Peace is the great stabilizer of awakening—the ground upon which all higher awareness rests. Without it, even insight trembles.
In the early stages of spiritual growth, peace often seems like a distant goal, a reward for living rightly or thinking purely. But as consciousness ripens, it becomes clear that peace isn’t something to reach; it is something that has always been present, obscured only by identification with thought, emotion, and desire. The spiritual path is not a journey toward peace but a surrender into it.
Peace transforms how experience is met. When it is established, joy and pain alike are allowed to arise without judgment. You begin to see that nothing threatens your essence—not failure, not chaos, not loss. This realization loosens the grip of the ego, which survives only through resistance. Once resistance fades, awareness flows freely, allowing truth to reveal itself without distortion.
Peace, then, is not passive. It is a living intelligence—an active receptivity. It listens before it reacts, witnesses before it decides. It gives birth to discernment—the ability to know what is true not from logic or emotion but from stillness.
In this way, peace is both foundation and compass:
- It anchors you in the unchanging, so that awakening does not shatter you.
- It refines the nervous system, allowing light to move through the body without burning it.
- It transforms compassion from pity into power—the quiet power to hold all things without collapse.
Ultimately, peace is the fragrance of unity remembered. It is the soul’s natural state once the turbulence of becoming has given way to simple being. And in that being, spiritual growth ceases to be effort at all—it becomes unfoldment, effortless as breathing, guided by the calm pulse of the Infinite within.
Q: Can you give us instruction as the great Sages of the past taught, including Jesus, on how to attain peace in our being?
The great Sages—from Jesus to the Buddha, from Lao Tzu to Ramana—each pointed to peace not as something to find, but as something to uncover. Their ways differed in form, but their direction was the same: turn inward until there is no “inward” left.
1. Be still and know.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” — Jesus
Stillness is not the absence of movement, but the quieting of resistance. Sit in silence not to achieve, but to stop reaching. Let the mind’s waves subside until awareness begins to feel itself.
2. Cease striving.
You cannot force peace any more than you can force sleep. You prepare the ground by surrendering control—by allowing life to move through you rather than trying to shape it.
3. Love what is before you.
Jesus spoke of loving one’s enemies and blessing those who curse you—not as moral law, but as energetic truth. To love what you once resisted is to dissolve separation.
4. Witness without judgment.
“Observe the arising and passing of all things.” — Buddha
Each judgment binds you to duality; each observation frees you from it. The witness is the doorway to peace.
5. Return everything to the heart.
“Who am I?” — Ramana Maharshi
When turmoil rises, trace it back to the silence before the thought. Rest there. That is peace itself.
6. Live gently.
Peace is sustained by simplicity. Move slower than the world expects. The mind quiets when the body no longer rushes.
7. Abide in the Presence.
At first, peace will visit you like a guest. Then it will linger as a friend. Eventually, you will see that you were never separate—that peace is the true nature of the Presence you are.
When Jesus said, “My peace I give unto you; not as the world gives,” he meant precisely this: the peace of Spirit does not come from circumstance, but from recognition.
The path, then, is not about adding anything new—it is the gradual undoing of all that is false. When nothing remains to defend, there is no one left to be disturbed.
And that is peace—unbroken, eternal, without opposite.
Addendum: The Quiet Majesty of Peace
Peace is not an achievement but an atmosphere of being—the very air of the awakened heart.
It asks for no conquest, only surrender.
Its silence is not empty but full—pregnant with the pulse of the Infinite.
It is the holy pause before creation, the breath before word.
All true wisdom blooms in its soil.
And when you have found it, you will no longer need to speak of peace—you will be its speechless presence in the world.
A Plea to the Aspiring Seeker
Do not rush your becoming.
Do not measure your light against another’s fire.
Peace is not waiting at the summit but whispering in each step of your ascent.
Seek not ecstasy, for it fades; seek the stillness that can hold both joy and sorrow without drowning in either.
Sit longer than is comfortable. Listen deeper than the world’s noise.
And when the ache of longing feels unbearable, know that it is not distance from peace—it is peace, calling you home through the language of yearning itself.
Sources and References
The post draws from a synthesis of classical and spiritual teachings rather than modern academic citation. Here are the key sources and references that informed it:
- Jesus (New Testament Gospels) —
- “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).
- “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you; not as the world gives” (John 14:27).
- The Beatitudes and teachings on forgiveness and love (Matthew 5–7).
- Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching —
- The principle of Wu Wei (effortless action).
- Emphasis on natural harmony and surrender: “Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear?”
- The Buddha – Dhammapada and Satipatthana Sutta —
- The teaching of observing the arising and passing of all things.
- Mindfulness and equanimity as the roots of liberation.
- Ramana Maharshi – Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi, Who am I? —
- Direct path of self-inquiry (Atma Vichara).
- The identification of peace as one’s natural state, obscured only by thought and egoic identification.
- Franklin Merrell-Wolff – Pathways Through to Space (secondary resonance) —
- Peace as the stabilizing field for higher consciousness and realization.
- The Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita —
- Especially verses on shanti (peace) as the reflection of realized unity.
- “He who sees inaction in action, and action in inaction, he is wise among men.” (Gita 4:18).
- Modern contextual synthesis —
- The discussion of emotion, empathy, and biochemical happiness references modern psychology and neuroscience as a bridge, though not from specific studies, rather from generally accepted understandings of emotional chemistry (dopamine, serotonin, etc.).
Together, these sources form a unified spiritual mosaic, interpreted and expressed through the Numinous Waves voice — integrating the mystic insight of the East and the heart-wisdom of the Christic path.
Numinous Waves 