When we exist outside of enlightenment, we constantly feel stretched. We crave inner peace, but likely do not realize that this is what we’re seeking. Our souls know that they seek something, so we try to determine what that something is, and our Earthly minds can come up with an impressively long list of false tonics for our feelings of emptiness when we’ve lost sight of what our souls actually needs. Food, friends, success, religion, children, money, alcohol, the approval of others, sex, fame, risk-taking… the list of ways that humans have tried to substitute something Earthly for their soul’s inner peace could fill the pages of countless tomes, as could the stories of the monumental failures of each to effectively slake the soul’s thirst for Universal connection.

Enlightenment is not an exclusive club. The only person who can exclude us from enlightenment is ourselves. However, those who successfully aspire do speak a common language. Once we’ve tapped into Universal truth and secured our inner peace with what we find there, our tongues become transmitters of knowledge and peace beyond typical human capability.

It’s TRAGIC that this state is atypical, and that tragedy plays out daily and horrifyingly on our planet. The Dalai Lama has said, “If every 8 year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.” And he’s undeniably correct. Only once we’ve begun to succeed in our aspirations to reach enlightenment, only once we’ve begun to reach the physical/mental/spiritual state of meditation on a regular basis can we see just how indisputable this is.

Because, unless we belong to an order of a very blessed few, we remember what it’s like to live outside of enlightenment. We remember feeling incomplete. We remember what an exhausting struggle it was for our fleeting inner peace to be largely incumbent upon external factors and our emotional state to be wholly dependent on the same. Living outside of enlightenment is surviving and no more, no matter how richly (or not) we’re accommodated with Earthly pleasures and treasures.

When we live outside of enlightenment, Universal truth still sounds sweet to our ears. Our souls instinctively know its veracity, but our Earthly minds find it hollow, inapplicable to this life. And without meditation, without an intentional spiritual walk, it most certainly is. We can hear it. We can appreciate it, but without the proper tools, we cannot apply it in our lives or foster it in anyone else’s.

Happily, once we’ve begun to take a few steps forward in our souls’ journeys, the truth ceases to strike us and bounce off, but begins, instead, to emanate from within us. It’s not that we ourselves become a source of truth, but rather that we become channels for the Universal source of truth. It is this connection that finally and joyfully completes us. Suddenly and perfectly, our inner peace is anchored from an immoveable place that we have all come from and shall all return to. Refreshing, invigorating, liberating, inspirational – it is all these things and so much more.

If we’ve set our intention to begin our spiritual walk, but have not yet reached this place in our journey, we can take this as a promise from our souls’ source, when we do reach this realization, we’ll be infinitely blessed with this emancipating wisdom as well.

Once we have reached a point in our walk where and when we feel well connected to Universal love/creativity/wisdom, it is our responsibility to share the loving wisdom with fellow souls and guide and encourage them in their own walks. Truly, if we all found an eight-year-old (or any person whose spirit is uninitiated in its true direction) to coach and encourage in the ways of meditation, we could save the world in a single generation, just as the Dalai Lama has said. Knowing this, how can we decline to join?