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AN ESSAY ON THE ESSENE SEVENFOLD PEACE---Based on: "The Teachings Of the Essenes From Enoch To the Dead Sea Scrolls" by Edmond Bordeaux SzekelyThe Sevenfold Peace was the Essene's explanation of man's relationship with his own being and with others, demonstrating how to maintain peace and harmony in his life. To the Essenes, the harmony in life meant peace within one's self, and with all of one's fellow man, nature, and the universe. They viewed human beings as having seven different relationships with themselves and others: physical, the relationship one had with one's body, one's mind, one's emotional make-up, one's social circle, one's cultural relationship, one's relationship with nature, and with the entire cosmos. They also viewed man as having 3 bodies, not separate, but existing together in harmony, these 3 were recognized as the "acting", "feeling", and "thinking" bodies. The greatest power of man's "thinking body" was wisdom, and that of the "feeling body" was love,thusly, it was the acting body's job to transform the wisdom and love into appropriate actions in one's individual, social, cultural, natural, and cosmic roles. This was what the Sevenfold Peace explained, so man could follow it's wisdom and find the peace within with all of his various roles and aspects in his daily life. During every noon time communion, as is part of the practice of the Tree of Life, the Essenes contemplated one aspect of the Sevenfold Peace. They also dedicated one aspect of every sabbath, thus completing an entire cycle of the whole Sevenfold Peace in seven week's time. Peace with the body was the first relationship man had to understand. The Essenes studied man's role in the universe and surmised that man had 3 roles: 1 was his own evolutionary role, 2 was his role on the planet, 3 was the role he had in the cosmos. The acting body had a great importance in these 3 roles. These acting bodies of humans were all connected spiritualy to one another and affect one another. One's wellness and energy was significant not just to the individual, but to all beings on the planet, and in the cosmos. The Essenes learned how to perfect their acting bodies in all 3 roles man plays, and adapted their lives to the seen and unseen forces of the earth and cosmos. They learned the effects of these forces: the Earthly Mother: the sun, the air, the water, the soil, the life-force of all vegitation-- it's purpose as food and sometimes, medicine. Starting each day with cold water ablution, going outside and absorbing the important sunlight, and communing with the Earthly Mother's forces, they lived their lives working for the good of their brotherhood, perhaps in communal farming, or the making of necessary goods, or maybe healing the sick or caring for the infirm, but in some way that was a service to others--giving of one's self in a helpful and lovng way. Living in accord with the "One Law" would bring about the evolution of one's soul through all 3 of one's roles. Disease, the Essenes learned, was caused by departure from the Law; learning how to cure the disease by returning to living in harmony with the Law. They used and taught proper breathing techniques, daily sun exposure, daily bathing, the healing properties of plants and herbs, lots of raw, natural fruits, vegetables, and grains, the benefits of fasting to rejuvinate the body and strengthen the spirit. All things were done in moderation, and thoughts were to be kept within the accord with the Law. They knew the thinking body could be the strongest of the 3 bodies, having the most influence over the feeling and acting bodies. So they taught man to train his thinking body to take control over his feeling and acting bodies... and all the harmonious actions of their acting bodies would bring them much peace, and promote the further evolution of the person in his individual, social, cultural, planetary, and cosmic relationships. The evolution must begin with one's peace with himself and end with one's ascension to the peace with the Heavenly Father .........Page 2 The second peace, peace with the mind, focused on the state of the thinking body. The Essenes considered the thinking body as having a higher power than either the power of the feeling or acting body. Indeed, your thoughts are a great influence on both your emotional state and the actions you take in life! The thinking body, like the acting body, had the same 3 roles of individual, planetary, and cosmic. The individual goal was to use the superior power of the thinking body to give the direction and control over one's feelings and actions. The planetary goal was to contribute highly moral, ethical, altruistic thoughts to the planetary thinking body, which consisted of all individuals' thoughts on this earth. The cosmic role was to produce extremely superior thoughts which are of such a higher vibration that it becomes freed of the individual and the planetary boundries of forces, and joins with all other superior thought within the cosmic ocean of thought. By the thinking body learning and understanding the Law, noticing the presence and power in everything that exists, beings can thus evolve. By thinking in harmony with the Law, man can learn to correct the inharmonious thoughts. The Essenes were aware that not too many humans may have been aware that their thoughts could be so important in man's overall plan. Negative thoughts created an inferior force. Never have we seen this than in these recent times. This inferior force is getting stronger with each substandard thought of every person multiplied by the grand populous of the earth. These inharmonious thoughts create the non-loving feelings of mankind: anger, hatred, jealousy, etc.and cause the unfortunate actions, and resultant senseless tragedies of our current times. Constant awareness of one's thoughts was viewed to be necessary for an Essene, with the knowledge that one had to correct inharmonious thoughts, by thinking only harmonious ones. Peace with the family was the third aspect of the Sevenfold Peace. this concerned mainly the feeling body, the greatest of all of one's feelings was love. Divine love, taught the Essenes, was a great cosmic power. Love of one's Creator was first and foremost in an Essene's life. Love of one's "family"--which the Essenes' defined "family" as all of one's relations in his daily life. So this included then, not only one's immediate family, but one's friends, coworkers, acquaintences, etc. The Essenes knew that at any one moment one can send out a negative emotion, these negative emotions, such as anger or sadness are energy expending. Not only that, but negative emotions were known to resonate with other "like" emotions, and return to the person, amplified stronger than the person's original first negative feeling--as for instance someone at first irritated and cross, suddenly looses their temper and yells at someone, and this could become even more detrimental to the situation if the other person at the receiving end of the anger, gets angry in return...we then see the escalation of the negativity which may affect others nearby, as in a family situation. The Essenes first observed and recognized the 3 reactions/emotions of babies, so prevelant due to their strong instinct of self preservation: fear, anger, and love. Fear and anger were seen to be the lower levels of emotion, and understood therefore to be base emotions, the love was seen as a developmental growth in the feeling body of an individual. The Essenes observed that both babies and primitive man had similar feeling bodies, and their feeling bodies developed and controlled their functions long before their thinking bodies started to function. In this way, the feeling body had control in situations instead of the thinking body. It is not difficult to see then, that man's first departure from the Law, causing his demise in the Garden of Eden, also caused both the man and woman great sorrow and pain from their seperation from their Creator. Then as this early family's lives go on, further sorrows and tradegies occur when the great anger and hatred of one brother for another causes the one, (who developed quite an evil continence) to kill the other with such hatred, & jealousy to the point of vengefulness...It is not difficult then, for man to recognize the merit of a loving and forgiving character in his relations with all of his brothers and sisters? Not living in accord with the Law, causes an individual much suffering; and many in the world suffer,as is now and in the past, as Buddah so astutely observed. Suffering causes much pain and sorrow, and dis-ease arises from this inferior force having control over one's rational thought, thus causing a disequilibrium that actually alters the normal function of the endocrine system, thus allowing the disease, any of the multitude of them to enter the body by affecting the body's normal line of defense and balance of normal body functions. The Essenes thus knew and taught, that the individual should focus on the good and pure feelings of the many kinds of love one could experience in life--from the essential love of self to the love of one's spouse, child, parent, sibling, friend,to the highest love--alturistic love of your fellow man. The kind of unconditional, all-accepting, all understanding, all patient love of ALL our "family" creatures-human and non-human, this is what man needs to strive for today, and every day of his/her life! |