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(The following article was written 4/03 for the Catalyst in Salt Lake City, Utah.)
Once
you've written your letters and Many people feel frustrated and helpless, as if their voice and prayers aren't being heard. But your prayers, in the form of your feelings, are heard. The most powerful prayer in the world is how you feel. If you want to experience peace in the world, you must learn how to actively feel peaceful throughout the day. You must find peaceful ways out of conflict. If you want to see a harmless, loving world, you must be harmless in your actions and conversations with yourself and with others. If your prayers are feelings of anger and frustration and helplessness, you will receive more of what you've been praying for. Based on results, isn't this true? Haven't you noticed that your feelings generate more of the very thing you don't want to experience? We live in a world of unending controversy provoked by individuals or groups engaged in power struggles. When conflict is suppressed, rather than resolved, there's always something bubbling under the surface, waiting to explode. Since power struggles have never been effective, why do we keep engaging in them? I suggest that power struggles in government are familiar territory because it's what we do in our homes and with each other. Each side - be it a person or a country - tries to have its needs met. The ones getting their needs met and taking control are usually the ones with the most financial power. In a model of a successful relationship, however, both sides win. And needs signal an opportunity for healing, not fighting. But how do we get from the dysfunctional turmoil that's so prevalent in our government institutions to a place where people would even consider a win/win scenario? And how do you find a win/win situation when it appears that for one to win the other must lose? In the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, Steven Covey says something to this effect, "There's your way, there's my way, but there's a third and better way." Could it be the reason we repeatedly fail to search out a "third and better way" to resolve conflicts is because it has never occurred to us that a third and better way already exists? How can we expect people in government and large corporations to actively seek out win/win scenarios if that was never part of their value system growing up? On the other hand, if we acquire these skills within ourselves, if we can look for ways to heal ourselves instead of expecting others to fulfill our needs, we will naturally teach our children and others how to solve problems differently. All of life is set up to be a win/win. By simply choosing to be actively peaceful in your own life, you are automatically creating the foundation for peace in the world. To understand this, simply imagine for a moment everything is perfect in the world. The environment is pristine, everyone is employed, everyone has free health benefits, and we're all playing nicely in the planetary sandbox. Would you be happy? Not if you don't feel at peace within yourself and in your own life. The only way we will ever experience unity and peace within our government and in our world is by exemplifying peace within ourselves. This doesn't mean expounding the concept of peace, it means treating yourself and others in a way that is harmless, compassionate and kind. It means consistently looking for a win/win situation in our personal lives and in our place of business. As a metaphor, the outer world can be the best guide to our inner world, too. Take a moment to look at the underlying cause of what you're seeing. If you see power struggles, you might look at and resolve the power struggles in your own life. If you see anger, take the opportunity to resolve your own anger. If you see people striving to have others meet their needs, have you contemplated how you can meet your own needs? It's always much easier to see what needs to be 'fixed' in others and in the world; it's far more uncomfortable to look within and say, "I do that, too!" The good news is that you, as an individual, really can make all the difference in the world when you simply recognize and take responsibility for your own thoughts and actions. We can't manipulate political issues, nor can we force world peace to occur, but we can acquire and apply simple tools for moving out of problems and into solutions. Through your example, your children and those around you will learn to find peaceful solutions. Your choices will begin to make a powerful difference in the world. Toxic news "If it bleeds, it leads" is a common axiom regarding daily news. Bad news sells. That doesn't mean you have to buy. When you hear or read news that makes you respond with fear or anger, ask yourself this: Can you do anything to bring about positive change? If your feelings are your prayers, is this what you want to pray for? (See the following excerpt from The Results Book, by Wally Minto.) Look for socially conscious news organizations that provide updates on current political activities as well as information on how you can take an active part in making a difference. A few of my favorites: BioGems (www.savebiogems.org) Robert Redford is a spokesperson for this organization which was created to help protect 'endangered wild places.' Moveon (www.MoveOn.org) provides information on current political issues where you can make your voice heard. Here's my mantra for having peace in my life: If there's something I can do, I do it. If there's nothing I can do I say to myself, 'This is none of my business.' As you can see, it's simple to become the Ultimate Armchair Activist. But it's not easy, because it has everything to do with who you're being; not just what you're doing. You now know all you need to know to make the world a more peaceful place. SIDEBAR: What do you really believe in?
But based on the thinking of the late
Wally Minto, founder of Alpha Awareness, McFerrin's song is not only good
mental health, it's a good recipe for world peace. Minto wrote, in The Results Book: Your brain operates under the law, as you believe so shall it be done. Your brain is a computer-like guidance mechanism and it guides you according to the beliefs you have programmed it with. However, there are different degrees of belief. What are some of the things you believe in? You might answer God, gravity, myself, night and day. These are things we might all believe in, but there are things we believe in stronger than any of these. The simple truth is that the things we believe in stronger than anything else are the things that we fear. I will guarantee you, if you are walking down a narrow path through the woods and you come face to face with a grizzly bear, you are going to believe in that grizzly bear stronger than you ever believed in God or gravity or yourself or anything else. If you believed in God that strongly, you would be getting answers to all your prayers, but you've probably never prayed with that much energy and emotion. You see, fear is the same thing as belief except that you put more energy and emotion into something you fear and so it becomes a stronger belief. You believe in God, gravity, yourself. That is believing. Then there is really believing, and really believing is worrying about something. And then there is really, really believing. And the things in life you really, really believe in are the things you fear. Realize that you use the same faculties of your brain-mind functioning to believe in God as you use to fear the dentist, except that when your believing reaches the degree of fear, you are putting more energy and more emotion into it so it becomes a stronger belief. If you can grasp the fact that worry and fear are the strongest forms of believing, and as you believe so shall it be done unto you, then you will understand how allowing your problems to be O.K. will solve 90% of your problems in life without even directing any attention to the problem. The simplicity that makes this work is this: Have you ever worried about something or feared something if you knew it was O.K.? No! If something's O.K., you don't worry about it or fear it. The reason you have failed to reach many of your goals in life is because you have not been aware that worry and fear are the strongest forms of belief. There is an ancient message, 'That which I feared the most came upon me.' What the message is really saying is, 'that which I really, really believed in happened to me.' If you will allow your problems to be O.K. just the way they are, then your subconscious mind will stop worrying about them or stop fearing them. This allows your subconscious mind to stop really, really believing in your problems. Then the conscious desire or answer has a chance to become a reality. In other words, by eliminating worry and fear you allow your mind to see answers instead of problems. Your brain is designed in a computer-like manner to seek answers, but through worry and fear you have taught it to see the problems instead. If all of your attention is focused on the problem, you will not see the answer. Worry simply develops a habit of having or doing or being what you are worrying about. When you worry, you create a predominant brain cell pattern of the problem. When you say it's O.K. you are creating a new pattern that releases the worry and thereby releases the problem. The Results Book, by Wally Minto, is no longer in print, however a more extensive version of this excerpt is available on Heather Macauley's new CD, The Silent Language of Peace or you can read the transcript on her web site: www.HeatherMacauley.com This page last updated 01/25/05 |