Prayer for Peace

In this article I hope to bring together people of very different beliefs, some of which are held very strongly.  I believe this is possible, although it is necessary for each of us to suspend any prejudice we may have about the beliefs of others.  Hopefully you will find I am not asking you to change what you believe, but just phrasing that belief in a way that should resonate with all my readers no matter what religion they follow (or even if they follow no religion at all).  Please try to bear with me on this, as the end result if you do could be an enormous surge of goodness and purity into a world that at the moment may seem to be filled with evil, danger, and dark powers.

When I look at the news there seems every reason to despair.  We read of violence in the Kenyan elections.  We hear of Kim Jong-un's threats to devastate the Western world with nuclear weapons.  We hear of Trump's counter threats to destroy North Korea completely.  We hear of 100 people dying in North Korea when a tunnel at its nuclear test site collapsed - and another 1,000 people dying when they tried to save those who were still alive and trapped.  We hear of moves in Japan to strip its constitution of its current pacifist position.  We hear of a threat by Daesh to murder a 4 year old boy (Prince George).  The list goes on and on ......

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918 the war to end all wars ended.  Except it DIDN'T end all wars.  Since the Great War ended in 1918, according to the Polynational War Memorial, there have been 221 wars in which just over 67 million souls have been lost (compared with the 10.7 million lost in the Great War).

But despite all the above, I do not despair, and neither should you.

Do you believe in the power of prayer?  If you are a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jew, Daoist, Zoroastrian, Wiccan, or a believer in virtually any other religion you almost certainly do believe in the power of prayer.

Do you believe in the power of the mind?  Even if you do not subscribe to any religion, even if you do not believe in the existence of a Supreme Being (which may be called God, Allah, Atman, or something else), you should certainly believe in the power of the mind, the ability of using the mind to create enormous changes around you.

So whatever you believe, I want to ask you to do one thing which can totally negate all those negatives I have listed, all the equally horrendous things happening around us that I haven't listed, and all the horrible issues that are about to arise and that we simply haven't heard about yet.  I am asking you to pray.  I am asking you to use the power of your mind.  I am asking you to help bring Peace into this world.

When you pray, when you send out positive healing waves of thought, do not allow the despair you may feel any entry into your being.  There is an evil power abroad in the world.  Again, what you call it depends on your religion and/or your philosophy.  But whatever you call it, it is out there.  And it does not want you to pray for peace.  It does not want you to send positive, healing thoughts of peace into the world.  It will use any means possible to stop you doing this, and one of the easiest ways is to make you think that your prayer, your positive healing thoughts, will not make any difference.  But this evil power is a liar.  When it tells you that you cannot make a difference with your prayers or thoughts it is telling lies.  Recognize those lies for what they are.  If you are a Christian, when you feel that despair coming repeat the words Jesus himself uttered - "Get thee behind me, Satan!"  If you are not a Christian, think of a way to say something similar that fits your own beliefs.

Another way you can deflect the thoughts of despair, the thoughts that you cannot make a difference, is to use the technique I introduced in an earlier blog about beginning to meditate.  Don't try to counter the thought, just recognize it is there but carry on praying or meditating regardless.  Eventually the Evil One will stop trying to deflect you that way as he will realize it simply isn't working.  But then he will try another tack.  Instead of despair he will try to get you to think about something other than what you are praying about or meditating on.  Perhaps he will tell you that you are thirsty.  Maybe he will tell you that although what you are doing now is important there are other even more important things you should be doing.  But remember that Satan is the father of lies!  Whatever he is telling you is untrue.  So simply recognize that he has introduced this thought but ignore it.

Unless you have any religious objections to doing so, when you start your prayer or meditation session for Peace, use the "Purity" meditation I introduced a couple of articles ago.  I am not going to repeat the entire meditation here, as you can find it here.  But in summary, look up and see above your head a ball of light that represents everything that is good.  Draw this down into your body and allow it to fill you so you are one with it.  Feel it expanding until it fills the world.  Then begin your prayer or meditation for Peace.

Do this as often as you can.  It should only take a few minutes once you are used to doing it.  But especially do it on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, when maybe those around you are holding their two minutes silence honouring those who died in a war.  You will be honouring those men and women by asking for Peace, so that their suffering and deaths were not in vain.

I believe just one person doing this is releasing an enormous power for good in the world.  But imagine 10, 50 or 100 people doing it.  If 100 do it I believe it will not simply be 100 times as powerful, but many more times than this.  Spread the word.  Send your family and your friends to this blog so that they all know what to do and how to do it.

Believe me when I say this could be the most important thing you will ever have done in your life!  So do it!  Please!

We Shall Remember

We shall remember.  But what will we remember, and why?

At the eleventh hour, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918, the first world war ended.  This war was known as the "Great War" and was supposed to be the "war to end all wars".  Ever since 1919 all Commonwealth countries, as well as many other countries, especially in Europe, have celebrated the end of this terrible war at 11:00 am on the 11th of November.  Wreaths of poppies are laid at war memorials, and many people observe two minutes silence.

It is right to remember those who died in the service of their country.  But I believe in remembering them we should also remember that it should never have been necessary for them to offer up their lives in this way.  Here I am not just talking about British and Commonwealth soldiers, and I am not just talking about those who died in the first world war.  I mean everyone who has ever died in any war.  Soldier and civilians.  There was no need for any of them to have died.  That is what we should remember.

Whether or not you are in a country that celebrates the end of the first world war (an end which almost guaranteed the start of the second world war rather than being a war to end all wars) I ask you to join with me now, as you read this, in two minutes silent contemplation.  A silent meditation for peace and goodwill to all men, women and children.  To me, this is the meaning of remembrance day.

George Santanyana told us that "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".  The first world war was a terrible war that caused terrible suffering to so many people, soldiers and civilians alike.  Because we have not remembered how unneccessary and terrible that war was we have repeated it again and again.  Today soldiers and civilians are dying in so many countries as a result.  Even one such death is one death too many.  Join me in two minutes silence to remember.  To remember how terrible war is, any war, and to remember that there is never any justification to go to war.

  The first world war came and its cost was laid on the people. 

  The second world war — the third — what will be the cost. 

  And will it repay the people for what they pay?... 

  The little girl saw her first troop parade and asked,  

  ‘What are those?’ 

  ‘Soldiers.’ 

  ‘What are soldiers?’ 

  ‘They are for war. They fight and each tries to kill as many of the other side as he can.’ 

  The girl held still and studied.  

  ‘Do you know ... I know something?’ 

  ‘Yes, what is it you know?’ 

  ‘Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.’

        Carl Sandburg, "The People, Yes"

Governments can only fight wars if the people agree to fight them.  Meditate now on peace throughout the world and your meditation can make the people who are still fighting those needless wars reflect on what they are doing.  Make a difference in the world, bring it closer to real peace with your two minute meditation right now.

Silent Night

Happy Christmas One and All!

If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you and your family are enjoying this wonderful day.

But whether or not you celebrate Christmas, I would like you to take just a few minutes out of your busy day to watch this moving video:

Simon and Garfunkel wanted us to experience the incongruity of our celebration of Goodwill and Peace to All against what was really happening in the world.

But it doesn't have to be that way!

I believe passionately in the power of visualization.  So on this day of Goodwill and Peace to All I am going to visualize exactly that: Goodwill and Peace to All.  Taking all the feeling that has built up in the days leading up to Christmas.  The emotions triggered by the tear-jerker movies I have watched.  The feelings that have welled up as I have sung about peace and love.  I am taking all of this and pouring it into a 2 minute visualization for Goodwill and Peace to All.

Please join me in this right now.  No matter whether you are Christian or Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu, Sikh or Jain, Shinto or Wiccan.  No matter whether you believe in God or not.  It simply does not matter.  All that matters is that we all join together, all over the world, and visualize Goodwill and Peace to All.

As we visualize, so shall it be.

Thank you one and all, and may you enjoy the remainder of the festivities!

Goodwill to All

For many of my readers we are now very close to Christmas.  For those of you who are not Christians, don't worry.  I am not about to start talking about the birth of Christ or trying to "convert" you, and I would also remind you that the origin of Christmas is not Christian anyway.  In case you are interested in the actual origin of many of the things that happen in the Christmas holiday, I wrote an article about this last year, and you can find it here.

What I want to focus on today is the feeling of goodwill we should all have at Christmas.  Well, to be honest, the feeling we should have all year round!  But we have to start somewhere, and if we can elevate our goodwill during this season then that is a great start for spreading the same positive emotion through the rest of the year.

Charles Dickens gave us good reason to do this in his immortal story "A Christmas Carol".  My favourite quote from that lovely novel is "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!"

Spend some time in the next few days reading something Christmassy.  You could do far worse than reading "A Christmas Carol" itself.  Watch some of the tear-jerkers that tend to appear on television this time of year.  Virtually all of them have good and powerful messages if you will only open your heart and listen to them.

Begin this way to work on yourself, improving your own character.  Only by each of us changing and improving ourselves can we change and improve the world around us.  In fact, not just the world around us, but the whole world.  When we change ourselves we are changing the whole world.  As the poet John Donne said in the early 17th century "No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."  So what happens within us also starts to happen within the world.  Make what happens something good, an increase in goodwill for all men (and women).

On Christmas Day I will post another short article around this theme.  But in the meantime can I ask you to do this one thing for me, whether or not you are able to log in and read my article then.  Remember how I asked everyone on Remembrance Day to spend two minutes visualizing world peace?  Well this time I want you to visualize goodwill.  It is actually the same thing - peace can only come from the goodwill of all people and all nations, and if there genuinely IS such goodwill there can only be peace.

Do this visualization for just two minutes on Christmas Day.  I know it is a busy day for most of us.  We have family around us, perhaps young children busy playing with their presents.  A big Christmas meal.  Yes, we are very busy.  But all I am asking is two minutes.  Just 120 seconds.  Is that really too much to ask?  You will find the time if you try.  And the more of us who try, the more goodwill we will spread throughout the world this Christmas Day.

Please do this even if you are not a Christian.

If you are a muslim for example, you will not be performing some infidel rite.  You will just be doing what the Qu'ran bids you, spreading peace.  "And make not Allah, by your oaths, a hindrance to your being righteous and observing your duty unto Him and making peace among mankind." (Qu'ran 2:224)

Whatever your religion I am sure it welcomes the spreading of goodwill and peace throughout the world.  So spread it on 25th December, when all of us who have read this will be doing the same in unison.

If you have access to the internet on Christmas day, visit my blog again and you will find a further article expanding on this and repeating my plea for a visualization for peace and goodwill.

Peace be with you!

Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

As I write this article people all over the world are getting ready to mark Remembrance Day in a couple of days’ time.  Remembrance Day was instituted to remember the sacrifices of the many young men who gave their lives for their country during the First World War, which ended on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month in 1918.  Nowadays it is extended to remember all who have sacrificed their lives for their country in war, both men and women.

During the 2 minutes silence at 11 am on the 11^th of November this year I will be imagining something John Lennon and Yoko Ono imagined early in 1971.  A world without war.  Or to put it in a more correct, affirmative way, a world filled with peace.  This is something I have always done on Remembrance Day since I was a child.

I do not imagine a world without religion though.  Religion has its place.  As long as it is not divisive.  It was the divisiveness of man-corrupted religion that made Lennon and Ono want to throw it away.  As Lennon himself said, he wanted a world “without this my-God-is-bigger-than-your-God thing”.  I imagine a world at peace, where we each seek the Truth in our own way, some of us by following a particular religion and others finding that Truth in a different way.  All of us recognizing and respecting the differences between us.

Nor do I imagine a world without possessions.  I believe the Universe wants all of us to enjoy the possessions we have and to provide us with even more.  It is simply not true that there is a limit on those possessions and that if I possess something it means someone else cannot possess what they want or need.  So there is nothing immoral about wanting more and going out and getting it.  But I also believe we are intended to use those possessions for good, using them to help all those around us.  In that sense my thinking is perhaps not so far apart from John Lennon’s as it might at first seem.

Probably most of you reading this believe in the immense power of visualization.  I certainly do.  If you do believe in this power, or even if you are not sure but are prepared to agree it may exist, and if you believe a world at peace is much preferable to a world at war, I would ask you to join me in a 2 minute visualization for peace.  Visualize everyone, regardless of country, race or religion, working together, living together in peace, being happy together.  Let us all do this visualization together for 2 minutes at 11:00 am on the 11^th November, this year, next year, and every year.

Imagine the power of that visualization!  Let’s do it!

Book Review

Personal Development Book Review

Recently I published an article on the importance of listening to what your life is telling you and following the path that inner voice suggests.  So my book review this month focuses on three books that go into this topic a little more deeply.

Click on the title of any book that particularly interests you and you can buy it right away from Amazon.

For my UK readers, or anyone who wants to pay in pounds sterling or have the booked shipped from the UK, click on the "UK Link" right at the end of each review.

Following the Path: The Search for a Life of Passion, Purpose, and Joy

by

Sister Joan Chittister

The author of this book is a Catholic nun.  But don't let that put you off if you are not a Christian.  This book is all about finding happiness by doing what your inner voice is telling you to do, whatever that may be.  Sister Joan does not preach her religion here, and even quotes from a Sufi mystic, although she is clearly devout and certainly not ashamed of her love of God.


"While this could easily be called an informal guide to what it takes to be happy, that would be too simple a description for such a wise book. As the popular author and lecturer Chittister notes, most of us seldom have the economic or social freedom to find that something that fulfills us. 'So how can we know what we’re meant to do with our lives?' That is the core question, and Chittister spends the bulk of the book sharing stories from those folk brave enough to change course, sometimes relatively late in their lives, while offering her own insight on the meanings of happiness and purpose. She has her own definition of happiness, of course ('Happiness,' she writes, 'comes from the inside'), as well as what it means to be successful; but the essence of the book concerns itself with the fundamental concept of call, that is, of discovering where we do—and do not—fit in. Essentially, Chittister’s slim volume deals with how to lead a meaningful life at any age (whether early adulthood, middle age, or later on); 'No one else can answer for us,' she observes, since finding our own way is a unique journey. Sure to be a modern classic of its genre."

-    June Sawyers


"Sister Joan provides a framework for charting a life that is deeply lived and deeply invested. By recognizing with gratitude the opportunities that show themselves to us, we can live lives that are incredibly fulfilling and also make a great contribution to the world. But it means taking risks!"

-    James Andrews


"An excellent book to review your life and encourage you to be assured that you are following the right path, and maybe consider areas in your life to improve or completely change."

-    Pat

UK Link

Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life

by

Thich Nhat Hanh

"This book was written by a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk. But don't let that fool you, this book is for everyone. The author doesn't try to convert you to his religion, the only Buddhist principles in this book go hand in hand with many Christian beliefs. The author shows how easy it is to live a fulfilling life in harmony with yourself and the world around you.

Read this book if you ever feel depressed or if you feel you are getting lost in the modern age. This book will not tell you who you are, but it will help to show you how you can discover what it is you really want and find happiness.

Thich Nan Haht was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by none other than Martin Luther King Jr.

Highly recommended."

-    W Fleming


"Peace is not external, so we do not need to chase it. Peace is already present but we have to get in touch with it. This is attained through mindfulness: living in the present moment, in the here and now. Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen master and spiritual leader teaches mindfulness through conscious breathing and smiling. Connecting the body and mind, to find peace and happiness even in the most unlikely situations. Breathing and smiling! Is that it? You may be as skeptical as I was before practicing this exercise: breathe in, while reciting 'breathing in I calm my body' then breathe out while smiling and reciting 'breathing out I smile' do this three times! This is a very easy yet very effective exercise, do this often enough, in any position at any time (sitting, lying, driving, walking, before you eat, before you wash the dishes, when you hear the phone ring....) and enjoy being calm, relaxed and peaceful.

This book is written clearly and beautifully. Full of inspiring stories and parables, meditations and practices, reflecting the author's wisdom and experience. Terrific and extremely effective, will make you calm and happy just reading it, then breathe, smile and be peaceful!"

-    W. Rashed (Jabriya, KUWAIT)


"I love this book. It's short, easy and delightful to read, and full of practical wisdom. More so than any other Zen Master whose writings I have encountered, Thich Nhat Hanh knows how to teach Westerners in a way that is straightforward, practical for everyday problems, and fun to read (rather than an intellectual puzzle). I cannot recommend this book more highly. A wealth of wisdom presented in a unique and immensely practical way. Thich Nhat Hanh's writing embodies peace and mindfulness at their highest - one could almost learn all he has to teach simply by reading his writings for their style and attitude, without hardly paying attention to the message or content per se.

Please do yourself a favor: buy this book, read it at your leisure, reread it if you feel so compelled, keep it on a shelf or pass it on as a gift. I almost never review books, but when I finished this one I knew I had to recommend it, and I do so with no reservation whatsoever."

-    Marcus Macauley

UK Link

Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

by

Brene Brown

"I deeply trust Brené Brown - her research, her intelligence, her integrity, and her personhood. So when she definitively lands on the one most important value we can cultivate for professional success, relationship health, parental joy, and courageous, passionate living...well, I sit up and take notice . . . even when that one most critical value turns out to be the risky act of being vulnerable. She dared greatly to write this book, and you will benefit greatly to read it and to put its razor-sharp wisdom into action in your own life and work."

-    Elizabeth Lesser, Cofounder, Omega Institute, author of Broken Open


"One of the tragic ironies of modern life is that so many people feel isolated from each other by the very feelings they have in common: including a fear of failure and a sense of not being enough. Brené Brown shines a bright light into these dark recesses of human emotion and reveals how these feelings can gnaw at fulfillment in education, at work and in the home. She shows too how they can be transformed to help us live more wholehearted lives of courage, engagement and purpose. Brené Brown writes as she speaks, with wisdom, wit, candor and a deep sense of humanity. If you're a student, teacher, parent, employer, employee or just alive and wanting to live more fully, you should read this book. I double dare you."

-    Sir Ken Robinson


"I am a recovering perfectionist. I have learned, since a child, to receive validation and my worth based on how others perceived me. I've always made excuses for it throughout my life, but Brene Brown slapped me in the face with this book and makes me want to be a more authentic and honest person. She gives you the understanding of how to develop your own self-worth and how important it is in order to live a beautiful life, and have beautiful relationships. She is inspiring because she struggles with the same thing, and that makes me feel understood. My favorite part of this book is how she defines so many of our emotions. This helps me understand mine and helps me walk my children through understanding their emotions. One of the greatest self-help books I've ever read!!!"

-    Holly (Brunswick, OH)

UK Link