Clear Path to Peace

I recently had the great blessing of traveling to the Indonesian island of Bali. It was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to be there, and I came home deeply moved by the beauty and spiritual depth of the Balinese people.

One day while I was in Bali, I had a wonderful stretch into new territory for myself. I was learning how to scuba dive, and I asked my teacher, “How many dives have you done?” He had to think about it and then he said, “Well, within the last 20 years I’ve probably done at least 4,000 dives.”

Here I was in the pool, basically a raw beginner. I admitted to myself that I didn’t know what I was doing, and my gratitude for his experience, trust, and confidence went very deep. I thought, “How wonderful to have someone who’s had the experience of 4,000 dives to guide me.”

My dive master held onto my body, anchoring me while I floated around, explored my equipment, and tentatively began to relax into trusting that I could breathe under water.

Like my aptly named dive master, Siddhartha, I hold onto people and guide them through emotional waters. At the same time, I, too, am learning.

I came to understand that my gratitude for this man and his expertise is also the gratitude that others have for me in my work. I felt soul satisfied at the thought.

I began to think about what I do and how I am a guide for people in the deep tides of our emotional lives. Knowing how much I have committed my life to this work and how much I’ve done it on my own, I realized, “I’m a dive master!”

I’m an inner dive master, demonstrating the connection between our Spirit and how we live in our emotional bodies, and of course, our mental and physical bodies as well.

We dive in all of these bodies, and very often we’re in denial of the depths to which we need to go in order to find the truth about ourselves. It can take a while to realize how much sincerity is required in order to dispel what is not true, to see what we have been holding as a veneer, and impressing it upon the world.

When people ask me, “What do you do?” I use this metaphor and it helps explain the territory and the journey. I help people to dive within. I guide and support; I hold their hands.

I learned to scuba dive as a gift to myself, so that I could have my own experiences with the animals and plants of the sea.

I help my clients to have their own experiences in their interior, personal aquatic environment, given as a gift to themselves. They learn to accept and include all of it - the amazing corals, the tropical fish and the Loch Ness monsters that may be living down there.

Once we’ve learned to dive, we may then return to the light, into the Oneness that we are. Just traveling around under the water is not the full picture.

Offering what we discover on our journey to the One Life Essence…to the One that creates us, and gives life…this is the full picture.

When I told my dive master about my realization, he said, “Yours is a much bigger ocean.” He’s a wise man. That’s why they call him Siddartha.

Thank you, Siddhartha, for showing me the way.

Last night I saw a wonderful documentary on the history of the environmental organization, Greenpeace.

Greenpeace: Making A Stand (by producer/director Leigh Badgley, 2006)

There was some great, inspiring footage of the early years, when brave young people went out in small boats to act as human shields, placing themselves between the harpoons of immense commercial whaling ships and the huge and vulnerable bodies of the hunted whales. Their actions were non-violent and damaged no property. In the style of the Quakers, they “bore witness”, and showed the world with powerful photographs the truth of what was happening in the world’s oceans.

The film also showed more recent actions in Argentina, where environmentalists are struggling to save large tracts of forest, and the culture of the indigenous people who live there, from bulldozers. Each day, many football fields worth of forest are being cut to make way for soybean crops, which last a few years and then leave a desert of denuded soil.

As I watched with deep admiration for Greenpeace, I thought - and what of the whalers, and the bulldozer drivers? What compels them to go to work each morning? The simple answer is, “It’s a job - they need to feed their families.” But most of us need jobs, and we find something else to do.

Rather than being satisfied with a simple answer, I ask another question: What if these people learned of Peace….enjoying immediate contact with their own divine essence….and could no longer go to work each day as killers of biosystems, as rapists of Mother Earth? What if they woke up to their innocence in God, no matter what it looks like, no matter what they’ve done? What if we all chose a day, a moment, or a lifetime to focus on Peace and to affirm our innocence, and no blame was possible? What a wonderful world awaits us in this vision….

After watching the film, I am recommitting to my love and dedication to peace activism. We can all offer something of the goodness of our hearts. What is your offering? I want to share it with you, because we cannot wake up alone - only together.

Today, let’s remember the brave ones who’ve shown us the way. Let’s hug someone in the spirit of Peace….in the spirit of Greenpeace.

I am inspired by Australia’s foray into the mostly uncharted waters of national apology. This week, Kevin Rudd, prime minister of Australia, apologized to the indigenous Aborigine tribe for the horrors done to them through racism in the name of “progress”. In particular, he mentioned the Stolen Generation, referring to the estimated 10-30% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who were taken from their parents to be raised and educated in white households, from 1910 until 1970. (partial text of Rudd’s speech is below).

As an American, I’m reminded once again of the massive denial that lives in our national psyche in the areas where apology has not yet been made. The Native American tribes of this land suffered full scale genocide at the hands of pioneering settlers and the US government. Healing between the tribes and the white majority here has not yet occurred. Sorry - on a national scale - has not yet been said.

The other wound that comes immediately to mind is the pain of the African people who were brought to this land against their will to be sold into slavery. No one has heard the word “sorry” about that tragedy from a President of the United States, that I know of. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this. I’d love to be wrong about it.

I think Australia is showing us the way….and like some people in Australia, some Americans are hesitant to open the door to “sorry” because it will also open the door to compensation. Yet an apology means nothing if there isn’t action to back it up. No one cares about words if they are just words, and nothing else. The Golden Rule reminds us - let us treat others in a way that we would like to be treated. Compensation in many forms, including educational, medical and employment support, is justice in action. It brings meaning to the words of apology and makes them real. Let’s not be afraid of this; rather, let’s say Yes to healing on every level of our national and global society.

We must make our inner healing real if we are going to be in any kind of shape to heal the Earth…together.

Partial text of Rudd’s Sorry Speech

Wednesday February 13, 2008

“Today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

We reflect on their past mistreatment.

We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations - this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.

A future where this Parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.

A future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity.

A future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed.

A future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.”

There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.”

Later, Rudd states, “We are…wrestling with our own soul…it is just the truth: the cold, confronting, uncomfortable truth - facing it, dealing with it, moving on from it…

I know that, in offering this apology on behalf of the government and the parliament, there is nothing I can say today that can take away the pain you have suffered personally.

Whatever words I speak today, I cannot undo that.

Words alone are not that powerful; grief is a very personal thing.

I ask those non-indigenous Australians listening today who may not fully understand why what we are doing is so important to imagine for a moment that this had happened to you…

…Our challenge for the future is…to embrace a new partnership between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians - to embrace, as part of that partnership, expanded Link-up and other critical services to help the stolen generations to trace their families if at all possible and to provide dignity to their lives.

But the core of this partnership for the future is to close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians on life expectancy, educational achievement and employment opportunities.

This new partnership on closing the gap will set concrete targets for the future: within a decade to halve the widening gap in literacy, numeracy and employment outcomes and opportunities for indigenous Australians, within a decade to halve the appalling gap in infant mortality rates between indigenous and non-indigenous children and, within a generation, to close the equally appalling 17-year life gap between indigenous and non-indigenous in overall life expectancy…

…Let us take it with both hands and allow this day, this day of national reconciliation, to become one of those rare moments in which we might just be able to transform the way in which the nation thinks about itself, whereby the injustice administered to the stolen generations in the name of these, our parliaments, causes all of us to reappraise, at the deepest level of our beliefs, the real possibility of reconciliation writ large: reconciliation across all indigenous Australia; reconciliation across the entire history of the often bloody encounter between those who emerged from the Dreamtime a thousand generations ago and those who, like me, came across the seas only yesterday; reconciliation which opens up whole new possibilities for the future.”

Full text:http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/kevin-rudds-sorry-speech/2008/02/13/1202760379056.html

There are so many religions and philosophies - a whole world to choose from.

The Tibetan Buddhist leader, the Dalai Lama, famously said, “My religion is kindness.” For me, my religion is forgiveness.

Forgiveness is saturated with kindness. It also welcomes deep honesty and a compassionate look at the difficulties we create together in this life. Focusing past pain and trauma, we forgive anyway. Why? To directly experience peace and freedom.

Forgiveness is the ultimate energetic transmission of soul friendship - both with ourselves and with our brothers and sisters throughout the world.

As I’ve explored in earlier posts, what I mean by “forgiveness” is not traditional forgiveness, which assumes there is a victim forgiving a perpetrator because a sin was committed. Instead, it is the forgiveness that is expertly and exhaustively delineated in A Course In Miracles, and also offered in Colin Tipping’s work of Radical Forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the voluntary realization that on the level of truth, no sin was ever committed Inside this constant Reality, we are ALL equal, eternal and wise beings made of light, and nothing wrong ever happened.

(This is not to say that there aren’t earthly consequences for committing violence - there are, and there need to be. The pain of violence can be healed for everyone involved, including the offering of community support, education and compassion. Having worked in prisons, I understand that we can’t skip these steps. All levels need to be included here.)

With forgiveness, we release the emotional constriction of guilt and shame that goes along with any attack…both our own and others’.

This is why forgiveness may be seen as a spiritual path. Every time I forgive, I realize the edges are friendly, and all my misery is self-created (no matter what it looks like). I open up to conscious awareness of my eternal nature as divine love.

With each act of forgiveness, I rise in love - shedding fear and the mistaken perception of being separate from my world and my human family.

I’ve noticed that when I forgive, I’m much more intimate with this moment. It’s like I’m molting a layer of skin, and everything feels fresh and new. I’m literally taking off the veils….doing a lovely strip tease and getting naked before God, and before myself, and before the whole of creation.

This is a very juicy spiritual path. It’s the only path I want …full of revelation, release, healing and inspiration. How about you? Are you kind and juicy…kinda juicy?

There are so many reasons to forgive….and by forgive, I mean the kind of forgiveness that is radical, spiritual, and unapologetically universal. When we forgive this way, we do it for our own internal freedom.  We do it because we crave Reality with a capital R, and Truth with a capital T. We forgive for the sake of all creation, including ourselves. We do it to heal our memories and to begin anew….to be born anew into this fresh and innocent moment.

My journey into forgiveness really began with my mother. She was an amazing, beautiful and talented woman. She was loving and kind and a good mother. And…she was very, very afraid and sad. So afraid and sad, in fact, that she did not want to be here on planet Earth. And after a while, when I was 23, she took her life. She said, “Enough.” and flew away to be with the angels.

At the time of her death, I was pregnant with my first child. It was such a shock that she killed herself, and even more so because I was 8 months pregnant….and single…and almost penniless. It was a time when I really needed my mother, yet her message in death was that life was not worth living. 

How could I make sense of this? How could I go on with life, when my own mother told me that creation, and living, and even survival were just not worth it? Why couldn’t she stay to help me with my new mothering? And how could I cope with all the feelings that came up in me, including relief that her craziness, fear and sadness were gone?

I gave birth to my incredible daughter and lavished my love upon her. It took me eight years to open the emotional box into which I’d placed my grief, confusion, anger and disillusionment. I was blessed to be at a retreat called the Enlightenment Intensive, which is modeled on zen meditation practice done by monks in zen monasteries. I let myself crack open there, and I felt the tender emotions that I’d been afraid to feel before.

Maybe you’ve had the thought - “If I go into those memories and feelings, I’ll drop into a bottomless pit, and I’ll never, ever be able to crawl out again.  I better not go there.”   

I’ve had that thought, too. I know exactly how it feels to stand at the edge of the pit, peering with dread into the oblivion that seems so dark and scary and mysterious. So it took a bit of courage to allow myself to let go … and trust that somehow, I’d survive. I needed to fall, and I let myself take the plunge. 

I didn’t really think of what I was doing as forgiveness at the time. I just wanted relief from all the pain I was feeling.

Another eight years went by….and then I discovered the work of Colin Tipping and Radical Forgiveness. At my first seminar, it was clear to me that there were more layers to peel away before I could truly be free.

Through Radical Forgiveness, I learned to find the “gift in the situation” and embrace my mother just as she was, just as she is. A divine, eternal being of Light. Just like me.

Her life and her death were just what I needed for my awakening. Her life and death pointed me toward the Divine, and especially into the lap of the Divine Mother.  I discovered that the Holy Spirit, the Shekinah, will never leave me…even if my earthly mother needed to go into her next cycle. I could finally be at peace with all the events that happened, and even better, see how they served me in ways I needed.

Of course, what I just wrote is a really short version of the story. But you don’t need more details, and they aren’t important. What is important, and revolutionary, and evolutionary…is the bridge of forgiveness as it is taught in A Course In Miracles. The bridge is offered by the Holy Spirit to bring us - consciously - to the innocence and health that never left us.  I left….or so I thought….then I walked the bridge and came home.

This coming home is why we forgive. The journey offers us depth, compassion and understanding of the human condition. It leads to the peace that passeth all understanding…available to every person at every moment. This is the mercy of the Divine, and the promise that was, is, and ever shall be kept for us.

I walk with you on the bridge of forgiveness, grateful for your company.

Here is a poem I wrote about releasing grievances.  How can we live in peace if we hold on to pain and hurt from the past? Every day I see ways in which I can release deeper…and love more.  Poetry is one way to express this.  Hope you enjoy it as you bring more forgiveness into your life. 

Fishing

I rescind

my recriminations

and revoke

my grievances

scooping them into a grand net

and hauling them

heavy and teeming

as they are

back aboard ship

like a great catch

of haddock or snapper

thousands of grudges

flapping their tails

and gasping for air

exposed – in plain view –

dying on the deck

of my schooner

gulls hungry overhead

I have sent into this world

many angry thoughts

and I’m fishin’ em all back

to be given

as prasad

as sacrament

an offering

returned to the God of the Sea

    — Ana Holub  

“Do I need a safe space where I can begin to let go of that which is poisonous within me – because of what I have done, because of what was done to me, because of what I failed to do? Do I need to begin a journey of forgiveness for the sake of my own freedom?”
— Father Michael Lapsley, Institute for the Healing of Memories

Father Lapsley is a great inspiration in the area of forgiveness. Active in the civil and social rights movement in South Africa during apartheid, Father Lapsley received a letter bomb that blew off his hands, nearly blinded him and impaired his hearing. He continues his work in South Africa, teaching people to release their personal and collective pain and come into forgiveness for the “sake of our own freedom”.

In South Africa, the work of his organization is the closest I found to my work in the United States. I had the honor of meeting Father Lapsley during a visit to Capetown in 2007.  He has truly deepened his own spiritual process through what he has received in this life, and he readily shares it with others.

I give thanks for the blessing of knowing that Father Lapsley is here on Earth, generously giving what he knows to be true.  There are many inspiring people quietly living their lives for the benefit of all of us. Father Lapsley is one.  Support his work:Institute for the Healing of Memories

The desire for healing is very strong in many people right now. The booming healing “industry” will deliver any kind of modality you could ever want. But what makes healing, and who does it?

My experience is that no one heals anyone else. The only healing possible is surrender to our shared, divine essence. When we offer up our burdens of pain, guilt, shame and terror, we receive their opposite in return. Goddess is purely generous in this way.

As individual human beings, we are taught to think of ourselves as separate and alone. This simply isn’t true, but it looks and feels very real. Since birth, and perhaps through many births, separation from God and each other seemed to make sense. We have separate bodies, and everyone and everything around us teaches us that we are our bodies; therefore, we must actually be separate units, doomed to isolation forever.

With surrender, we turn our backs on this logic. We open up to another possibility. What if there is a vast and mysterious Power of Love that we can rest within? What if we can lay our burdens down and give away the storehouse of pain we’ve accumulated? What if it only takes an instant? And what if, when we experiment with this notion and actually try it…we discover that we are already resting inside this Generous Grace?

There is no way to know about surrender and the miracles that will follow without direct experience. It is not something we can “study up” on ahead of time. Only sincerity brings us to this humble place of honesty, openness and willingness.

I offer you the following method to support you in experimenting with surrender. It is a barebones version of the steps I use in my own inner life. They work. Give it a try….

If you’d like to experience surrender, open yourself in simple prayer. Use whatever religion or non-religion feels real to you. Choose something specific and ask for healing from God, not from another human being or from changing circumstances. Offer your pain and place it in front of the altar of the Divine. Or into the lap of the Divine Mother. Or into the hands of God. This is surrender. Use a relaxing breath, focusing on exhaling slowly and consciously. Allow your feelings to flow and release…not to get rid of anything because you hate it….but to cleanse and open yourself to make room for Love. Feel your feelings….tears are great at this point. Welcome them with an open, tender heart…

When you feel empty and your release is complete, fill the emptiness with Love. This Love is your own Life Force! With powerful inhaling breaths, drink this Love deeply into your body, and give thanks for the invisible, potent miracle of life that is arriving into every cell and place between cells in your body, your heart and your mind.

After these steps, trust with all your soul that what is happening is, in fact, real. More real than the world around you and the circumstances of your situation. Close with a prayer of thanksgiving and praise. And remain open to the levels of healing that will begin to unfold! Relax, and watch expectantly for miracles to appear!

It’s holiday time again, and some of us are ecstatic….and some of us are not. Holidays are usually a time when memories and emotions reappear from childhood, and they aren’t always the easiest ones to negotiate. Even if we are not consciously aware of it, longings and expectations about what “family” is, or what “Christmas” or “New Year” are supposed to be, can affect us heavily in our emotional lives.

Many of us experience a lot of stress around this time of year - triggered by lack of sunlight during the dark winter solstice, or our mounting credit card bills, or from family dynamics that often play out during “festive” gatherings. Fortunately, there is help, and it is easy. All it takes is using something we already have - our breath.

As a peace educator, I have a lot of respect for using our breath as a tool to center ourselves, and to feel more grounded and calm. If you notice that you are feeling anxious in any way, take some time…a few moments…to become aware of your breath. Notice yourself, your body, your thoughts. Probably, you are holding your breath or not breathing very deeply. So stop your busyness - and give yourself the gift of a deep breath. Or two. Or five. Fill your belly and your lungs. Allow your entire torso to fill with good oxygen on the inhale and empty fully on the exhale.

One really helpful point about tuning in to your breath is to be especially aware of the difference between your inhale and your exhale. They are two separate parts of one breath, and you can use them for different needs. For relaxation and stress reduction, use the exhale as your point of focus. Try breathing out about twice as long as your inhale. So if you inhale for two counts, exhale for four. Next breath, experiment with inhaling for three counts and exhaling for six. Whatever you do for your inhale, exhale very slowly and evenly. Take as long as you want to get to the end of your breath. As you are exhaling, you will be lowering your heart rate, releasing tension from your muscles, and enlivening your blood. Your head will clear, and you’ll be able to handle your holiday office party much, much better.

Hope this helps. When I teach the good men in San Quentin Prison, they often remark upon how much this simple relaxing breath technique helps them. I figure if it works for them, in an intense place like San Quentin, it can work for you and me.

Try it, and let me know how it goes. Happy Holy Days!

A Course in Miracles states that the first obstacle to peace is “desiring to get rid of it”.  I’ve been watching myself experience deep states of peace, and then fall asleep to mySelf…..ending up having gotten rid of what I wanted.  So, the only thing I know to do is to relax into Divine Love in order to “get it back”.  Like I’ve said before - Peace didn’t go anywhere.  I just need to return to it, over and over, until I strengthen my inner muscles, and I don’t leave anymore.

I want Peace so bad I can taste it.  How about you?

Here is a poem by Mary Oliver, my all time favorite poet.  If you don’t know her work, go immediately to your library or nearest bookstore and feast upon her brilliance.  I offer this poem because it is so simple, and speaks to the necessity of forgiveness when walking our clear path to peace.

The Uses Of Sorrow

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me

a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.

        — Mary Oliver, Thirst