Leçon 1
Tools for Finding Inner Peace
Buddha said, “Peace begins within”. It does. Peace begins within. It doesn’t start outside ourselves, it starts inside.
Peace begins within, and there’ll be times when we can be centered in our soul and the light is pouring through. It can come from meditation, and you’re feeling that energy of the world meditating with you, or when you’re feeling in tune with your soul. Carrying through with that amazing soul’s love is a wonderful gift. The world can be rather challenging sometimes when it’s working in a different place than you are. But this has been where taking the middle path helps in being able to carry through and walk in that place of peace.
Leçon 2
Compassion
Mother Teresa said, ”If we have no peace. It’s because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
I think there is a definite correlation between empathy and peace, and I believe as we are learning more and more how to be sensitive and to be aware of the needs of others, we are developing more empathy, and empathy allows us to feel some of what others are feeling. But with compassion, we are not only feeling what others are feeling, but we are allowing ourselves to give back the grace of peace, the grace of giving love, the grace of giving of ourselves to others, to give the truth of our oneness to the other person by seeing within them the beauty of their soul.
Leçon 3
Forgiveness
One of the keys of peace that is so very important is the key of forgiveness. I think that if we all could really find it in your heart to forgive each other, we would find such great peace. Mother Teresa said, “Whatever our religion, we know that if we really want to love, we must learn to forgive before anything else.” This is such an important thing to remember.
To find peace. I think it’s also important that we do this before we face our death. It’s so important to be free of any guilt or any pain or any suffering you find lingering hidden within. Forgiveness will set you free. One of the great teachers of forgiveness was Dr. Gerald Jompalsky, he recently passed on, and he wrote many insightful books on forgiveness. He really understood that it’s a daily practice. Each day you need to dig deeper into what you need to forgive. Sometimes that hurt that we’ve had goes so deep that we can’t find it at first. Until we do find what we need to forgive and what caused that hurt, we can’t let it go and we have a hard time finding peace of mind.
Leçon 4
Unity
If you could be one of those astronauts that look down on the world and see this blue planet as a peaceful planet where we are all joined as one, then we can change our perspective. Peace is the cornerstone in everyone’s development and every nation’s development. It comes with that vital key of unity. It’s so important that we have a set of united values for the world, not separate values for each country, but united in values that we can all live with support and share. When we have that wonderful understanding of unity, we can agree, it’s about how we can live together here on Earth.
Leçon 5
Love
At the root of peace is love. There’s so many keys to peace, but at the heart of it all is love. Love encompasses all the other elements of peace. Of course, I’m talking about unconditional love.
Let’s just let that sink in. It’s so very simple and true. When you think about the differences that exist in the world, and you think about the fact that through time, we’ve learned more understanding, we’ve learned hopefully our lives more compassion, we’ve been able to see through history the fact that war is a terrible, terrible thing, and we also know that peace comes from within. When any great master brings the element of peace forth, such as the Prince of Peace, as Christ did, or Buddha, as the embodiment of compassion, I am convinced that would change the energy field of another person’s consciousness. If that energy field can change the frequency of the energy, it also can change the world. When we think of how many thousands of years, the teachings of Buddha and the teachings of Christ have been used to help solve some problems of the world, we must look out how we may have changed. And both teachers tell you about the values of peace and the value of love, and we know that peace and love begins within.
Leçon 6
Aloha
There is a great peace embrace in the word aloha. The word Aloha embodies peace. The literal meaning of aloha is the presence of breath, the breath of life. ALO means presence. Ha, its breath, so it is the presence of breath, also the presence of divine breath. That presence is right there, front and center. It is a way of living and treating each other in that presence with love, with respect, with understanding. It has a deep meaning that starts by teaching ourselves to love our own beings first and spread that love to others.
If we can do this with that presence of the true breath that every single person has, we can understand we are all part of that presence and all part of that same breath.
Leçon 7
Goodwill
“No person, no place, and nothing has any power over us, for ‘we’ are the only thinkers in our mind. When we create peace and harmony and balance in our minds, we will find it in our lives.” —Louise L. Hay
This spirit of goodwill can change the world. Over the holidays, we often see phrases on cards wishing for peace and goodwill to all. Goodwill is a compelling motivating force for all of us. It actually opens up a channel of pure positive energy. If we’re open to being receptive to goodwill, then we can also share and transmit goodwill. Be a part of that flow that can help change the world. It’s a straightforward thing, but it goes extremely deep.
That spirit of goodwill holds energy. That spirit of goodwill is alive in our hearts, our minds, and souls. That spirit of goodwill is on the earth, and the breeze and the water, every grain of sand holds the energy. It’s the fire of the eternal song that celebrates the sound of life. It’s resonating right now in your heart. It sings to your soul. Seeing the world surrounded by the song of goodwill, surrounded by the spirit of good, will feel the love that’s radiating at work in the world.
Leçon 8
Observe Your Life
You can learn to focus your mind to see Objectively. I believe from the point of the objective observer we might see with more compassion and understanding some of what the other person has gone through. We might better understand what they’re trying to explain. Many times it’s very hard for people to talk about the pain and anger they’ve gone through, because it’s so buried and it’s so deep within them. When it is brought up it can bring up even more pain and anger. However, if we can observe ourselves and others from a higher state of mind, we have a great tool towards finding greater peace. As Buddha said, it starts from within.
So let’s get to the root of what might be bringing you some kind of disturbance. It may go way, way back, and it may be buried deep inside you. I have found when you do long meditations, like I’m talking hours or maybe days, that you’ll find that all kinds of things come up. It’s important to realize they have to come up to be released. But you need to be at peace with whatever comes up, so you can release it.
Leçon 9
Find Peace In Meditation
Meditation is one of the most important things that you can do each day. Even if you just spend five or ten minutes in the morning, it can be the most crucial time of your day. It connects you with your inner self and God. There’s plenty of evidence supporting the numerous benefits of meditation. Meditation offers great spiritual benefits. Plus, general health and mental/emotional benefits, lower blood pressure, reduced stress, better sleep, improved emotional balance, increased focus, enhanced mood,reduced aggression, greater adaptability, healthier aging process, a greater sense of empathy and connection with others.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama said:
“As human beings, we all want to avoid suffering. In my limited experience, if we are to achieve this, it is valuable to cultivate and maintain a positive state of mind. In the Buddhist tradition to which I belong, one of the most effective means of doing so is to engage in meditation. Meditation can sometimes mean sitting in a formal posture and stilling the mind, but in familiarizing ourselves with positive thoughts.”
Our prayers and affirmations are the foundation to have a deep connection to God. When we sit quietly in a safe space, we can stop our thinking. When we meditate, we do not harm and just experience our true nature. We can just be with God. By being in meditation, we become more aware of our true essence and our soul’s inner presence, which is where peace abides.
Leçon 10
Pray for Peace
I have learned that there is much peace to be found in accepting that a Higher Power with greater plans for our lives than we can ever fathom.”~ Julie Donner Andersen.
Prayer generates such a powerful energy to create peace. I think prayers are so valuable to release the stress and the conflict and the worries that can come in our lives. There are so many ways to pray, but when you’re seeking to release yourself from that, the conflicted situation and divisions we’ve seen in this world, from the problems that we encounter in this world, we can always turn to prayer instead of worry, what a great relief that you can let go of your worry and turn to God and pray, but there’s so many ways to pray. Matthew 11-24 in the Bible says, “Whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it and it will be yours.”
Leçon 11
Don't Worry, Be Happy
“It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
One of the key elements of finding peace is to realize how worry takes away from a peaceful state of mind. I realized this when many people on Facebook would make statements that incite anger and upset. Listening to the news can do it. Suddenly you worry, and we know that when you worry, a lot of things happen that you don’t want to happen.
There are alternatives to worrying. Part of that is recognizing what’s going on in your mind. When you meditate, you become aware of what causes your mind to spin out of control. You become more aware and take certain steps to keep yourself from worrying.
Leçon 12
Negotiating Peace with Yourself
Never be in a hurry; do everything quietly and in a calm spirit. Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, even if your whole world seems upset.” —Saint Francis de Sales
We know how important it is to negotiate peace with others, but first, let’s negotiate peace with ourselves because we know peace begins within. Our biggest obstacle in negotiating peace with yourself isn’t really another person or a lack of power. It’s really always going back to ourselves. We often sabotage ourselves and you have to look from where that comes from? How deep can you dive to see if there’s something inside yourself that hasn’t negotiated peace within yourself? If you have any hidden shadow self, any destructive patterns, any issues with self worth, any problems with communication, then we can find that we do that first with loving and understanding ourselves to make better relationships with ourselves.
Leçon 13
Understanding and a Peace that Passeth Understanding
Our mind in the world’s state of consciousness, it’s based on our mental plane, our physical plane, in our circumstances of the world, but that isn’t the ultimate peace, world peace, and the ultimate peace have to come to that place where it’s raised to a higher resolution and I use the word resolution with meaning, re-soul-solution, from your soul, finding that way to come to terms again to come to terms with peace, and that comes when you can let it go. And when you can indeed get to that higher place in the light and love of God, then you can find a peace that transcends all understanding. And so here we’re talking about something that isn’t found in words, it’s found in the silence behind the silence, it’s found in the light behind the light, it’s found in the love within the source of all love, the love that created everything. It takes you out of your individual self and it surpasses all comprehension. Now that’s a lot of peace. So, there are many ways to go about discovering peace and trying to find peace, but why not go to the place where you can find the source of peace and where peace came from? Finding that place within.
Leçon 14
Be At Peace
When things change inside you, things change around you.” —Unknown
There is something that is very deep within us that makes us think we need more, “We need more of this, we need that, we need something else,” always needing something more. I couldn’t help but laugh. What came to me is a Mick Jagger song, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” I know, it goes way back, I’m old school. But it’s true, You can’t get no satisfaction a lot of times because you try, and you try, and you try, but if you don’t have it inside. Getting more and more is not going to bring you peace of mind or satisfaction. We think if we could just have this or that, and there’s so many unbelievably creative, tempting ideas, and thoughts and things to purchase. Then when we think if we have whatever it is we will be happy. We may know deep within it won’t work, but that we convince ourselves that if we get it this time it will work, we will be happy, we will be satisfied.
It can even be good for a long time, but it’s also something else to deal with. I got a new iPhone and have to deal with all the things that come with it, and some of the things that are glitches with it as well. And everything you get, everything you have, take some maintenance and issues and work as well. I think there’s nothing wrong with getting what you need. I mean, it’s wonderful to have the ability to manifest and get what you need, but it’s also wonderful to realize that you can just be.
Leçon 15
Peace Meditation
This is a bonus track to use for just meditation.
