Peace is Possible~ The Alchemy of Resolution Resides Within each of us
You're Invited to Grace's Peace Oasis Monthly Port Townsend Peace Gatherings
Peace is Plausible and Possible if you’re willing to give up being right or having to take a side.
My intention is to address peace as a state of being born from a resolution of inner conflicts we each harbor consciously or unconsciously inside our hearts, bodies and minds.
These inner conflicts are usually due to a polarized way of seeing life’s challenges, debates or events as black or white, right or wrong, good or bad. Life however is more nuanced than this ‘either or’ way of interpreting feelings, situations and reactions. We tend to mentally justify our actions and reactions based upon being convinced we are right about whatever triggers us to defend our points of view.
Allow, Trust, Surrender to Love~ Peace can Emerge
When my son was a teenager, we would begin to talk about something in the kitchen while I was preparing dinner and inevitably, we found ourselves in an argument. One day, when he was seventeen or eighteen, he responded to my opinionated intensity, “Why do you always have to be right?”
I appreciated my son’s zingers of truth that sometime stung. I allowed this one to land and began to inquire of myself, “Why am I so serious about being correct? What is underneath my desire to be heard and received by my son?
Over the years, I have contemplated why I have clung to being right about many points of view, revealing my inner need to believe in ultimate truth. I based my inner stability, safety and security upon something being absolutely true or not.
If instead I reflect upon nature’s demonstration, I open to the possibility that there are no absolute truths, especially religious or spiritual ones.
Freer of dogma, a more authentic reality rises in me of how the past, present and future are woven into every “now” moment. Absolute truth is not feasible since we each, being fallible humans, have filters of conditioning from which our experience and ways of seeing influence our ability to be absolutely truthful even with ourselves.
Over the past five years we have been inundated with “crisis programming” via the news and social media, challenging our relationships concerning survival. Crisis provides us with an opportunity, an invitation to go deeper inside. Instead of reacting to images or mere suggestions, we can pause, take a breath, self- reflect, open to feel repressed feelings being triggered that have nothing to do with the ‘other person’. In each moment, we have a choice to not take things personally.
What I am inviting us to consider is we may not have the whole story. Repetition of half-truths via social media continues to feed conflict and outrage between us.
The inner turmoil that results when we cling to one side or the other of any situation, does not resolve anything.
Remember, there are more than two sides to every event or story. Choosing to gift ourselves with a break from the weary tug of war in news and social media can be empowering and vitalizing to our body, mind and soul.
It is within our power to choose what we give our attention to. I encourage all of us to go inside and feel our own inner knowing. I advocate for us to begin to develop a trust in our inner wisdom rather than trusting only what we hear, over and over again in the news or conversations that mainly feed fear and confusion about what’s real or true. We can instead trust our actual experience of the “now”. Choosing to empower ourselves with a focus on our daily lives, can transform what we can contribute and how we show up for each other.
The energetic frequency of peace can and does dissolve division and separation. Peace is the frequency of the fabric of love that holds any conflict empty of defensiveness.
Eleven of us attended the September Peace Gathering, three local loving and present Vietnam vets, a Sufi man who traveled from Illinois, a filmmaker working on a project in B.C. and a beautiful comedian and compassionate counselor who contributed her gifts at the Dove House groups and Recovery Cafe right here in Port Townsend.
I invite you to join us in Feeling the Frequency of Peace at our Monthly Peace Gatherings on Saturday, 3 to 4:00 pm in Chetzemoka Park: March 28, April 25, May 23, and June 27.
We meet at the Gazebo, if raining, or on grass near the cottonwood tree. Bring your enthusiasm, heart, presence and voice, blankets, drums, or instruments. We will quiet our minds, open our hearts, and receive how we can alleviate suffering, our own and that of our troubled world. All are welcome, whether you consider yourself a Peace Keeper or not!
Grace Rosen, M.C., M. Ed. Grace is a masters level counselor, educator and caregiver here in PT for ten years. GraceRosen@pm.me