As summer winds down and the fall equinox ascends, we are met with a privileged opportunity – to celebrate International Day of Peace on September 21st. If you have never read the Declaration of Human Rights, a United Nations document that serves as the basis for this Global celebration promoting peace, health and prosperity in our world, I encourage you to read it.
Article One makes this bold yet essential declaration: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of [community]. (my edit to the word brotherhood).
In my Peace-Building Conversations course, I ask people to read and reflect on this document in the context of the course. Just as the students who read it, I remember reading it for the first time and thinking, “It’s all here. The formula for peace is right here and it’s in our global consensus for how we are to live together on this planet.” The Commission got it right and Eleanor Roosevelt was a powerful driving force to make this incredible document accepted into the history of our global governance. A definite cause for celebration!
A few years ago, I took a mediation course with the Canadian National Defence in Trenton, ON. After the course, I shared some of my peace-building and Reiki healing work with some of the instructors. An army captain, who was one of the instructors, said to me, “it seems peace is always there. We maybe just need to return to it. Maybe we don’t have to build it.” For me it was a profound comment and truth. At the same time, our lives and relationships with ourselves and others are filled with such tenets and mindsets of conflict that returning to peace becomes a transformative and often challenging path.
What strikes me about the power of peace is that it is the energy, the vibration, the true essence of all healing. Healing cannot occur if peace is not present. For me, the path of Reiki Ryoho is a path of peace, a profound path of inner self healing. It is both simple and profound. What makes the Reiki practice magical is that there are moments where such deep peace is experienced and the inner conflict of a relationship or personal habit simply dissolves into a great harmony.
What makes it deeply challenging at times is that this path to peace is really a path to awakening to our own inner truths – to the many faceted tendencies of the personality, to the pain of our own contradictory feelings and ideas, to the undeniable evidence of our own inner demons, or to the inner conflicts between our primal intuitions and our intellect or reason. Discovering our inner truth offers us the potential of freedom and power to live our dreams and be profound agents of change in this world.
Conflict will return on this path to peace because it has a necessary place in the journey of the soul. Our lives are filled with paths that present many choices. As soon as we come to or even create the crossroad of choices, our soul needs to make a decision. And these decisions are rarely permanent. The path is too dynamic for that and our contradictory feelings, ideas and dreams keep re-emerging. But there is hope…
Join me in this conversation about Peace. It is a lifelong conversation which has no end and no one right way. To start, pick a path that helps to promote peace within. Consider what you can do today to take a step towards inner peace. What are the internal conflicts you need to acknowledge aloud to yourself?
One possible path that may be right for you is to learn Reiki Ryoho as a way to inner peace and healing, Join me at my next Reiki Level One training on September 27th, 28th and Oct. 5th, and begin a new journey.
You are also invited to join me and other Reiki practitioners in celebrating International Peace Day on Saturday, September 21st. Drop in for a fall food recipe contest and free Reiki peace blessings. Family, friends and colleagues are all invited.
I encourage you to find your own path to peace. Be courageous. Learn to love yourself and find the light, the peace within.