Friday Flicker (April 8, 2016)
Happy Friday! This week’s Flicker is from our Connect for Peace street happenings, with a quote we found to be inspirational by John Muir (environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States): "When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."
Wishing you a great start to your weekend.
What’s a peacelight to do?
What's a Peacelight to do?
by Joumana Rizk
I am deeply moved by the work of TalkIslam, a group of young Muslims from Australia. One of them, a poet, when faced with the horrors committed by his own people, dove into his wave of creativity. In response to the killings of innocent civilians in the name of Islam, he lit up his peacelight very brightly with the amazing video above, Nothing to do with my Prophet. When we watch the video, we feel his pain tearing him up inside. We also feel his profound love of his religion, of his prophet, and of all beings. When we share these emotions with him, we are united with all of those who are suffering, and with those who have been led astray.
People often ask me what I do. When I tell them about my organization, Peacelights, they ask me the following question:
In the face of the atrocities committed by groups such as Daesh and Isis, with the loss of so many innocent lives every day, what do you believe should be done? Should we fight the fundamentalists, attempt to destroy them all, or reach out to them? What’s a peacelight to do?
I’m not a political leader and gratefully I don’t have to make political decisions between diplomacy and war. My work is to light my peacelight, time after time, no matter what is going on. I believe that everything and everyone in this world are interconnected. When we do our peace work, we are contributing in both small and large ways to attaining peace on earth.
I was recently feeling overwhelmed after the string of terrorist attacks last month. I was also drained by personal conflicts at home with my teenage kids. When I realized that my peacelight was dimming, I decided to research other peace organizations to see how they were inspiring people. On the Facebook page for The International Day of Peace, this is what I found:
When you do nothing you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better.
Maya Angelou
She said it so beautifully.
Dear friend, please don’t allow overwhelm and powerlessness to settle in. Get involved. Whatever most upsets you, act on it. At Peacelights, we organize our work around 4 Waves:
The Wave of the Feminine and Masculine
You can read more about the waves here.
Last week, I realized that my Wave of Relationships needed some work. I took strong action with my teenage daughter, which was hard for me emotionally. But I had to get involved or we would both have remained stuck in the limbo of overwhelm. I ferociously remapped my relationship with my daughter by sending her to a boarding school, appropriate to her situation. In doing so, our relationship changed completely. I am no longer trying to act as her savior or to control her actions. I now see her as capable and free, and she sees herself as responsible and having choices. Remapping my relationship with my daughter last week freed my energy, and began to light up my peacelight.
We often feel somewhat numb when we hear about bombings around the world. This numbness is normal. If we actually related to the pain of victims and their families as if it was our own trauma, we would have trouble getting up in the morning and living our lives. We all need some distance at times, but protracted silence can be deadly. In her landmark book Trauma and Recovery, Judith Lewis Herman makes a compelling argument that in order to heal, trauma victims need a community that cares.
Worldpeace.org, an organization that truly cares, offers daily communal prayers. They suggest repeating the mantra, “May Peace Prevail on Earth.” Last month they prayed in community for the people of Belgium, Pakistan, and Iraq. It was such a simple act, and yet it was impactful for those who prayed together and for the victims. Prayer and positive thoughts have proved to be very effective in helping people heal, as the Dalai Lama never tires of telling us.
So, going back to the question posed to me, faced with atrocities, what’s a peacelight to do? As Maya Angelou says, get involved.
Some people pray while others organize demonstrations or start a movement. Some send money. Some people immerse themselves in politics, while others enlist in the army. Some resolve their conflicts at home like I did, and still others create spoken word videos about the peaceful nature of Islam.
Perhaps you could look at the 4 Waves, determine which one is calling to you, and dive deeply into it. What will you do to light your peacelight today? What action is calling out to you as you read this? Please share with us below.
Feel free to post your personal stories as well as opportunities for people to get involved with a group of likeminded people. If you are a new reader, please consider subscribing to our mailing list to receive updates from us.
[ccf_form id="1592"]Friday Flicker (April 1, 2016)
The Flickers are back! Every Friday, we will be posting up a new Flicker on our blog, as well as on social media so you can easily share it with your friends. The Flickers are photographs of our Connect for Peace street happenings, with quotes that we hope will be inspiring to you.
Wishing you a great start to your weekend.
Love,
Joumana
The 4 Waves of Peacelights
Peacelights is an organization dedicated to promoting both inner and outer peace through an integrated approach that joins in-depth emotional education with vibrant social activism. It is a movement of like-minded people dedicated to ending the darkness by turning on their personal light of peace.
A peacelight is a person who takes responsibility for shining his or her individual light of peace into the world. This expression may be big or small. It can take any shape. It can flicker on and off. You don't need to be Ghandi or Martin Luther King to be a peacelight. You simply need to be someone who wants peace and is willing to work for it. The 4 Waves is the way we organize this work.
Peace is not only a right, it is also a responsibility
In our present culture, too many of us say we want peace above all else, but so few seem to be willing to work for it. This needs to change if we want a more peaceful world. Now is the time for each of us to grow up and become a beacon of peace. Peace is not only a right, it is also a responsibility. We take on this responsibility by working on the 4 Waves of Peacelights which are interdependent but affect each other on many levels.
The 4 Waves are as follows:
- The Wave of Inner Work
- The Wave of the Feminine and Masculine
- The Wave of Creativity
- The Wave of Relationships
Someone suffering from a relationship breakup, for example, might find that his wave of creativity is stifled. Someone who is blocked creatively may be unable to find her inner peace due to a job that is not fulfilling. Perhaps the spark is gone. The work of a peacelight is to utilize the Four Waves to heal heartbreak, free up creativity, and restore wholeness to our relationships. Becoming whole within ourselves, and shining our light of peace for the benefit of others, will feed each other.
Here are the 4 Waves that are simultaneously interconnected and autonomous. When we practice them, we can become fully self-expressed as a peacelight.
The Wave of Inner Work
Becoming conscious of our shadow and integrating it, is the foundation of being at peace with ourselves and the world.
The Wave of Inner Work, is at the core of our work as peacelights. Meditation and mindfulness practiced on a daily basis help us to know ourselves and stay centered. But there are parts of ourselves that we cannot see, even in meditation. Groundbreaking twentieth century psychologist, Carl Jung, calls those parts our shadow. Our shadow makes us feel wrong and ashamed. Instead of owning it and accepting that we are all imperfect human beings, we repress it and project it onto someone else.
For example, if we feel ashamed of our greed, it becomes our shadow. When we see it in another, we become upset, angry, and blaming. We might see that other person as evil, and the conflict has begun. When a conflict seems unsolvable, the shadow, the disowned parts of ourselves, is often at the root of the conflict.
Along with the personal shadow, we have cultural shadows as well, the parts of us that our culture denies and makes us feel ashamed of. Projected on someone else, we see their gender, race, country, or religion as bad. If a man fears his emotions, he may accuse the woman in his life as being irrational. If a Christian refuses to embrace their history of war and persecution, they may view all Muslims as evil. Such projections lock both sides into opposing roles and create a kind of trance that can blind even the most evolved and tolerant person. The bottom line is that projections feed conflicts, making it impossible to see another person’s point of view.
In order to heal these kinds of false perceptions, reclaiming a projection can dissolve the conflict. Practicing the Wave of Inner Work will train you to recognize your shadow and dissolve your conflicts. Becoming conscious of your shadow and integrating it is the foundation of finding peace in yourself and the world.
The Wave of the Feminine and Masculine
Our sexual essence is made up of two interconnected and inseparable halves, the Feminine and the Masculine. Each of us, man and woman alike, has both energies inside of us and we can never separate them. Most often, men have more of a masculine essence while most women have more of a feminine essence. For thousands of years, our culture has favored the masculine until we have lost the knowing of the feminine within us. While we intuit and feel our feminine essence, we usually judge it by masculine standards, which has become a norm in our culture. Some think that revaluing the feminine is the key to world peace, and to the survival of our planet.
To define masculine and feminine is difficult because they are so interrelated. There are some qualities we know from our sexuality and our cultural norms. Masculinity can be defined as linear, directive, competitive, goal-driven, achievement-oriented, and hierarchical. Femininity can de defined as receptive, magnetic, fluid, cyclical, flowing and connective. We need our masculine and feminine. Sadly, both essences have been devalued. Femininity has been repressed for millenniums. Since the sixties, we have also made the masculine wrong. Watered down masculinity and repressed feminity have now become the norm.
When we do the practices of this wave, we free the feminine and masculine inside us. We express ourselves in our essence and make room for others to do the same. To know and honor the feminine and masculine in ourselves and the world, is central to the work of a peacelight.
The Wave of Creativity
Creativity is our birthright.
Creativity is our birthright. When we express it freely, we light up. When we repress it, we dim the light of our souls and deprive the world of our gifts. The Wave of Creative Expression is the outer, authentic, innocent expression of our peacelight.
Have you thought about the form of your peacelight? Do you know how your most natural uncensored creative expression looks? Hindu spiritual leader and Guru Amma, a renowned humanitarian from India, uses hugging as her peacelight. She hugs millions of people who come to see her and when people ask her why she does this, she says it is just natural for her. “Like the river flows, Amma hugs,” she tells us. And while she hugs hundreds of thousands of people and offers them personal advice, she also runs multi-million dollar charitable organizations. Starting with her simple act of hugging, she helps and inspires thousands who in turn help others.
When we find our personal creative form of peacelight, our lives begin to flow. We wake up fresh, we get into motion, and we feel uplifted, which in turn touches and moves those around us. At Peacelights, we create street happenings. With the background of great music, we physically join ourselves to each other with colorful bungee cords, bringing people face to face in a dynamic way. We look each other in the eye and say, “I see you.” In this way, we activate our peacelight and that of onlookers and participants alike.
The Wave of Relationships
Since our relationships define who we are, the quality of our relationships can make or break us. No matter how high our self-esteem, if we are in toxic relationships, we will feel discouraged and depressed. On the other hand, empowering relationships inspire us, turn us on, and help us feel like we can do anything we choose. And so, our closest people influence our peacelight.
A relationship map shows us how we interact with those around us. We see how each thing we do and each choice we make influences others in our network. In other words, the maps we follow determine the course of our lives: where we go, who we become, and what we achieve or fail to achieve. Just like geographical maps, relationship maps have fixed destinations that can lead to ease and joy or discomfort and unhappiness. Unlike geographical maps, we don't always know we’re following them.
We inherit these maps from our culture, our families, and our social environments. When we become fixed in very rigid roles in these maps, we become imprisoned, trapped between how our role defines us and who we really are. In this way, we are preventing ourselves from fulfilling our potential. When we practice the wave of remapping, we are choosing to rearrange our network of relationships in a way that is congruent with our real inner selves. We are bringing about breakthrough experiences so we can achieve harmony with our loved ones. We are learning to express our deepest needs, listen to those of others, and allow our lives to reflect the way we have always yearned to live.
In this way, The Wave of Relationships fuels our peacelight by giving us the energy and stimulating our desire to give back to our communities. Let’s use this remapping to break free from our negative patterns. Let's reshape our difficult and challenging relationship maps into flexible, mutually supportive ones, as we become powerful agents of change in our world.
Dive Deeper into the Waves
We will be publishing a monthly article that digs deeper into one of the waves. We hope you find this material useful and inspiring.
-Joumana Rizk
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