Peacelights

Introducing: Tuesday Flickers

 

Video: Concert for a New Earth

I wish you could have been there with us to bathe in the excitement in Brazil last June. During the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, a group of us produced an amazing event, Concert for a New Earth.

Artists, natives, elders, and children from all over the world gathered together to honor our Mother Earth and mobilize a movement to transform humanity's relationship to our planet; a movement that includes all of us.

The artists included YouTube sensation Playing for Change, Legendary Brazilian singer/songwriter Milton Nascimento, the adorable Oeiras Santo Amaro Children’s Choir (winner of the Rio+20 Global Youth Music Contest), and many others.

The atmosphere was euphoric in Rio. While government officials were laboring at an agreement to usher in a new era of sustainability, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets, literally holding our planet up in their hands (watch for that at the end of the video).

I am so humbled and grateful that I got to co-produce and direct Concert for a New Earth. Please watch our video and share it. My deepest hope is that it inspires you and brings you into the fold of the amazing movement that swept Rio last June.

With love,

Joumana Rizk
Founder and Directress, Peacelights

 

P.S. Please donate here. Your generous contributions directly support our mission.

Meditating on Sandy Hook

James O'Dea takes us through a profound meditation on the Sandy Hook killings. Please listen to this important call, share your thoughts in the comments, and pass it on:

[soundcloud]https://soundcloud.com/focus-peace/focus-peace-december-15th-2012[/soundcloud]

Click here to register now for upcoming FOCUS: PEACE calls and listen to other call recordings

You can also join the conversation about this call on facebook

Focus: Peace

Peacelights and We, The World partnered to offer Focus: Peace, a series of daily tele-seminar phone calls from December 7 to December 21, 2012. Every day we gathered virtually for a short 20 minutes to meditate together and be the peace we wish to see in the world. Calls began with a 10 minutes teaching by some of the most amazing writers, teachers and peace makers of our time, followed by a 5 minutes meditation on peace, and prayers for peace in our planet. Featured speakers were:

• Rev Deborah Moldow, World Peace Prayer Society’s UN Representative
• Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute
• Swami Dayamrita Chaitanya, Director of Amma's Center of North America
• Joumana Rizk, founder and directress of Peacelights
• Debbie Ford, best selling author, speaker and coach
• Meggan Watterson, founder of REVEAL: The Next Generation of Feminine Spirituality
• Dena Merriam, founder and convener of The Global Peace Initiative of Women
• Chloe Breyer, Executive Director of the Interfaith Center of New York
• ALisa Starkweather, founder of the Red Tent Temple Movement
• James O’Dea, Director of Amnesty International and peace teacher and activist
• Rick Ulfik, founder and director of We, The World
• Kurt Johnson, Co-Founder of Coalition OneVoice and teacher of Integral Spirituality
• Robert Thurman, Buddhist writer and co-Founder of the Tibet House
• Audrey Kitagawa, spiritual leader
• Katherine Woodwoard Thomas, therapist and bestselling author

Inspired by the words of Amma, the revered humanitarian and spiritual teacher from India, Focus: Peace aimed to bring together like minded people to usher in a new era of peace and co-creation.

Oneness TeleSummit

We at Peace Lights are very proud to be sponsors of this year's annual Global Oneness Day Telesummit on October 24. We believe the impact of Oneness and unity have everything to do with making our planet more healthy, more compassionate and more peaceful. This is why we are supporting this important event. Please register for this extraordinary gathering of luminaries such as such as Ken Wilber, Jack Canfield, Lynne McTaggart, Neale Donald Walsch, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Michael Beckwith, don Miguel Ruiz, Jean Houston, Joan Borysenko, Bruce Lipton, Gregg Braden and many more. These great thinkers and activists, and others will speak about how Oneness plays a critical role in healing our planet and the people on it. Register now!

The Piece in Us All

Post by Tara Steinberg

 

This world is full of violence. Violence is in our homes, schools, streets, neighborhoods, and on our television.  Violence is in our thoughts and our dreams. In any given moment, somewhere in the world, someone is committing a violent crime or dying from one. In some places, individuals are being forced to fight in violent wars – whether or not they really understand or agree with what they are fighting for. Yet everyday, they will pick up their weapon and they will carry it with the intention of doing harm to another human being. How can we stop this violence that swirls and perpetuates itself all around us?

One way we can end violence is by standing within it and recognizing the Peace that exists within everyone.

The Quakers refer to it as addressing “that of God in everyone”. Others may simply call it love. Some may refer to it as ‘worth’, ‘value’, ‘purpose’, or ‘sacredness’. Some may call it, ‘light.’ You can choose whatever word that you find the most comfortable with your beliefs; whatever word you find that best describes the inner core, the inner and equal piece of the universe that exists within every single human being. Recognizing the inner piece, the inner God, worth, sacredness, light, or Peace that exists in every person is the first step towards living and breathing a society that perpetuates Peace and non-violence: non-violence between our individual lives and therefore, non-violence as a means for social change.  As all conflict starts between individuals, it is there, within individual understanding that the answer to a more peaceful world lies.  So achieving peace and non-violence is a two-step process: once we achieve it in our individual lives, then social change will naturally follow.

Collective identities and former allegiances aside, human to human, we are in this world together. Harm to one is harm to all. We can acknowledge this by me recognizing the Peace in you, and you recognizing the Peace in me.

Recognizing the Peace of the universe that exists in everyone can be simple. Try it. Try it with your family. Try it with the person you buy your coffee or newspaper from every morning. Try it with your taxi driver. Try it with your boss. Try it with yourself. See how “seeing the peace of the universe in everyone” affects you.

If every person was able truly to look at every other person and recognize her as the individual she is, no different, worse, or better than herself – then how could one human voluntarily harm another? If every person was able to look at every other person and recognize that each is sacred and both are equally part of something greater – then how could there ever be war?

If a soldier looks across the battlefield he will see another soldier. If he is able to realize that the only thing standing between him and that other soldier is an equal sign, then he just might, in that moment, decide to drop his weapon.