Peace Ambassador Training #1

1.  Track your own worldview changes and transformation. Have you noticed particular changes recently?

I think the most dramatic change for me recently has been my willingness to accept that working on myself and bettering myself will have a positive effect on the world around me. I’m grateful for the opportunity in this course to connect with others around the world who trust in love.  I recently completed a meditation on my heart, which consisted of deep listening, forgiveness, acceptance and wholeness. I have layers of scar tissue that continually need my loving kindness and attention. Opening into a space to really love myself and appreciate myself helped me to open further into compassion for others.  My worldview has changed most recently by being willing to love those that make choices contrary to my convictions or philosophy of living. I aim to walk a path of peace and open to all possibilities of loving kindness.  

2.  Review “I am a Peace Ambassador”: what are you moving from and where is it you are shifting towards?

I am moving from beliefs of ‘less than’, ‘other’, and general worthiness issues to loving kindness and compassion.  I am moving from hyper self-consciousness to global consciousness. I am moving from individual to community awareness. I am moving toward storytelling as healing and art as expressions of mystic communication. I am moving toward the collective heart of the creation. I am moving from fear to gratitude.  

3.  Write and share some thoughts on a how a culture of peace has a dimension of change from the inside-out, from inner to international.

I really resonate with integral theory – linking the personal & systemic with the collective culture. The US has been at war for over a decade consistently – I could even argue that the US has been at war in some capacity for generations, but for this point I’m talking about the specific war in which the US is currently engaged. And I got to thinking how all kinds of systemic unravelling is occurring in the US from financial to infrastructure to social. My conclusion is that the collective psyche of the US is damaged, damaged from years of oppressing – in my mind the culture of peace from within represents the opportunity for individual responsibility in participating in a global dialogue. Elevate the conversation to underscore the mutual respect for all living beings, without compromise.

I know for me, I try to say hello to people I pass on the street and look people in the eye and smile because people make me really happy. I am really grateful to live in a neighborhood where people walk on the streets often. I feel a sense of comfort knowing there are other people doing things and living their lives. Also, when I’m outside I like to become really aware of everything alive around me, whether it be the plant life or animals out and about. I feel the connection between all living things, and I am grateful to be on such a creative planet. There is creation occurring continuously, simultaneously, ubiquitously, and consistently at any given moment. The culture of peace within me feels very attuned to the rhythms and cycles of nature.

4.  Spend time over the week looking at how you process energy and when it is transformational not just managing difficult energy.

I grew up being an energy zapper, because I was brought up not to engage with my feelings, to numb them. But over the course of the last 10 years with meditation practices, reflection, discernment, and patience, I’m learning to hear where my impulses originate and feel when I’m overwhelmed, without judgment. I’m learning to breathe through my difficulties, staying present through the waves of my emotion and allowing myself the amount of time I need to process.  Being aware of my impulses made me sensitive to how other people control their own impulses. I became aware of tone and inflection, posture and delivery.  Using this awareness, I think my communication skills have increased and I am able to relate to more people because I am deeply listening.  I am a phenomenologist and believe that the content of conscious experience will always be meaningful to the collective conscious. I continue to listen.

Peace Ambassador Training #2

What have you learned from Aqeela’s presentation about how to maintain inner peace in the face of challenges, and even conflict and wounding? 

The message I took away from Aqeela’s presentation is that storytelling, sharing experiences, and deep listening are key to building the compassion needed to not only heal but to grow as a community.  I’m very curious about this because my upbringing involved a lot of fairy stories made up by my mother which transported me to another realm of reality. But she rarely shared stories about our family, or my father or her life before me.  So this taught me that we can create the world we want to see around us, but the world that is around us doesn’t have to exist. My understanding of storytelling was fractured from a young age.  

I lived on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for three years after graduating college as a volunteer teacher in a parochial school. I learned the value of storytelling and deep listening there too. Storytelling on the individual level opens the possibility to reconcile confusions that come from holding a story so close.  Storytelling has the power to filter our cultural experiences, values and traditions into powerful threads of collective identity.  

I studied phenomenology after I left the reservation. Phenomenology is the study of lived experiences. I believe that because we all have lived experiences together simultaneously, our individual experiences are all equally important to the collective truth of our lives together.  We all are the sum of our collective memories.  

I really appreciated this week’s discussion. I learned that once personal healing begins within, the work for a cause can be rooted in loving kindness, equanimity, compassion and peace.
 

What are you learning in your own story?
I’m learning how willing I can be to feel unworthy of love and learning how untrue that is.