Dec
17
2012
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James ODea
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Prayer Vigil for Sandy Hook

Prayer Vigil for Sandy Hook

With James O'Dea and Sister Jenna

Recorded December 16, 2012

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FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Prayer Vigil for Sandy Hook
with James O’Dea and Sister Jenna

 

[0:00:00]

James:                        Hello. This is James O’Dea and I’m the lead faculty at The Shift Network’s Peace Ambassador training program and the author of Cultivating Peace. Thank you so much for joining us today as we meditate and reflect on recent killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. With me here this morning Sister Jenna from the Brahma Kumaris who’s a deep colleague in the field of peace work and peace building.

 

I’m going to open our time together then we will have time for sharing and David here at The Shift Network will help explain to you how you can offer your voice, your prayers, your sharing, your insight at this wisdom council that we’re convening. Then when we conclude, I will ask Sister Jenna to lead us out into the peace, into the great peace that we so seek to embrace at this time.

 

So I would just ask you to bring your heart full attention at this moment to breathe into your heart. Breathe, seek to reflect on these events. We come to the heart of pain without denial. This is a law we must obey without any denial. First, feel the pain before we rush to address the problems that face us or to make judgment, race to make action plans. Come to the heart of pain without denial. Let your heart feel the hurt. Let the grief of murdered children and teachers, victims real. Trust the heartbreak, trust it. Go deeply into that trust. Let it break open indifference, numbness, despair, reactivity, judgmentalism, fury, rage upon rage. Trust the heartbreak. Let it break open all those defenses. The mind wants all kind of solutions in a moment like this but it doesn’t want to feel its own wounding.

 

The heart of this slaughter of the innocent, see the shadow of the wound. See the shadow of our collective wound. See the shadow in hiding, the one they called the nerdy and remote boy who became the deadly perpetrator. See how the wound gathered there. See the shadow of a society that walks around so many wounded people. See the shadow now. See the wounded amidst us. See how they are walked around.

 

If confronting the wound, addressing the wound is to difficult, too dangerous, see the shadow of a society that allows them to buy guns. See the wound of the great fear of this society with millions and millions of guns. See the shadow of profiteers, of paid off politicians and stand in that shadow with a light of compassion.

[0:05:04]

So I ask you now to stand in our collective shadow with these opening of the heart, which must be opened to allow the light of compassion to radiate out. Stand in the shadow not the shadow of others but the shadow of our collective societal wound with opened heart bearing a light of compassion.

]

Repeat to yourself, repeat to yourself now the words of Mahatma Gandhi, I have no enemies, I have no enemies. What Mahatma Gandhi said was I have no enemies, just friends who can be deeply misguided -- changes the whole relationship when you enter into that truth. I am not your enemy if I want to protect the innocence from deranged people with guns, to protect our children, our teachers, these assaults that keep happening in our society. I am not your enemy if I want to heal the wounds of heart, soul, and psyche that cause people to pick up guns and kill the innocent. I come to you unarmed. I come to you with only the power of love. I am conscious being come to work with you on healing the lacerations in our social body. I am a conscious being who will never surrender my natural loving vulnerability to false security and the fortress of false power armed with fear.

 

Repeat in your heart after me. I am a conscious being. I will never surrender my natural loving vulnerability to false security and the fortress of false power armed with fear.

 

Yesterday, a politician said we need to now arm the teachers. No, no, no my friend. So what will you do next, then say the children should be armed? Disarm. Wars come to an end with disarmament. Let the tide of humanness be embraced. Let our fragility be embraced. Let our need for deep nourishing contact be the very basis of our education, whole person education supported by the whole of society. Let us envision that support to our educational system that says we need to nourish the heart, we need to nourish the heart and soul.  That cannot happen, whole person education cannot happen without whole society support and involvement.

 

Let love be safety. Let cherishing be admired. Let emotionally intelligent lawmakers be voted into office. Let the voice of the mother be heard. Let the voice of our mothers be heard. This tragedy, it was the mother who was killed first. Let our culture be renewed in a great collaboration of average decent people rising up to create a revolution from the heart of humanity. May our light rise offering real peace, genuine reconciliation, deep societal healing.

[0:10:22]

This moment, we also give deep, deep thanks and love and support to our teachers and children, families of Sandy Hook, all educators everywhere who heroically marched on to try to create emotionally and socially healing environments.

 

Before we go to open this on, I just wanted to reflect for one moment. This time and for so many of us we’ve been looking at the activities of The Shift Network and the momentous global events that are happening around the theme of the birth of a new consciousness and hundreds of sites are linking up for events that will happen next weekend. The birth, even the time of when we think of the sacred birth, yet always when there is a birth of moment, it seems the force of Herod, the power of the Herod in us rises too. When Moses is born, there are massacres and he is hidden in the brushes. When Jesus is born, children are slaughtered and he is born away from cities in a stable.

 

As we try to give birth to this consciousness that is deeply intelligent in the heart, that is deeply aware of the planet as a being, we wonder where that power of what I will call for the moment the Herod power where it is. Is it driving up in its limousine to some high office building, Herod Incorporated, believing that the dream of materialism is the dream that will save humanity? That the amassing of concentration of materialist power at the expense of the earth itself, the expense of our health, the expense of the wellbeing of so many people on the planet. Let’s look at this moment. Ask if we are really conscious and awake and aware of what we must live through.

 

When I think of that Herod power in this special moment, the birthing of a culture of peace, I see that it is dying. It is dying with great power and great potential devastation as financial systems collapse as its ways can no longer be sustained, as the earth itself is in jeopardy. It looks out from its corporate windows and power places. It says where is the opposition? We need that opposition to keep going but the peace movement has changed. The peace movement is no longer simply the footnote of opposition to this power brokering. It is a force of creativity that says each one of us is now called to creatively respond whether it is to the tragedy in Sandy Hook or to the death of children by sickness and malnutrition around the world, any number of ways in which you’re challenged. So it is this creativity that is called upon that we invite into the birthing moment of this new era. We ask that our own deepest creativity be awakened so that we can build that moral structure based on true values of community, of love, of sustainability, of noble justice, of deep societal healing.

 

When we think of this love, we think of it not just as the internal process that we must awaken in ourselves, the peace within us. But we visualize it emanating from that heart of peace within us into the social structures, into the systemic change, into deep systemic transformation brought on by a consciousness of love. Mayor Bubba says love is in no way susceptible to any form of coercion or forcing but because it is that quality, it cannot be forced. As it is expressed from one heart to another, it will spread unstoppably until humanity transforms the whole story.

[0:15:40]

As we think now, as we hold this moment, know that we will be called to act. Dalai Lama himself said it is not enough to be compassionate. One must act. We act out of the deeply sourced awareness that comes through our hearts. We act out of that deeply sourced awareness that comes through our hearts not out of reactivity in this moment. Let ourselves be guided to see how those actions sourced by love and deep peace will indeed take on a mighty action in transforming systems that are now deeply in collapse that must be transformed if we’re to bring a planetary peaceful civilization together and to manifest at this time.

 

So David, what I would like to do now is to invite this community that is gathered, this prestigious community of concern, of awakening hope. I invite you my dear friend to speak as I have tried to do from the heart and to share with us response to these events in the form of prayers or comments or questions or seeking or action that you’re contemplating. Then as I said, when we finish our time of sharing, we will conclude with a meditation with Sister Jenna.

 

David:                         If you’re on the phone and would like to share with us, just press 1 on your keypad. If you’re listening by the webcast, you can use the instant message window to send us your message. So right now, it looks like we have a comment from [name withheld]. [Name withheld] you’re with us live.

 

Participant:               Good morning or good afternoon wherever you are and thank you for the opportunity Steve and everyone that is on the line. Needless to say, we all have been almost deeply saddened by all that has happened. For me, it’s kind of like a dual close tragedy because I lost a young child to domestic violence and also my adopted son is an autistic child, an Asperger child and I hear all the comments, all the anguish that we go through thinking that our children could possibly probably do this to anyone including themselves.

 

I was not born in this country. I was born in Cuba. We were raised very close to our family and our children are revered and so is our teachers we hold them very close and dear to our heart. Adding to what you were saying about the Dalai Lama, he did say a beautiful saying that anger is the real destroyer of the good human qualities and that an enemy where their weapon cannot destroy these qualities but anger can. Anger is our real, real enemy. My heart goes to all of those that are in the families both of the innocent victims and of this greatly troubled young man. My heart goes out to that family as well and my --

 

James:                        Yeah.

 

Participant:               And I just – I can’t ignore the fact that so many of the young victims were little girls and that his first target was his mother. So I don’t know that there was a pattern. I don’t even want to think about that there was a pattern. But it just brings me to a beautiful place that I visited in Japan. It’s a shrine and in that shrine, there is a basin that we washed our hands before we enter. In the shrine, it is said that she only knows contentment that this deity only knows contentment.

[0:20:39]

Maybe these young little children only know contentment. Having been silenced so early in their life, they are the purest of all angels, the earth angels. If we can conceive that this horrible tragedy will bring about awareness, the collective thoughtfulness and consciousness that we need to have towards all of us regardless – including those that have hurt us or have hurt others.

 

James:                        Thank you for your –

 

Participant:               So that’s my thought. For a whole day, I could not talk. Physically, I could not utter words and I thought in my --

 

James:                        Thank you –

 

Participant:               Thank you for listening.

 

James:                        Hear some more comments now. Thank you, thank you.

 

David:                         [Name withheld] from the 203 area code, you’re on the phone with us.

 

Participant:               Yes. Some of you may recognize 203 as being Connecticut. I’ve lived in Newton for close to 14 years now. No one from our family, our immediate family was lost but we have many connections to people in this town who have lost. And I have many connections to this group, to the people who see the possibility for conscious evolution. It’s something I’ve dedicated myself to for the past three years at least and so it’s quite remarkable to be here in the middle of this, in the epicenter of this.

 

What I can tell you, I was in Sandy Hook this morning, just a short walk from the school. I had an office there, there’s a coffee house that I go to regularly. I was supposed to talk to some reporters but they were not there to meet me. I found a friend and leading discussions in that coffee house for four years every week. What we feel here, I think what I feel and I think it goes for everybody I’ve talked to is we do feel love. We feel the compassionate embrace of humanity around us and it’s coming through all these different channels, some of them very new in the history of humanity.

 

It’s palpable, it’s tangible. You feel it walking around Sandy Hook center. I certainly felt it in the Unitarian Universals Congregation I belong to where we gathered this morning and it turned out we had scheduled an intergenerational service. Usually, our children are in separate building in education but today they were part of the service and that meant a very different and it turned out entirely wonderful energy to watch all the young children in our community again fortunately none of whom were, no family lost anyone from our congregation, although many members are in Newton.

 

So the sense of something very special happening in the wake of this incredibly unspeakably awful thing. I can tell you we feel it here right now and we also feel the forces of Herod showing up too in various ways. It’s not anything like that the dominant energy but we need your ongoing support and it is coming through. So thank you all.

 

James:                        Thank you so much [name withheld]. Thank you so much for letting us see that mirror of the flow of love and compassion in Newton, to touch that and to mirror that out to a larger field. Let the world know that that experience of deep compassion is coming from the heart of this place of suffering because people have been opened up in a very, very, very profound way. May light come from it. Thank you again [name withheld].

 

[0:25:24]

David:                         Next, we have [name withheld].

 

Participant:               Is that me?

 

David:                         It is.

 

Participant:               Yeah. Well I’m thinking that maybe there was a purpose for this happening that we in this country need to feel what one feels when one loses a child like that because all over the world there are children dying from bombs and revolutions and all that stuff. We’re sitting here safe and I think that we needed to know what that felt like. I’m not saying it as a judgment because I don’t believe in judgment but I think if you’re in duality, you have to feel the pain as well as the joy. Our country is perpetrating a lot of that so I kind of think maybe it’s – I don’t know whether you call it karma or what but there’s some reason for us to be feeling this. That’s all. Thank you.

 

James:                        Thank you [name withheld]. As we witness with [name withheld] right there are the scene of this massacre, in fact if we can witness the love and compassion and then move that, follow that love and compassion into the transformation of our dominant societal ways with regard to guns and punishment then indeed it will have served us.

 

David:                         Next, we have [name withheld]. [Name withheld] you’re live with us.

 

Participant:               Thank you so much for this. This is a tremendously important coming together and I feel the healing that is possible here and I think it’s also a very powerful learning moment. As you had mentioned, James, about our emotional intelligence, it’s almost counterintuitive with you guiding us deeper into the pain and the deep searing pain of that emotion. I wondered if you could explain further about the wisdom, the importance of that as we then can move into greater healing. But I think that’s a very powerful learning for all of us because I think for myself there’s resistance to going into deep pain.

 

James:                        Yes. I think we are so clever in some ways at creating these walls that buffer us from the heart of suffering. Let’s say, you know, I must do a charitable act, I must sign a petition, I must do something, all of those things of course are important, but what we want to try to do is to tear down that wall. Because the energy is so strong as we felt from [name withheld] there in Newton that the energy is so powerful when it goes in that it has the transformative power to go to that nondual place where the bitter and the sweet become one. But we can’t get there without experiencing the truth of the bitterness of this moment. If we try to make it sweet or we try to make it simply the cause of our action, you won’t go deep enough to do its transformational work. So we’re opening up, we’re offering our hearts to feel so profoundly that energy transforms us and those around us, around us and become the field of transformational agency.

 

The heart, the heart is the knower of truth. It says don’t lie to me, don’t pretend to me. Let me experience what it is that is the essence of this situation. When you do that, the heart really becomes so empowered when it’s listened to, to move us out of numbness and indifference to a new form of empowered heart-based action. Thank you for your question.

[0:30:16]

David:                         Next, we have [name withheld].

 

Participant:               Hello. This is [name withheld]. Thank you so much for doing this today. I have a couple of reflections that I felt and experienced over the last several days. Initially, my own personal reaction was one of numbness. I work a lot with people in my life work and I was surprised at my numbness. When I really deeply looked into that, it brought to me the sense of [0:31:04] [Indiscernible]. Maybe we all feel as if innocence is taken away when someone’s life is snuffed out in that manner. We have a sense of deep compassion to all those involved even the one who pulled the trigger. The sense of somehow along the way that man’s innocence was somehow damaged or the love that is deeply imbued in each of us as I think and I believe that we come into this world somehow was buried.

 

So for a long time during the last several days, I was sitting with this reflecting with other people and I went to get a cup of tea at a local café and I had a newspaper with the headlines of what had happened over the tragedy. A woman couldn’t find a place to sit. She asked if she could sit with me and I said absolutely. She looked at me with the terror in her eyes and said please put that newspaper out of my sight. That expression, it wasn’t just the expression but it was the tone of the expression that made me feel that underneath that bitterness that James was alluding to earlier that that bitterness that gets buried and not spoken of is deep anger and resentment. I cannot help but believe that the allowance of a dialogue around this deep pain is critical in order to allow people to express that depth of emotion.

 

Now this woman was a lawyer, someone who advocates for children and it hit her very, very deeply. She was challenged with processing it. So I have witnessed many people being challenged in processing this thing. My heart goes out to them in deep compassion for opening up and removing that veil of that pain so that this dialogue can begin again around instead of perpetuating resentment and revenge which I’m hoping that people will make the choice to speak up to this deep wound that I think is symbolic of all of us. This is symbolic of each and every one of our wounds, my wound, your wound, the wounds that each of us experience in our life and can be tempered and softened and elevated through the expression of beauty, compassion, empathy and support to each one every one of us to each other. Thank you.

 

James:                        Thank you so much [name withheld] for that deep wisdom and these are in fact a complex weave of emotions that we gather even anger. when Mahatma Gandhi said don’t make anger wrong, don’t just push it away but in that fire of the emotional field let it through and then let it through too so that like electricity becomes light. It’s this raw energy. It wants to come up all the way to the place of light and to the place of love and compassion that we heard from [name withheld]. Thank you [name withheld] again.

[0:35:25]

David:                         I’m going to read a couple of the comments that came in over the webcast. [Name withheld] from Hawaii says thank you all for this prayer and discussion, wonderful comments. Transmutation into purest love and awareness of forgiveness. She also writes it is felt deeply through the world because we’re all remembering we are all one and we are remembering love is all that is. [Name withheld] writes we need positivity and peace centers in each community throughout the nation, centers that cater to people of all ages especially adolescents transitioning into adulthood who need mentorship from elders and community members. Can we replace mental health often referring to the broken? Peace and positivity. A live comment now from [name withheld].

 

Participant:               Hello. I’m guessing that I’m the [name withheld]. I too James, want to thank you and everyone who’s in this space and who’s feeling and sharing and speaking and finding a way to move through the incredible intense pain of anger of the loss and find a way to transform our piece of the shadow, James, that you are talking about. You know, what remains is sort of a question. It’s always a difficult one. Spending so much time flipping energy, working with people as so many others have mentioned on this call, but that deep look into where – it’s like when the police were going at every crack and cranny of the school, I found myself oh my god, oh god, god is all that is, where are the cracks and crannies where I’m still possibly contributing. It’s been very, very painful.

 

I just finished teaching a three-day workshop on following the footsteps of the divine feminine and the transforming anger into creative love. So the comments of the first women that I heard speaking, sorry I don’t remember her name, the woman from Cuba who couldn’t help but be touched by how many girls and women and teachers and principal and the mother who was killed first… Somehow, that loosely brings an association to something that the Dalai Lama had said a couple of times. That there is the rise of the feminine that the western woman will save the world, something like that. I’m sure, I’m getting quote incorrect.  That’s a few years ago and that’s been working on me and also the Hopi.

 

I live in Arizona. In 2008 said that the mantle of the world, you know, have shifted to the feminine. I’m intrigued and I’m curious and I’m pulled and I don’t pretend to understand all of that and yet somehow I’m being pulled into that river.

 

Thank [name withheld] my goodness, for sharing his actuality, his actually being there. I could feel that through him. And I realize I’m going to different places. When we speak of a new consciousness, the new consciousness that has been awakening and it’s going to be very difficult for most people to turn away from the consciousness that is occurring now. That it somehow struck me that the name if this town is Newton. We need new towns. We need new consciousness. We need new ways to speak to one another. We need new ways to penetrate one another without fear.

[0:40:05]

I suppose I need to – there’s so many thoughts coming in at once. I do deeply appreciate the opportunity to just speak unprepared possibly not even making a lot of sense but my heart is just so broken open and so full. All these feelings, these rivers feels like around the world are flowing through me and there’s a very short little poem by Hafiz that I have loved forever and it’s up, it’s up in my mind. Also, I awoke this morning with again being in the southwest there’s home, home on the range was going in my head and I know to listen to that but the words that stuck out where home, home it’s like our heats, our bodies, our towns, our planet, our humanity. The shift in the words were too seldom is heard an encouraging word and so in a very small, quiet humbling way knowing how an encouraging word can help children and neighbors and people at the grocery store just sort of a rededication to the awesome power that simplicity. And the Hafiz poem and then I will remove myself. Again such gratitude for this space.

 

It Felt Love

 

                                    How

                                    Did the rose

                                    Ever open its heart

                                    And give to this world

                                    All its

                                    Beauty?

 

                                    It felt the encouragement of light

                                    Against its

                                    Being,

                                    Otherwise,

                                    We all remain

                                    Too

                                    Frightened.

 

James:                        Let’s read that. Let’s say that Hafiz poem one more time.

 

Participant:               It’s called It Felt Love written down in a line in my memory. So the first line is how…

 

How

                                    Did the rose

                                    Ever open its heart

                                    And give to this world

                                    All its

                                    Beauty?

 

                                    It felt the encouragement of light

                                    Against its

                                    Being,

                                    Otherwise,

                                    We all remain

                                    Too

                                    Frightened.

 

James:                        Thank you so much [name withheld]. That’s so beautiful, the encouragement of light, the opening of the heart of the rose to the deepest beauty. Thank you, thank you for your beauty and wisdom. I give it back to you, David.

 

David:                         Let’s go with [name withheld]. [Name withheld] you’re with us.

 

Participant:               Thank you for the opportunity to come together for your reflection James. As I’ve been sitting with the horror of what has happened, what came to me very strongly was that the Herod forces are not all out there. That it’s easy to jump to some kind of solution or what was the problem here and try to move into fixing it or changing things. At the same time, I could feel an enormous compassion for those, particularly for the assailant and for his whole woundedness. I also had to take a look at the fact that it’s not all out there. That there are parts that someone just recently said the nooks and crannies. That until I can really look at those nooks and crannies and resolve some of that, I too am contributing perhaps at least on an energetic level. But it was just that sense of that immediate rush to what’s the problem out there kind of turned to what’s the – you know, where are the Herod forces within me.

[0:45:16]

So thank you.

 

James:                        Yes, indeed. Thank you for sharing that wisdom, it is so true, it is so accurate.

 

David:                         [Name withheld], you’re live with us.

 

Participant:               Hi. Thank you so much for having this today, I really appreciate it. And thank you so much to everyone for your wisdom that you have shared. It was very hard for me to hear this news. One of the things I have struggled with as a peace ambassador is asking myself how to reach into mainstream and normalize the idea that these tools are available that help us to reach into the depths of our being and really look at the wounding and bring it into the light.

 

So for the last few months, I have been working on a peace awakening event in Dallas, Texas where I’ve lived for a good number of years. It’s going to happen on MLK, Martin Luther King weekend in January. One of the first thoughts that occurred to me was, oh my gosh, it wasn’t quick enough, it wasn’t enough, how do I get this out there. The event has many wonderful speakers who will come and share their message and I’m gearing it toward mainstream and there will be many activities where people can learn nonviolent communication and conflict resolution and how to use peaceful means to communicate and work through issues within themselves and others.

 

It’s a family friendly event and one of the things I’d like to share if I could is the theme song. It’s very short. It’s a chant by Karen Drucker and it’s called Stand.

 

[Singing] Let there be peace, I am a stand for peace. Let there be love, I am a stand for love. Let there be joy, I am a stand for joy. We are making a new world now. We are making a new world now.

 

                                    And that’s my hope and prayer is that we all walk away with the commitment to making a new world, to raising our voices for the things that we want in that new world. Thank you so much.

 

James:                        Yeah. Thank you so much [name withheld] for all you’re doing to bring this culture of peace into the mainstream. How are we doing, David? I think we will wrap up soon but I just wanted to check in with you.

 

David:                         We do have a few more callers. Let’s go with a caller using the general pin from the area code 860, you’re here live with us.

 

Participant:               Oh, that’s me. My name is [name withheld] and thank you, James, for taking the time in having this healing meditation because I am from Connecticut and we have deeply, deeply, deeply hurt, deeply wounded. I was on a plane from Washington DC because I was participating in a filming of the book of one my teachers, I remember union. The news struck me very deeply and this is very powerful learning and very powerful learning experience for all of us. I did connect very, very strongly where did that – I’m sorry because I’m emotional. You know, like how we could create that union.

[0:50:06]

Lately I was –because I took the course the Peace Ambassador and from the program and based on this program in the last few months, I’ve been creating the program. I call that actually it’s called How to Shift Your Energy on a Cellular Level to Help to Heal the Wounds and to Help to Release the Wounds. I believe that this tragedy, this tragedy is calling us family to step into it and act on it. Thank you.

 

James:                        [0:50:51] [Indiscernible] We’ll take one more call and then we’ll go Sister Jenna.

 

David:                         All right. We have a caller using the general pin calling from the 210 area code. All right, it looks like we lost that person. Let’s try another general pin calling from 530.

 

Participant:               Would that be me?

 

David:                         That is.

 

Participant:               Okay. Hi. This is [name withheld] and I just want to say that I work with women in prison and I work with women who are doing life prison sentences. So I work with the perpetrators and I just want to comment that these perpetrators who have committed some horrendous crimes are deeply, deeply, deeply human and deeply wounded and carry the wounds of our shadows of society and of the wounds of domestic violence and sexual abuse and physical abuse and the intergenerational wound of centuries. Yet they are so hungry and thirsty for the light and for us to bring that light into them.

 

I think of this young man and that he too, you know, if we had as the callers had been saying in place the healing tools that we know that we have, we know how to heal people. We know how to continue to hurt people and I just hold the vision that our prisons will fall like the Berlin wall fell. That the time is coming that we really are bringing this new consciousness to see that we are indeed all one and that we rise and fall together and that as we see each other in the eyes of the other and see ourselves there, that we really truly can heal this world and ourselves with it. I appreciate --

 

James:                        Thank you.

 

Participant:               --this time to speak.

 

James:                        Thank you [name withheld] and thank you for standing in the shadow with the light of compassion. So much in your life’s work that you’ve done that work. Thank you, thank you.

 

Participant:               Thank you, James.

 

James:                        So I’d like to thank the Peace Alliance, many of you who spread. We have a lot of people on this call and we’ll find out from the Peace Alliance and The Shift Network where people can go for the recording so that you can share this heartfelt conversation to friends and family. I think there’s a lot of healing in this call, a lot of wisdom. We can really feel the energy of something that wants to open to the suffering and yet transcend and move into new forms, new levels of sustainability and love and compassion. Thank you. I will now ask our beloved Sister Jenna who as I said works at the United Nations, work so deeply on peace and healing in the planet to give us a concluding meditation. After she is finished, the call will be over.

 

Sister Jenna:             Thank you, James, and om shanti to everyone. I think that the things that were shared were so true and powerful. James, I wish you had shared some more of the methods that you’ve offered in your book Cultivating Peace with all of us because there’s so many solutions in the book to move away from wounds and this cycle of violence that the nation has particularly endured within the last ten years.

[0:55:36]

I think if we look back recently or just within these ten years from 9/11 to anthrax scares to snipers to shootings in schools, to Sandy storms to what happened in Newton, tragedy or love becomes a huge trigger that tells us something must change.

 

So with this meditation, I would like to invite all of us inwards, inside ourselves. Inside the soul is a recording of god’s love and light. So let’s take ourselves there. We relax more and breathe in deeply and focus behind our two eyes. Breathe in and out.

 

We take this moment as an opportunity to rekindle and to remember the original, the eternal love and purity that are the properties of every living soul. Let’s let go of any attachment we have to our names. Let your name go. Let go of your gender, of thinking of yourself as a man or a woman. Free yourself from that. Let go of the roles that you play and your titles if not who I am, how the soul is feeling without a name, gender, role or title.

 

Break away from the attachments to even religion, nationality, language. Let go of the body. With this awareness, ask the self what do I feel. Who would think of me? Who would I remember? It will be god’s light, god’s love, and heal me. [0:59:57] [Indiscernible] …freedom, kindled its truth.

[1:00:15]

We hold this experience eternal memory, reality. We send these vibrations to the families in Newton, the souls that transitioned, the what the nation is going through. We send love, god’s quiet subtle presence, our hearts, the country. Breathe in deeply. Inhale. Allow your breath as if it’s spreading around the whole country into the mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters and grandparents in Connecticut. Letting them know the present [1:01:54] [Indiscernible]. And deeply again, let it out. Om shanti, om shanti, om shanti.

 

As we end the call, I just like to invite everyone to remember to look at everyone with love and meaning as each day goes by. Thank you.

 

James:                        Thank you, Sister Jenna. The call is now completed. Thank you. Love to everyone, much love.

                  End of Audio

 

© 2012 The Shift Network. All rights reserved.

James ODea

James O’Dea is author of The Conscious Activist, Cultivating Peace , Soul Awakening Practice (June 2017) and other acclaimed works.

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