Christianity Oasis Forum

[xxJILLxx]

Hello brothers and sisters in Christ,

God has been leading me on a journey of learning to cultivate peace. I have hopes of cultivating that peace in my community, wether it be my circle of friends and coworkers, family, neighborhood or social network I am not sure of yet, so I am careful to cover all bases to entrust my obedience to Him.

My responsibility is to pass on what I have learned in hopes that others may be sparked to unite for peace, first in theirselves and then abroad. I respect others views and in return my hopes would be from you the same, as I come in peace with no hidden agendas. But purely because He has laid it upon my heart to do so out of love and for peace.

With that being said last night in real solutions chat program there were some comments and questions that arose, that with the knowledge that was shared with me, I hope to be of some help to shed some light on the HOW to become at peace or find a place of solitude or quietness and peace within to better be able to deal with our daily spiritual ailments that hinder us from moving forward in our recovery and our walk with our Lord and also on a hind note to create peace within to better create it in our world.

We all have a responsibility of peace, our own peace within and our responsibility of peace in this world. Through individual in depth reflection and prayer we can explore our own responsibility of peace.

I have listened to a webinar not too long ago by a wonderful woman who was a survivor of war and she had come up with these 5 steps her name is Alexandra Asseily and the information and guidance I found was helpful to me in understanding the many aspects of cultivating peace. She promotes to share this knowledge to anyone and everyone who will listen in hopes to create a more peaceful world. She recognises that the peace of the world starts within ourselves as individuals.

I have found this to be comparable with the counseling here as well as the 12 steps of AA, just with an outlook of creating peace within to be able to better create it abroad.

This has alot to do with the HOW of the inventory process of how we become out of peace with our true selves before addiction, tragedy, trauma, grievance, resentments etc... disrupted our lives and the lives of others and HOW to repair that.

Step One ~Taking Responsibility
The first step is to take responsibility for one's own part in any conflict/ imbalance/ tension/ grievance/ problem with courage, honesty, humility, EVEN if one does not feel personally involved in conflict.

Step Two~ Ask yourself a set of questions, which I will go more in depth in later.

Step Three~ Releasing, surrenduring and forgiving
The third step is to understand the power of forgiveness and compassion. By understanding and allowing for forgiveness of oneself and others, including our ancestors and our collective past, we can let go of guilt, shame and fear. We then no longer need to uphold, conscioulsy or unconsciously, the same grievances from one generation to another. As we forgive others, we forgive ourselves and vice versa.

notes about forgiving
Many of us resist forgiveness because of the feeling that we may be letting a significant other or others off the hook of justice and betraying our obligations to our ancestors of our collective past. Also many of us resist forgiving because we have been so badly hurt within our family or group and fear forgetting our pain and suffering if we were to let go of our grievances.

FORGIVENESS IS NOT ABOUT FORGETTING IT IS ABOUT RELEASING AND AND SURRENDURING THE PAIN EMBEDDD IN MEMORY.

Our resistance to being able to forgive holds us back with the weight of the past and stops us from fully and freely expressing ourselves with our gifts and talents today.

Surrenduring our pain and asking for forgiveness can be done at anytime in the healing process.

Step Four~ To understand our authentic selves.
The fourth step is to understand the changes we can make in order to speak with our own "inner" cohesive authority, thereby helping us to promote harmony and peace in the world.

Step Five~ Sharing and practicing.
To get out and share this healing process with others. Practicing this prcess can transform ourselves, others and our communities.

Going back to step two Here are some quetions to help with this inner dialogue to be able to explore, heal and ultimately bring you at peace within, with God and with mankind.

1) At this time what is peace and harmony to me?
2) At this time in what way am I preventing peace and harmony in and around me?
3) At this time what is the special gift (spiritual or physical) I am not yet fully using to bring healing in me and around me?
4) At this time In what way am I preventing harmony in my body*?
5) At ths time What is the gift that I am not yet using to bring harmony to my body*?
6) At this time in what way am I preventing harmony with (name of person's with whom I have the greatest conflict)?

*questions 4 and 5 can be repeated replacing the word 'body' with other words such as self, family, work, group, nation and world.

Forgiveness: Asking and Allowing
(internal questions)
At this time what stops me from forgiving myself?
At this time how do I forgive myself?
At this time can faith allow me to forgive myself?
At this time what is forgiveness when it occurs from grace and faith?
At this time what is my gift for healing when I have fully forgiven myself or allowed myself to be forgiven?
At this time who is the "victim" in me?
At this time who is the "persecutor/victimiser" in me? ( the racist, the enemy, the terrorist, the other etc)
At this time who is the "savior" in me?
At this time how can I enable these aspects in myself to be forgiven?
At this time how can I be enabled to forgive those aspects in others?
At this time how may I fully accept the "other" to bring unity to myself?
At this time what is the potential for healing when i fully accept the "other"? (or person with greatest grievance)
At this time how is it when all parts of me are fully in harmony?

Ask for the grace of an inner awareness of forgiveness for ourselves, our parents, and our ancestors.
Ask for inner awareness of gratitude for ourselves, our parents and our ancestors.

If you like u can pm me and I can share the link to the five step list.

I hope that this will help those who are having a hard time finding that place within of peace as it has helped me and will continue to help me as I practice these with all my affairs.

Building bridges one 'peace' at a time.

God bless
♥Jill