Rev. Jayne Howard Feldman’s
Angelic Newsletter
Fall 2007 – PART II
Dear Angel Friends:
More Angelic Blessings of Peace Eternal to you.
In Part I of my Fall 2007 newsletter, I shared how the Angels of Peace guided me to attend Dr. Arun Gandhi’s lecture on Wednesday, September 12 at Essex Community College and I was inspired to share his message through my newsletter.
The following day Chuck and I went to an annual Steam Show event held at a fairgrounds near to our home. I have attended this event every year since it first started being held at the Arcadia Fire Department’s fairgrounds.
As we walked among the steam engines and flea market tables, my eyes were drawn to a book on CD that was being sold among a dealer’s antique dishes and collectibles. It was Deepak Chopra’s PEACE IS THE WAY. I knew the Angels of Peace were at work again. I made the purchase and this weekend traveling to and from an appearance in Bethesda, Maryland on Saturday; and to and from an appearance in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Chuck and I listened to the entire book on CD’s. Deepak’s voice and messages filled our car and I noticed that on both days there seemed to be less stress experienced from the traffic we encountered
on the highways.
In his book PEACE IS THE WAY: Bringing War and Violence to an End - Deepak Chopra proclaims that it is the right time to give peace a chance and to each help end war through small daily practices. This excerpt lays out a seven-day plan. I was inspired to share this with you to support your path of being a peacemaker.
SEVEN PRACTICES FOR PEACE
The program for peacemakers asks you to follow a specific practice every day, each one centered on the theme of peace.
Sunday: Being for Peace
Monday: Thinking for Peace
Tuesday: Feeling for Peace
Wednesday: Speaking for Peace
Thursday: Acting for Peace
Friday: Creating for Peace
Saturday: Sharing for Peace
Our hope is that you will create peace on every level of your life. Each practice takes only a few minutes. You can be as private or outspoken as you wish. But those around you will know that you are for peace, not just thorough good intentions but by the way you conduct your life on a daily basis.
Sunday: Being for Peace
Today, take five minutes to meditate for peace. Sit quietly with your eyes closed. Put your attention on your heart and inwardly repeat these four words: Peace, Harmony, Laughter, Love. Allow these words to radiate from your heart's stillness out into your body.
As you end your meditation, say to yourself, Today I will relinquish all resentments and grievances. Bring into your mind anyone against whom you have a grievance and let it go. Send that person your forgiveness.
Monday: Thinking for Peace
Thinking has power when it is backed by intention. Today, introduce the intention
of peace in your thoughts. Take a few moments of silence, then repeat this ancient prayer.
Let me be loved, let me be happy, let me be peaceful.
Let my friends by happy, loved, and peaceful.
Let my perceived enemies be happy, loved, and peaceful.
Let all beings be happy, loved, and peaceful.
Let the whole world experience these things.
If at any time during the day you are overshadowed by fear or anger, repeat these
intentions. Use this prayer to get back on center.
Tuesday: Feeling for Peace
This is the day to experience the emotions of peace. The emotions of peace are compassion, understanding, and love.
Compassion is the feeling of shared suffering. When you feel someone else's suffering, there is the birth of understanding.
Understanding is the knowledge that suffering is shared by everyone. When you understand that you aren't alone in your suffering, there is the birth of love.
When there is love there is the opportunity for peace.
As you practice, observe a stranger some time during your day. Silently say to yourself, This person is just like me. Like me, this person has experienced joy and sorrow, despair and hope, fear and love. Like me, this person has people in his or her life who deeply care and love him or her. Like me, this person's life is impermanent and will one day end. This person's peace is as important as my peace. I want peace, harmony, laughter, and love in his or her life and the life of all beings.
Wednesday: Speaking for Peace
Today, the purpose of speaking is to create happiness in the listener. Have this intention: Today every word I utter will be chosen consciously. I will refrain from complaints, condemnation, and criticism.
Your practice is to do at least one of the following:
Tell someone how much you appreciate them.
Express genuine gratitude to those who have helped and loved you.
Offer healing or nurturing words to someone who needs them.
Show respect to someone whose respect you value.
If you find that you are reacting negatively to anyone, in a way that isn't peaceful, refrain from speaking and keep silent. Wait to speak until you feel centered and calm, and then speak with respect.
Thursday: Acting for Peace
Today is the day to help someone in need: a child, a sick person, an older or frail
person. Help can take many forms. Tell yourself, Today I will bring a smile to a stranger's face. If someone acts in a hurtful way to me or someone else, I will respond with a gesture of loving kindness. I will send an anonymous gift to someone, however small. I will offer help without asking for gratitude or recognition.
Friday: Creating for Peace
Today, come up with at least one creative idea to resolve a conflict, either in your
personal life or your family circle or among friends. If you can, try and create an idea that applies to your community, the nation, or the whole world. You may change an old habit that isn't working, look at someone a new way, offer words you never offered before, or think of an activity that brings people together in good feeling and laughter.
Secondly, invite a family member or friend to come up with one creative idea of this kind on his or her own. Creativity feels best when you are the one thinking up
the new idea or approach. Make it known that you accept and enjoy creativity. Be loose and easy. Let the ideas flow and try out anything that has appeal. The purpose here is to bond, because only when you bond with others can there be mutual trust. When you trust, there is no need for hidden hostility and suspicion — the two great enemies of peace.
Saturday: Sharing for Peace
Today, share your practice of peacemaking with two people. Give them this booklet and invite them to begin the daily practice. As more of us participate in this sharing, our practice will expand into a critical mass.
Today, joyfully celebrate your own peace consciousness with at least one other peace-conscious person. Connect either through e-mail or phone.
Share your experience of growing peace.
Share your gratitude that someone else is as serious about peace as you are.
Share your ideas for helping the world move closer to critical mass.
Do whatever you can, in small or large ways, to assist anyone who wants to become a peacemaker.'
As a humorous side note, after hearing the weekly peace activities Deepak outlined, Chuck commented that Wednesdays were going to be a challenge for Chuck, especially the part of about non-critical when he is out on the highways.
On Monday of this week, I opened The Carroll County Times, our local community newspaper and saw an article on the front page: EXUDE PEACE, SHED THE STRESS. Buddhist Monk to present talk at McDaniel College. It was with joy that I read that McDaniel College has a PEACE CLUB and the club was hosting Buddhist Monk Bhante Wimala of the Center for Conscious Evolution in Princeton, NJ to speak Monday evening at McDaniel College on ways to achieve inner peace. As I hold a weekly Monday class in my home, I knew that there had to be another way the Angels of Peace wanted me to connect with Bhante and his message.
I went to Bhante’s website http://www.bhantewimala.com and saw that the very next day he was going to be at Gettysburg College and would be speaking and leading a meditation in the college’s planetarium. So yesterday Chuck and I drove to Gettysburg.
Bhante Wimala is a Buddhist Monk who travels the world crossing religious, racial and cultural boundaries. Bhante has devoted his life to helping others and promoting the message of inner peace and spiritual transformation. Many of you know of my love and heart connection with the city of Prague (especially Infant of Prague), and I felt a connection with Bhante when he spoke of retreats that he leads in the summertime in Prague. He exudes peacefulness. There’s an energy about him that is pure grace.
Bhante spoke about the importance of meditating daily. He suggested that we use a very simple meditation technique. The technique is to simply focus on the breath. Simply concentrate on our breathing. Notice the breath – the breathing in and breathing out. The breath is the pulse of life. It is in the moment. The breath supports our peacefulness. Gentle breathing in and breathing out. It’s that simple.
Many people tell him that they cannot meditate because as soon as they do they notice how crazy their mind is. He encourages us to sit with our craziness. Don’t repress it. Don’t run from it. Continue to focus on the breath. Gentle breathing in; breathing out. When the mind starts getting crazy, say within yourself, “the past doesn’t exist; the future doesn’t exist; all that is – is my breathing in this moment.” Bring your attention back to the breath. Say within yourself, “Now - I just want to have peace.” As we focus on noticing the breath, our mind slows down and our body begins to relax.
The mind is always active. We cannot stop our thoughts. The thoughts won’t stop. We don’t repress the thoughts. We sense them and then direct our focus back to the breath.
By choosing to meditate daily, we are being gentle with ourselves. We are supporting that which is positive within us. We are lightening up our hearts and loosening up our physical body and relaxing.
Bhante said that when the mind wanders, and it will because that is what the mind loves doing, simply bring the focus back to the breath.
Just as Dr. Aran Gandhi did, Bhante spoke about the importance of mindfulness. Buddhism began by encouraging its practitioners to engage in smrti (sati) or mindfulness, that is, developing a full consciousness of all about you and within you -- whether seated in a special posture, or simply going about one’s life. This is the kind of meditation that Buddha himself engaged in under the bodhi tree, and is referred to in the seventh step of the eightfold path.
Soon, Buddhist monks expanded and formalized their understanding of meditation. The bases for all meditation, as it was understood even in the earliest years of Buddhism, are shamatha and vipashyana.
Shamatha is often translated as calm abiding or peacefulness. It is the development of tranquility that is a prerequisite to any further development. Vipashyana is clear seeing or special insight, and involves intuitive cognition.
I truly believe the Angels of Peace are front and center in our lives because of the importance of inner peace to our very existence. The peace we are looking for is within each of us. It is in our breath waiting for us to consciously breathe in oneness with inner peace. It is in our hearts, waiting to be felt and experienced in loving ourselves as beings that originated from God’s heart.
As you know I have been given assignments by the angels to establish angelic celebration days, i.e
August 22nd BE AN ANGEL DAY
January 31 INSPIRE YOUR HEART WITH THE ARTS
First Sat./AUGUST TEDDY BEAR PICNIC DAY
This year - inspired by the Angels of Peace - I am launching the 1st Annual BE A PEACEMAKER DAY, which will be an annual celebration on October 4th (the feast day of St. Francis). BE A PEACEMAKER DAY is a day to inspire ourselves and the world to be mindful about being peaceful. In order for us to let peace prevail on earth, we must first let it prevail within us. Let peace prevail in your breath. Let peace prevail your heart. Let peace prevail in your mind.
All of us have Angels of Peace on our Angel Teams. I am certain the Angels of Peace will be shortly tapping you on your shoulder guiding you to read books on peace, listen to lectures on peace, attend activities focused on peace. The Angels of Peace are in our lives inspiring us to accept that a world of peace exists now. It’s here now. A world of peace is in each of us. Through our mindfulness we are embodying the fullness of the divine truth: A World of Peace exists now.
Note: If you would like a FREE BE A PEACEMAKER bumper sticker, send me a SASE. Additionally, we have produced happy face peace buttons and are offering them for sale -
Promote Peace with PEACE BEGINS WITH A SMILE buttons -
PEACE BEGINS
WITH A SMILE
BRIGHT YELLOW 3' BUTTONS
Featuring a happy face with words: Peace Begins With A Smile
25 Buttons for $10
Free Shipping
Here's an easy way to promote peace
Share the message with a happy face button
with the words: PEACE BEGINS WITH A SMILE
To order: Send check with SASE to Jayne Feldman
/PO Box 95/Upperco, MD 21155
Peace and Love, Jayne
Jayne Howard Feldman
44 years of communing with angels
www.earthangel4peace.com * earthangel4peace@aol.com *
Angel Heights Healing Art Center
Creating Sacred Space for
Scientific and Spiritual Dialogue
/PO Box 95/Upperco, MD 21155 * 1-866-peace2u (1-866-732-2328)
Newsletter Copyrighted September 2007.
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