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peace Tag

Letting Nature Guide You

As I write to you, I’m sitting outside in our pocket of the city, listening to birds begin their chirping and watching the sunlight begin to brighten the sky. Though we live in an industrial city, I’m grateful for the pocket of nature we’ve created for ourselves. It’s never far from my mind that this land was once a forest populated by First Peoples who lived in greater harmony with the land. Though I live in this now-industrial city in a capitalistic society, nature is still here. Nature comes from God. Following the breath of nature puts us in touch with the heart of God. Growing up, I did not know how out of touch I was with nature until I learned how to be in...

Healing and Politics

Though this is not a political blog, it’s hard to separate politics from healing when there seems to be so much need for healing in our current political climate. No matter what country you live in, there seem to be so many issues rearing their heads, from nationalism, to economic inequality, to anti-immigrant policies. And yet, each day there is something to celebrate. Each day people are still fighting for the good. And each day is a chance for me to remember that the greatest shift happens within.  What if all politicians and all people came to realize that there is only one of us? That would pretty quickly solve a lot of our problems. If we saw ourselves in everyone else we would never be able to...

Seeing the Good

I admit that sometimes it is hard to see the good in people and things around us. We live in a beautiful world that is also full of pain, hardship, and suffering. Is it trite or even cruel to see the good when we know others are suffering? In my own life, I have found it’s always good to see the good, not in order to deny the bad or difficult, but to allow the good to grow. I would not have healed if everyone around me were only seeing the negative in the world. I needed visionaries who could see past pain and see beauty and love in me, and in the world around me. I held onto those people’s conceptions until I could walk...

Raising Your Vibration

To live in a high vibration means to be connected to your true heart- to love, joy, and peace. When I think of raising my vibration I think of times when I’ve felt very happy and free. It didn’t have much to do with my external surroundings. It mostly had to do with how much I was connecting my heart to the heart of God, and how much I was letting go of behaviors and thought patterns that distanced me from that peace. The truth of you, your soul and essence, already lives at a high vibration. How can you connect to your original God self? Different things work for different people. It always helps me to pray and meditate. It helps me to get an...

Being Still

Can you find times in your day to be still? It can be an enormous undertaking when you are living in the modern world. Being still allows peace to enter. Being still allows you to hear the “still, small voice.” Being still means putting away your smart phone and screens and televisions and distractions. Being still means being brave enough to sit in silence and accept the truth of who you are.  Pre-healing Rebecca ran and ran and ran. I joined things and did things and added many things to my schedule and life. I was afraid to be still. I was afraid to know myself. And yet, when I finally gave myself the space to be still and truly heal, I learned there was nothing...

Healing the Heart

What does it mean to listen to one’s heart? I write about listening to my heart often because it’s a huge part of how I healed. It can be very hard to listen to your heart in this world. Since we were children, many people taught us not to listen to our hearts. Adults around us - teachers, parents, babysitters -  nudged or pushed us to conform to this world and stop following our natural inclinations. How can we learn to listen to our hearts again when we’ve been so conditioned to ignore them?  An important first step is getting quiet and still for more than just a few moments. It helps to sit still for a while, if you can. Eventually, you will begin to feel...

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Learning to Love

In the years after my trauma, I did not know how to love myself or other people. I surrounded my heart with protective steel walls. No one could hurt me if I couldn’t feel anything. It felt safe, but it led to me hurting other people, and to me feeling sad and emotionally numb. I was still myself, but I wasn’t connected to the world or people around me. To look at pictures of me from that time, I still seem like myself, and I’m sure if you asked my friends from that time if I seemed cold, numb or depressed, they may not have noticed. But I noticed. It was a learned way of being that I’ve thankfully mostly unlearned. How did I learn to...

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Living in Gratitude & My Steps to Conscious Creation

I try to remember to be grateful each day for the blessings I have, and for the blessings I wish to have someday. My favorite book series, Conversations with God, says that the most powerful prayer is saying thank you in advance. I don’t always remember to do that, but as much as I'm able to, I try to practice this high form of gratitude. It’s similar to visualization and to making a vision board – techniques I and some of my friends have had some success with. It is a pretty neat (and powerful) phenomenon when you put it to work in your life.  Form arises from thought. As long as we live in the manifest world of the physical, we create the things we think...

Finding Joy in the Mundane

Most of our lives are taken up by very mundane, even boring, tasks. Some of my more mundane daily tasks include making beds, cleaning up toys, making breakfast, making lunch, commuting to work, doing paperwork, bathtime, and bedtime, to name a few. Sometimes these tasks seem far from my experience of connecting to God, but I know that they are a big way that I can stay present and be of service to the world. Connecting to the divine doesn’t mean we stop participating in our daily lives, we just approach them differently. As the Zen quote goes, "before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” Once we have an experience or knowledge of our oneness to the divine, our outer lives don’t always...

Grace

Grace is a concept I find very comforting. Grace, to me, means love and mercy from God, even when one hasn’t done anything to earn it. It’s just there, and it’s for you, no matter what.Grace is God’s love for you, calling to you and accepting you as you are – warts, imperfections, and all. Grace erases the pain of the past and brings you back into the fold of God’s love, where you have truly always been. Grace is allowing God’s love into your heart and letting it heal you. God doesn’t require you to do anything except be yourself.  Richard Rohr writes about grace in one of his meditations: “Basically, grace is God’s first name, and probably last too. Grace is what God does to keep...