{"id":113,"date":"2012-05-08T02:10:12","date_gmt":"2012-05-08T02:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bittmanbliss.com\/wordpress\/?p=113"},"modified":"2012-05-08T02:10:12","modified_gmt":"2012-05-08T02:10:12","slug":"blessed-are-the-peacemakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bittmanbliss.com\/wordpress\/blessed-are-the-peacemakers\/","title":{"rendered":"Blessed are the Peacemakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not sure why, but still I sometimes tend to operate in life as if one of the \u201cbeatitudes\u201d said, \u201cBlessed are the control freaks, for they shall inherit the earth.\u201d It would surely boggle my mind, if I chose to actually do so, to consider how much time, energy, focus, creativity and power I expend in the futile pursuit of controlling other people, events, the world, etc. No wonder I feel overwhelmed at times. No wonder I even, once in a while, imagine that there\u2019s nothing I can do as an individual that would make a dent in the problems I see in the world. In attempting to force the world to conform to my ideas of it, there\u2019s nothing left in me to actually consider and take effective action!<\/span><\/p>\n

When I think about it, my heroes these days tend to be people who seem(ed) to direct their entire beings toward the only thing they could truly control: their own state of consciousness. These heroes exerted their power in order to transform themselves so that only love, compassion, forgiveness, joy and peace remained. I include folks such as Gandhi, Teresa of Avila, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, <\/span>Aung San Suu Kyi,<\/span><\/span>the Buddha, Jesus. A quick check of this list reveals the incredible impact these people have made on the world. Elie Wiesel, a concentration camp survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner, said, \u201cUltimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself.\u201d<\/a> Somehow, after losing his whole family in the Holocaust and living through inconceivably horrible conditions he devoted the rest of his life to forgiveness and peace principles. And because of that, he single-handedly requested and received the first formal apology issued by the German government for their role in the Holocaust. <\/span><\/p>\n

None of these heroes of mine had easy lives, but they became peacemakers in the truest and biggest senses of the word. They always seemed to have reserves of strength and resources at their disposal that they used to create and perform effective action. By their very presence, they reminded people of what is good and beautiful and true. So I figure if they could do it, so can I. Indeed, to \u201cbe peace\u201d has been my foremost intention for at least 2 decades, and it\u2019s nearly always what this blog is about. It\u2019s become pretty clear to me by now that trying to control everything other than what I can does not bring me to peace or leave me free to do what is mine to do in the most impactful ways. On the contrary, it\u2019s more like imitating a hamster on a wheel; it takes lots of energy (and perhaps fun at times) but gets me nowhere. Fast.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve explored and unfolded this intention to take mastery over my own consciousness, it has also become clear I\u2019m the one making the choice to evict myself from my true and innate state of peace and love, consciously or not. And lately I\u2019ve noticed perhaps the foremost way I accomplish this: through the things I say to myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lately I\u2019ve been paying lots of attention to my self-talk and, though I\u2019m happy to say it has improved immensely, it could still use some work. Just the other day Hillary and I were having a mildly heated disagreement, and during a lull in the proceedings I became aware of what I was saying to myself. A lot of it was about things wrong with Hillary that she needed to change so I could be happy and peaceful. A little of it was about how I, being such a spiritual person, should know better. None of it brought me back to peace and love. So, with this awareness, I was able to stop and remind myself that I love Hillary more than anything else in the world, and that she loved me too. I saw she had temporarily forgotten, just as I had. And I was able to then express love from a more peaceful place, which helped a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n

Actually, I can\u2019t really control my own consciousness either, but I can be a better steward of it. I can plant better seeds and take better care of the soil. I can nurture it and give it loving attention. In doing this I\u2019ve discovered that my self-talk becomes a huge part of the background music of my awareness. In our Unity studies, Hillary and I saw a video of street scenes in New Your City. It was set to rap music and seemed very abrupt, frantic and hard to watch. Then the whole scene began to repeat itself, this time to classical music. It was then we noticed that in every scene, someone was helping or serving someone. None of us saw that the first time around. I\u2019m not judging rap music (well\u2026); I\u2019m pointing out how important the background music is. It changes our perspective on everything. So as I\u2019m exerting my power on my own consciousness, it\u2019s critical I address the background music. When my self-talk is un-peaceful, it\u2019s difficult for me to access peace. As my self-talk becomes truer, more loving and more peaceful, so does my life experience.<\/span><\/p>\n

A long time ago at a chiropractic seminar, a speaker shared, \u201cIf I talked to you the way you talk to yourself, you\u2019d come up here and kick me in the butt.\u201d My response at the time was, \u201cHow did he know?\u201d Today I\u2019m thankful for this: I have practiced some sort of affirmations and affirmative prayer in the subsequent 25 years, and now I finally understand why. Consciously and repeatedly reminding myself that I am good, worthy, loving and lovable, despite thoughts or behaviors to the contrary, has brought my self-talk to a truer, more loving and peaceful level, and it has brought me there along with it. I still forget, for sure, but the trip \u201chome\u201d is a lot more familiar and much easier to find. <\/span><\/p>\n

Yes indeed, I still forget. And I\u2019m allowing that to affect my self-talk less and less. I imagine my heroes forgot sometimes, but they had more important things to do than beat themselves up. So do I. So do all of us. <\/span><\/p>\n

And if that\u2019s all we remember, that\u2019s more than enough for now.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m not sure why, but still I sometimes tend to operate in life as if one of the \u201cbeatitudes\u201d said, \u201cBlessed are the control freaks, for they shall inherit the earth.\u201d It would surely boggle my mind, if I chose … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-look-for-the-good"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bittmanbliss.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bittmanbliss.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bittmanbliss.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bittmanbliss.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bittmanbliss.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bittmanbliss.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"https:\/\/bittmanbliss.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bittmanbliss.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bittmanbliss.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bittmanbliss.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}