When I was a child, we used to sing a hymn in our Sunday service that I’m sure many of you know:
Make me a channel of your peace
Where there is hatred let me bring your love
Where there is injury, your pardon Lord
And where there is doubt true faith in You
While the prayer was attributed to St. Francis, its real author is anonymous, and it was first published in a spiritual magazine in France, in 1912. Whoever wrote it, it speaks to a desire deep in the human heart. No matter how hurt, how angry, or how victimized we feel, we all want peace. We don’t want to give our mind over to the behaviors and words of others, and yet we all know that sometimes it is very difficult to wrestle the ego away from its tendency to attack and defend. Fight or flight are wired into our very biology.
The fight or flight response was meant to be a survival mechanism, to make us run or hide from attack. It was never meant to be a survival mechanism for the human ego and yet we have adapted it to be just such an instrument. Luckily we are more powerful than our wiring. We can choose reason and response over a reaction. It just takes practice.
Most of us, me included have had the opportunity to be very angry at someone who has disappointed us in some way. Anger is just a force that says strongly, “Something has to change. I am not in alignment with my own soul.” Maybe we’ve made excuses far too long for being in a situation we clearly know is not right for us. Maybe we’ve made another our God – giving them responsibility for our own happiness only to have them hand that power right back to us when they disappoint us. Maybe we’ve been surprised by another’s behavior because we haven’t been listening to our own God-given guidance. Most of us have gone through all of the above in one form or another. Most of us have grappled with anger while desperately craving peace. And most of us have prevailed in our desire to feel good and feel at peace.
Forgiveness, the angels say, is not saying, “What you did was ok.” Forgiveness is saying, “I give your behavior in my past no power over my future.” It seems like we’re “granting pardon” for an action that hurt, but in truth, we are cutting energetic cords to a pain in the past so we are free to focus forward on what we want to create.
I’ve had many attack me during my career as an angel communicator in both large and small ways. I’ve been belittled for my beliefs. I’ve been the target of passive-aggressive name-calling and snotty remarks because I didn’t show up in people’s lives the way they wanted me to be. Like most of you, I’ve been hurt and disappointed by people I’ve cared about. I’ve even been attacked by parasitic vibrations that made me feel like the subject of a sci-fi horror movie till I finally understood that love is the greatest power and nothing or no one has any control over us If we learn to control our own vibration.
In my past, I did get angry in reaction, and yet the angels reminded me that my anger was not caused by the other person – even if they wronged me. It was caused by the fact that I had given away my power and was upset at myself for my own misalignment with the Divine. Their words weren’t easy to hear, but they were empowering.
By owning that my anger was mine – not caused, but rather triggered by others, I found my own weak spots. I found those areas where I was focusing on things I didn’t want to empower. I found those areas where I’d ignored my own knowing. I found those areas in myself where I had given others more consideration than my own soul. I found my own areas of vulnerability and I was able, in time, to bless those who hurt me for showing me where I needed to love myself more. Now the unkind words not only don’t hurt, they inspire compassion. Now even the parasitic energies that occasionally are like “flies on you know what” when I’m tired or worn down, don’t scare me and I just surround them with my light. Now when another doesn’t agree I can listen to their perspective and acknowledge their right to be.
The further I go down this path of learning to live and let live the more I see these dramas – both personal and global – as ripples on the surface of a deeper ocean of love and peace, caused only by our illusions of separation.
So as I see and hear about the wars on this planet, and feel them rippling through my body like a disturbance in “the force” I go within. I sit with God and the angels and intend to be a receiver and transmitter of peace. I quiet my mind, put on beautiful music and focus on all that I love. I gaze online with Braco. In these spaces I occasionally find myself out of body, comforting a mother and child in a shelter – someone I’ll never know this lifetime, but someone in need of love. I sometimes find myself focusing on the light within those who are most hateful and hurtful because they need someone to remember who they really are. I am determined to be an instrument of peace.
It isn’t always easy but we can choose not to empower the vibrations of war and instead to choose the higher vibrations of peace, compassion, and above all love for the light that, no matter how dim it may seem, lives within every human heart.
Here are a few tips to help you choose peace when others choose war:
1. Refuse to hate
Remember the scene in one of the Star Wars movies where Darth Vader has hurt Luke Skywalker and is urging him to “use his anger” to join the dark side? I think of that often. When someone has wronged you, taunts you, or hurts you in any other way, and you are tempted to anger, remind yourself a short burst may be the necessary push to move you in a more positive direction but letting anger fester is the equivalent of “joining the dark side.”
In reality, there are no sides – just one light either expressed or pinched off, but you don’t want to pinch off your light by letting anger fester within you. If you find yourself in this condition, surround yourself with angels and ask that they help you burn it off. Journal your anger, talk to your angels, gather stones that represent your upsets and toss them in a river, vehemently vacuum, weed the garden, go jogging, kickboxing, or use a punching bag, but find a healthy way to burn off the anger, rather than falling into hate.
You don’t want to pinch yourself off from the experience of your own loving soul on account of someone else’s behavior. You want the powerful experience of connection to the light within. Refuse to hate.
2. Turn the other cheek… by turning your focus towards the light.
The angels have said many times that when Jesus said, “Turn the other cheek” he was not suggesting you offer someone else another cheek to be slapped! He was suggesting you turn your attention away from the darkness and toward the light. He was suggesting you focus on the good within another when you can and turn away from a focus on their darkness. He was even giving you permission to turn away from those lost in darkness and turn towards the light.
Do anything to move your focus towards a higher happier vibe and away from the lower vibes on this earth. If you must, walk away, or turn away from bad behavior and focus on anything better.
3. Stay in a vibration so high it doesn’t let the “attacks” in
This is the most empowering thing of all – to do what the angels have been urging us to do for the past few years – to choose the next best feeling thought that we can, the next most loving action. In a higher and happier vibe, we repel the attacks of others and if they attack anyway it bounces right off of us. When we’re happy and in love with life, we feel compassion for others who aren’t. We perceive our guidance. We don’t want to add to the pain of the world. We love ourselves enough not to “dignify the devil” no matter who it comes through metaphorically speaking.
In a higher and happier vibe, we become ambassadors of peace, light, compassion, and the beautiful vibrations that don’t permit war.
Caring for your own feelings, and tending to your own heart is the most unselfish thing you can do because from that vibration, you become a true contribution to this earth. In that vibration you can “love your enemies” as the saying goes because you realize they’re just hurting hearts. In that vibration, we become the peace.
It isn’t always easy to remain peaceful in these wild times, and yet the more you do so, the more you contribute to the vibration of peace and remove power from the vibration of war. We may be a small group compared to the population of the earth but in the words of Abraham-Hicks, a popular channel, “One Soul in true connection with the Source is more powerful than millions who are not.” Let us be the change we wish to see in the world. Let us choose peace in our own hearts so there may be greater peace in the world.
**By Ann Albers
**Source