Let us remember for the moment that wars are not just country against country but also governments against its very own people. There are wars against drugs, wars against poverty, wars against hunger, wars against terrorism and even wars against wars. Fights break out between brothers, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters and employers and employees. Hatred and anger is expressed on the road, in the grocery store and even shopping at Christmas time.

This begs the question, how can we stop fighting across borders when we are unable to stop fighting in our own living rooms? It is important to understand that peace, world peace or the “peace movement” is not just about ending war and global conflicts even though this has been the peace movement’s main “battle” for years.

The “peace movement” has been going on since I can remember. I was born in late 1963; some of my most vivid memories of childhood are from the late sixties during the Vietnam War. My Aunts and Uncles participated in marches, sit-ins and even peace prayers at that time. And still today this goes on as we trade in one conflict for another. None of these tactics seem to work in the long term. Forty years later we are still at war, anger still rages in the streets, parents discipline their children for fighting and shoppers are killing for the best price.

Although it has been scientifically proven that peace prayers do have some affect on the global community, lowered crime rates and unexplained ceasefires, this is yet only a bandage not a cure. Temporary moments of peace are encouraging but we need a longer term plan not short term fixes.

Friends, we have a choice to make. We can ask or petition God to bestow peace upon the Earth and simply continue to wait until He/She gets around to it. Or we the can take the matter into our own hands. Every one of us can adopt the personal responsibility of consciously and deliberately creating for ourselves, each other and our children a world where peace is the way. The only way! Right here, right now and within our lifetime.

This task is not as daunting as it might sound. We do not have to create the peace we are looking for as it already exists. Where is it you ask? Take a look inside and there you will find it nestled safely within each and every one of our very own hearts. The peace movement is truly not about making things change outside of ourselves; it is about moving ourselves into that place of peace that already exists within each one of us.

If we stop screaming and fighting so much, take a pause from the chaos of life for a moment, sit down and take in a big resounding breath we will remember that place of love and peace we were all born from. Believe it or not it is still within us all. All of us!

Now that we are all here remembering and standing before this palace of blissful calm and peace, let’s move in. Move yourself into the peace palace with all of your belongings. There is plenty of room for All. This is the peace movement or the moving into peace. We are all now surrounded by peace, it is all around us. We have moved in, taken up house. We are all sharing space in the palace of peace.

Next, take in another one of those resounding breaths and breathe it in. Let us all take in a few more deep breaths and fill ourselves with the peace that surrounds us. Breathe here for a while as we replace, or exchange, our inner air with the breath of peace. Fill yourself up! Now, peace is within us all. The palace of peace dwells with us as we dwell within it.

The peace movement is complete because we have moved into peace as peace has moved into us. Welcome my friends to the New World. Remember to be kind and gentle with yourselves and others fore the path we are now on is as a razors edge. We shall lift each other up as we slip and fall fore we will surely slip and fall.

To adopt a few words from our Beloved President Obama, we must all be vigilant in upholding the values we believe in. Living in this state of peace does not make us weaker it makes us stronger. Go in peace not just in words but in deeds and be an example to all of those who would dare to thwart you from this path.

My Friends, these are extraordinary times we live in. Change is all around us. Vibrational energies are waiting for us to simply align ourselves with them. Peace IS at hand. With our very next breath peace will be realized. Our children’s children will live in world where there will only be memories of hatred and war, silly stories talked about on the playground. As one by one we move into the palace of peace we change the world.

Peace Be With You!

I grew up in a military household with an alcoholic father who was very angry and unhappy with his life. He was not physically abusive per say, but he was emotionally abusive. Fear was always the emotion of the day. Being a military family we moved about every three years or so. My Mom was a loving person but as a Catholic she was unable to consider divorce as an option. She was also afraid.

I couldn’t wait to leave home. My older brother left home six weeks before he was to finish high school; he had been using drugs and between his drug use and my dad’s alcohol abuse, life for him and everyone else at home had become unbearable.

I had been playing trombone in the school band and had found a certain type of refuge in playing music. Band had actually become my life and I planned for it to be my life. Towards the end of my junior year of high school my dad received transfer orders. This was an every three year process for us and for the most part I was used to it, but this time was the worst of all. I had been selected to perform first chair in the All Europe Band but we were scheduled to leave Germany two weeks before the concert. I had also been working as my band director’s aide having opportunities to conduct the band during concerts and performing with numerous choirs as well.

When I arrived at my new school here in the States the positions that I had held in the band in Germany were, needless to say, already taken. The frustration and anger that overtook me was unbearable. I blamed my dad for everything that was happening to me. I lost my musical refuge and life simply sucked. Life at home sucked and there was hardly any reason anymore to care about the music. By Thanksgiving of my senior year I attempted suicide, the following spring I ran away from home briefly. My brother talked me into going home again so I wouldn’t leave my mom alone with dad. Two days after graduation I was gone.

As far as I was concerned I had had a horrible childhood. I would tell people how bad I had it. Woundology was the language at hand. I was attracting people into my life that also had horrible stories to tell about their childhood. It was a time of “poor pitiful me”. The first few years of my adult life were filled with the struggle of trying to really be free of my dad. I went off to college and my band director there became my dad all over again. So I quit school and went to work and my bosses became my dad.

Didn’t I leave you at home? I could have sworn that I had left home and left dad there. But everywhere I went, there he was.

After a few years of running away from the voice in my head I actually started to listen to the stories of the wounded childhoods that my friends were telling me. I didn’t know what it was on that day that got me to realize that my childhood wasn’t anywhere near as horrible as most of the stories I had been hearing. When they would say to me after my story, “well you think that was bad…” my inner attitude started to change. Actually no, comparatively speaking it wasn’t that bad. Not at all. There are people I know who grew up in the darkest of darks.

I started to see that although my childhood wasn’t as full of light as some it was also not as full of dark as some. It was actually fairly gray. I started to see into the light side of my life little by little. I had a mother who showed me a form of caring love that is still with me today. I had the opportunity to travel around the world as a child and see things and places most Americans will never see. I was given an opportunity to spend time with people from other cultures and be influenced by their ways of life. Most importantly of all, my dad taught me what it was like to live in sadness. That lesson helped to lead me out of my personal darkness and to decide the one most important rule of my life today; no matter what always be happy and love what you do.

When I was about twenty I went back home for a visit. I came across my father staring out the living room window with tears in his eyes. He was crying. I had never seen my dad cry before. I went and stood next to him, asked him what was wrong. What he said to me that day brought all the work I had done to revise my childhood story to an ultimate climax. My dad looked me in the eye and said to me, and I quote, “I have not been a very good father, have I?” I was blown away. This man actually had emotion!

I had never been as proud of myself as I was on that day for how I responded to him. I could have taken that opportunity to unleash an unholy hell and fury upon him about how terrible he was, but I didn’t. If this had happened a few years earlier I am sure that I would have.

What I said to him instead was that, it was true, he had not been a very good father; but he had been an excellent provider. I reminded him that we never went hungry or had to wear second hand clothing or live in a place too small or without heat or cooling. My mother never had to work which gave us the opportunity to grow up with a stay at home mom. I also told my dad not to try to make up for it, to go on from here, that I was “ok” with the way things were and how they are right now.

I had never believed until that day that my father loved me. Now I have a different story that I tell of my childhood.

The facts you read at the beginning of this post were simply just that, facts. They were not the story.

The story is that I grew up in a house of love and opportunities. My parents and childhood have greatly influenced my life and I am truly glad to be the man I am today. I owe this all to them and the path of my childhood. It was actually really cool.

I find that people are attached to their suffering and are even willing to identify or define themselves by their negative moments. The retelling of my childhood has had a positive impact on my every day life. This story leaves room for me to be happy and positive in my adult life, and to remember and recount the good days of growing up. It also reminds me to find the light in every situation throughout my life, to give my attention to those aspect in order to maintain a greater leval of happiness and to attract into my life a more positive and uplifting relationship with the world around me.

The question that I have, is that the way you want your life to be? Is your story of “the way of the world” the way you want the world to be? Simply put, is the story you tell the way you want your “reality” to be or is it the about the “reality” you are in?

I hear from people, in regards to their current daily lives, stories that seem to be mostly about lack. I don’t have enough time. I don’t have enough money. My job or my wife doesn’t appreciate me. I can’t afford this or I can’t afford that. Then, these stories of lack move into their world view. There isn’t enough food. The price of gas is too high. We are always at war and there is no peace. We are in a financial crisis. There are no jobs. There is a global threat of nuclear war. Our children are not safe, we are not safe.

I have a few friends that say to me, “Well Jonathan, I just tell it the way it is.” Or even yet they say, “I’m a realist.” My Dad says, “That is just not how the world is“. Parents tell their children, generation after generation, that they need to live in the “real world”. The “real world” you say. Well I, for one, am done living in the real world.

The world we all live in together is a culmination of the collective stories that we are all telling and believing in. Our individual personal lives are a direct manifestation of what we believe is true about ourselves and our situations. The question comes back around for me again and again, is this the world of which we want to live in, that we want to raise our children in? Isn’t it time to start telling a different story?

Fantasy does become reality!

It is not important, or even relevant, if the story you tell is the truth of reality or not. What is important is that it is about the reality you want. If the reality in your life is what you want then keep on telling that story, but if not, it is time for a change. As you go throughout your daily routines, take time to notice the story you are telling and believing in, for that is the reality you are creating. It has not been created for you, you have conjured it up all on your own through the stories you have been telling.

Here’s the kicker, the story comes before manifestation not after. 99 percent of all creation takes place in the vibration which we align ourselves with before we see any piece of physical manifestation. We do not align ourselves with the vibration of the manifestation; manifestation aligns itself to our vibration. Vibration comes before manifestation. We must first align ourselves to the vibration of the reality we want.

Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”. You must first “be the change” before the world will change. If you do not first align yourself with the vibration of the way you want the world to be, there will be no change.

How do you know if you are aligned with the vibration of what it is you want? Be mindful. Ask yourself if the stories you are telling make you feel good. Your feelings are your inner guidance system. Follow your feelings. As Joseph Campbell said, “Follow your bliss”. Wouldn’t you rather live in a world where everyone was following their bliss, where you were following your bliss? Ask yourself over and over again; “how do I feel” and “how does this make me feel”. Then, follow your bliss!

Set out in each moment of your lives to conjure up a new vibration. Summon up, as if by magickal or supernatural powers, a new reality. Evoke, call or bring to mind a new story that will influence or as if by magick effect the change of how you want your world to be. You have the power to change your life simply by telling a different story.