My personal experience of inner peace and harmony was to first work through, during active meditation, acceptance and cooperation. In other words acceptance of every single thing that I had done in my life, or that anyone had done against me, or with me, or to me. To accept and cooperate with it. There's not much sense in not cooperating, because it's happened, so that's it. The next process for me was to find out about unconditional love of self and others, about totally loving, no matter who it involves, or what has happened. And thirdly, the process of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a big one ' on the Peaceful Place CD number 13 - Inner Peace and Harmony I do a very shortened version of this. Once the process of acceptance, cooperation, unconditional love and forgiveness took place within my life then I could delve deeper and deeper and find the real inner me - a person that I can live with. Someone in fact that I would like to spend the rest of my life with. Not a lot of choice in that is there, but you know it's a really good thing to know that it's OK to live with myself. The process of Inner Peace is different for all of us. We all have different journeys. I'm sure the active meditation techniques can be useful and will complement anything else you do towards achieving your own inner peace.

There is no doubt that life tests us all and many of us face more challenges than others - there often seems to be neither rhyme nor reason that we can fathom to explain this. Grief is certainly something that all of us are going to have to face in one form or another in our lifetime and many as well face trauma in their lives. It can come about through many situations. Some examples could be the loss of a loved one, even the loss of a pet, loss of a job, moving to another town or city, business failure, a friend moving on to another town or city, a broken relationship, a child changing schools, your own children growing up ... the list could go on.

This E Report is for "day to day happenings" and the associated Active Meditation CD is an uplifting meditation not intended to address deep trauma. For a larger treatment of dealing with Trauma then please download my complete Free E Book titled - Addressing Trauma, Grief and Loss  by clicking this link http://www.calmmeditation.com/subscribe.php. This book recommends using three separate active meditations.

Acceptance, Co-operation and Letting Go

Acceptance and co-operation probably go together. A short explanation of what I mean is that whatever has happened, already is. It has already happened. It doesn't matter how bad this adversity is, because according to the teachings I have learned about (and it is commonsense to me) whatever has happened cannot be changed, so co-operate with it, accept it, and in other words, don't deny it. Look for the lesson in the adversity, asking a question of yourself such as "What is there in this event that I can apply to my life?" or "What is there in this event that I can learn and perhaps help others?" You see, asking a question like "Why me?" just sets up guilt. When we ask a question of ourselves the mind goes searching for an answer - and eventually gives it to us. I might as well have asked the question "Why do I deserve this to happen to me?" At the time I did ask "Why me?" and can you imagine the answers that my mind came up with? Things like "You've been a rotten father - you should never have got divorced", "You should have been there"; "You did some bad things when you were a kid ...like .....". You can see where this leads. And you've done it to yourself! A way to commence this process is by quietly thinking about acceptance and co-operation during meditation. It's a good idea to make this process of meditation a daily habit ... until you feel clear on these issues.

Another challenging and often essential component of going through grief and loss is that of "Letting Go". I have a complete chapter in my book "Switch On To Your Inner Strength" which addresses this area - I'll briefly summarise it. In some places, monkeys often get caught (and pay for it with their lives) because they wouldn't let go of peanuts or bright crystals). The moral of the story is not that monkeys shouldn't eat peanuts, or play with crystals, or be curious. It's that there are circumstances where monkeys must let go. So too with our old habits, our old ways of doing things, our old opinions, our old attitudes. All of these things may have served us well in their time. But there comes a time to let go. As we progress through life we need to "Let Go" of many things such as the past, our children, broken relationships, our status, resentment, envy and jealousy, a pet, a home, a business, a partner or a friend or a close relative who have "left us" through death, and eventually letting go of life itself.

My personal experience of letting go my three daughters after their murder was brought about by some advice from John-Roger (www.msia.com.au) who advised that "You need to let them go as you may impede their progress". I didn't understand this but I know at the time I was meditating daily and bringing my daughters to my mind with very strong and powerful thoughts. The only thing I could think of to do at the time was to meditate and go through a process of letting go. What I did was akin to "Letting Go and Letting God", which meant that I did not bring them up in my meditation any more. Does this mean I don't talk about them or have their pictures around? No, of course not. I have their pictures, and whenever they come to mind now they are those lovely 16 and 19 year olds bringing a smile to my face with pleasant thoughts.

Unconditional Love

The next step is Love. This is the strongest force in the Universe and it is important to love all the people touched by this instance of grief. This includes yourself (after all, loving yourself is purely taking responsibility for yourself). I found that the analogies I use to help me understand unconditional love really helped me to be all-embracing, and are described in full detail in my book "Switch On to Your Inner Strength" (see my site www.calm.com.au where you can read the first two chapters of this book). Briefly, we all have an energy within us - whether we call it CHI, Prana, Life Force, Soul, Spirit, Spark of the Divine, or simply Energy. We are all joined to one another through this Energy in the same way that each and every ray of sunshine is ultimately joined back to each other ray of sunshine, through the body of the Sun. So when I extend my unconditional love to anyone, I bring to mind that part of the person who is joined to me (in the way just described) and then I say (to myself) "I unconditionally love you .... and say the name ..."

Forgiveness

A final step is Forgiveness and after going through the steps above, you will know when you are ultimately ready for this part of the process. If there is still anger present, then one really needs to work with getting rid of the anger. I first did Forgiveness in meditation by once again bringing to mind that part of the person who is joined to me (once again in the way just described) and then I say (to myself) "I unconditionally forgive you .... and say the person's name ... for ..... whatever it is". There are a couple of things to remember. Forgiveness is for the Forgiver and NOT for the forgiven, so therefore it is not to be done face to face with the person, unless that person has specifically asked for forgiveness. You can do it in your own mind, in meditation. Another thing to always remember is that Forgiveness does not mean that you condone whatever was the offence / crime / or event. The Forgiveness Process should always be a two-fold process - in other words, forgiving the other person and forgiving yourself. Forgive yourself for all the negative emotions and thoughts you have surrounding the particular event or issue.

I believe that Meditation is like Prayer and in fact, when you're doing Acceptance, Love and Forgiveness, it is actually a Spiritual process. If it sits well with you, it could be a good way for you to bring to mind somebody that you consider symbolises the Divine ... or perhaps a personal Guru, Teacher, etc... and "have a chat" to them ... or "ask advice" of them.

The Active Meditation CD follows along the same principles that have been described above with a wonderful surprise at the end.

So, please feel free to pass this e-mail on to any, or to all your friends and, here's to your Inner Peace.

All the best,

Success Stories

Peaceful Place is expressed in all my books and meditation CDs. It is the precurser to relaxing and releasing stress quickly. I received a lovely expression of Peaceful Place - really a journey of how to get to her comfortable chair (inside her mind) from Rebecca James who attended the recent CHI Seminar and has put her journey to verse. Thank you for sharing Rebecca.

The pathway is paved
The gates always closed
But as I approach
It opens….
This is just as I chose

The flowers are blooming
Their perfume so sweet
I walk on the grass
It’s soft on my feet

I look up to the sky
The sky…….yes it’s blue
I walk to the cliff edge
I create my own view

The birds they are bathing
In a birdbath quite near
And a waterfall flows slowly
Creating water sounds to my ears

As I brush past a pelican
Standing high on a hedge,
It flies off right in front of me
Towards the vista, from the edge

A view so magnificent
So wide and so clear
This is my peaceful place
I have nothing to fear

I breathe deep, the fresh air
As the sun beams down too
My door opens wide
Exactly on cue

The floors with plush carpet
The walls made of glass
As I walk through the door
The cold air rushes past

The ocean is brewing
I can hear it afar
The door closes behind me
Left a little ajar

I turn and look around me
And spot my position
I walk slowly to it
With the utmost precision

I sit slowly back
As rainbow clouds float on in
And a white tunnel of light
To protect and guide me within

That’s when I know…….
When I know I am there
That’s right!

“My Peaceful Place - From my Comfortable Chair”
By Rebecca James, May2007