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Peaceful communities are comprised of people who are at peace with themselves.
Peaceful communities are comprised of people who are at peace with themselves.
Vincent J. Lasorso, Jr.
Moving toward Peace
Peace is not the absence of visible conflict, violence, crime or war. These are just symptoms which reveal the depth of our societal illness. An illness of fear. Fear which drives us, as individuals and groups, to isolate, disassociate, rage, judge, accuse and move into hopelessness. Fear creates an inner conflict and longing which radiates outward into our lives, associations, work and the actions of our community. As powerful and real as they may seem, these fears are illusions, childhood nightmares, which are quickly dissolved when we chose to move into Peace.
Peace is a palatable visceral experience. It is a feeling of completeness of union. It is the feeling of loving and being loved. It is an awareness of the larger patterns of the universe revealed in the simplest of things. It is a choice which is literally only a heartbeat away.
No matter how complex, confusing, chaotic and even hopeless our lives may seem, we are each organically wired to experience great bliss, power and communion with the divine. There is a physics to our consciousness that with very simple processes, can instantly free ourselves of stress and discord. Each of us must make a choice for inner peace, if not for ourselves, then for our families, our children, and our future.
The Greater Cincinnati 30-day Experiment for Peace
We have a very simple goal to create peace within our community by teaching and encouraging thousands of normal people, how to feel and experience peace within themselves; link and share that peace with the community: and create a peaceful field of consciousness that lowers the local crime rate.
In 1993 a two month Transcendental Meditation study was conducted by the national demonstration project in washington dc when the group, practicing a form of “Super Radiance” meditation reached 4,000 violent crime, which had been steadily increasing, began to fall. and continued to drop until the end of the experiment. When the group disbanded, the crime rate began to rise again. The study demonstrated that the decrease in crime was not caused by the variables of weather or special police activities. (J.S. . Hagel, et al. Effects of group practice of the Transcendental
Meditation Program on preventing violent crime in Washington, DC: Results of the National Demonstration Project, June-July 1993, Social Indicators Research, 1994: 47: 153-201)
There has been a lot of research into the effects and nature of consciousness which demonstrates that group intentions and thoughts have influence over events, healing and even weather. The majority of research published in the past thirty years to reduce crime and violence has been using the modality of Transcendental Meditation. No matter what one’s personal feelings toward the TM organization, enough of the work has stood under critical review to validate this fact:
When one percent of a population practices a coordinated group meditation on peace, crime drops, over time.
As everyone knows, and the physics of consciousness research demonstrates, practicing Peace is not limited to the practice of meditation.
Therefore we are inviting everyone to commit to share whatever method of peace they practice for thirty days with our group intention of lowering crime and violence in this region.
Connect your prayers, meditations, song, contemplation's, movements and dance to a peaceful field of consciousness. Share your bliss, love and heart to positively change our community. Check our “How to Link Up” section for techniques on connecting to the peaceful field we are creating.
A living community is not just a location on a map
Communities require communion to live and flourish. We can not isolate ourselves in our own world and claim to be a community. A community is a contract, a commitment by people, to support nurture and defend each other. The commitment to common union with goals, visions and ideals is what creates a living community. There is no union, no peace, if everyone is choosing to be unique and different.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand”: Abraham Lincoln.
For Cincinnati to become a community, and not a conglomeration of segregated subcultures, we must all agree to practice peace above all else.
We are designed to be in harmony with each other.
A couple of decades ago I watched a PBS science program which contained a very compelling demonstration. The scientist took a fibers of heart muscle from two human cadavers and attached electrodes to each of them. The fibers beat at their own natural pacer. But as they were brought closer together the fibers “entrained” and beat in perfect harmony. as they separated, they returned to their own normal pacing.
On a cellular level, we want to harmonize with each other. Our hearts’ produces an electromagnetic wave which radiates several feet from the body. This wave has been shown to reveal itself in the brain wave patterns of individuals sitting next to each other (McCraty, Rollin, Ph.D..: The Energetic Heart: Bio-electric Interactions Within and Between People, 2003 Institute of HeartMath) Each of our hearts is trying to communicate with the person next to us! In spite of this cellular quest for bonding with our neighbor, we refuse to believe we are interconnected. Our personal ego, cultural training and operand conditioning convinces us to be in opposition to our biological and spiritual imperative for union. Its time to honor our nature.
Commitment is the first step to create a field and a community
It would be wonderful if thousands of people sign up at our web site and our email group with the intention to create a peaceful field of consciousness. Your name has power. It is a symbol of the energy which is you. Energy that supports the creation of peace and community. All you have to do is desire the field to exist and succeed in helping to positively influence the thought processes and union of our community. Then pat yourself on the back often, that you helped to create an energetic pattern of change.
Commitment creates intention but involvement builds a community
The process of practicing and sharing peace for thirty days is a quite an undertaking. There are many distractions waiting for your commitment to wane. The way through this is to create a group of peacemakers. Get your friends involved to practice, discuss and research peace. Join our email group and discuss the changes in your life, your observations and your fears. Forget fear, limitations and nay sayers. Be a center of change.
Lead. Use the linking procedure everyttime you lead or participate in a class, prayer group, or service.
The process of changing a community begins by committing to change ourselves.
As each person practices peace they start to change their brain wave patterns from chaotic rapid waves to coherent large peaceful waves. They move into a state of meditation. Brains love this state and try to seek it out. Continued practice changes brain chemistry and behaviors. A recent Harvard/Yale/MIT study revealed that regular meditation actually grows new brain cells changing the physical structures to enhance functionality. (NeuroReport 16: 1893-1897, November 28, 2005)
Practicing peace makes us happier, healthier and calmer. People will notice, they will feel a difference in themselves when they are around you. They will adjust their behaviors toward you and others. Peace becomes contagious. We literally start to send off positive “vibes” to all around us, which in turn changes them. Its a giant ripple effect which is demonstrated on both a behavioral and quantum energy level.
The group field is more powerful than the individual
On three occasions I have personally viewed a groups of over three thousand people cut a perfect circle in a cloud covered sky during the process of chanting the Hail Mary prayer. That was not the intention of the group gathering, but none the less, physical matter was altered by group prayer. Roger Nelson of the Princeton’s PEAR lab directly explored the ability of group consciousness to affect weather and found it indeed could. (Nelson, R. : Wishing for Good Weather: A natural experiment in group consciousness: Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1997 11(1) 47-58)
Changing weather is fine, however our goal is to heal a community. Some of the best, most controlled research in group healing at a distance was done by Elizabeth Targ and is most applicable to our project. Using healers of many different methods from traditional christian to new age physics, her research was able to prove that any method with the loving intention to heal, combined with a group, has a profoundly positive effect on physically and emotionally healing AIDs patients. (Targ, E. Research in distant healing intentionality is feasible and deserves a place on the national research agenda, Alternative Therapies, 1997, 3(6): 92-6)
Anybody, using any method of peace generation, in combination with a group, focused upon a group intention and target, can heal the diseases of mind which seek to produce violence and fear.
Violence in this community is a public health crisis affecting the physical and emotional health of everyone in the region. As members of this community, each of us has a moral obligation to contribute a small amount of focused intention to the effort of healing us all.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
Mirror Lake, the center of Sacred Ground, in “The Garden of Eden” Park
Few people are aware that all of Cincinnati is build upon the sacred ground of the “Mound Builders”:
“When the whites first came the plateau extending from near the present line of Third street to the hills was literally covered with low lines of embankments, and an almost endless variety and numbers of figures. Among them were several mounds, one large mound on the bluff at the intersection of Third and Main streets; the great mound at the intersection of Fifth and Mound streets...” Force, M.F.: Prehistoric Cincinnati, New England Magazine, September, 1888
The land was used for ritual prayer and burial which imbued it with the status and energy of a “spiritual power center”. Power centers have different vibrational fields than normal ground. (Nelson. R.: FieldREG measurements in Egypt: resonant consciousness of sacred sites. Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research, School of Engineering/Applied Sciences PEAR Technical Note 97002, July 1997)
For our experiment we will use Mirror Lake as the focal point, symbol of the field and center of the locale of consciousness that we are about to create. The calm stillness of the water can be the image of what we wish to achieve. From this locale all positive intentions and thoughts will radiate concentrically throughout the region. This is the center of our network.
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