Be The Peace

By Daneen Burk, Peace Ambassador

When I took the Peace Ambassadors course, I was living in Costa Rica and heard Rita Marie Johnson talk about the BePeace Practice. I contacted with her the next day and went to visit the following week.

Now, she is in the U.S and I am living on the property in Costa Rica, doing a pilot project called BePeace Intensives. We use the BePeace (heart/brain coherence) meditation as a starting place and then work it deeper to heal places in the heart that steal away our daily peace.

Every presenter In the Peace Ambassador Course affected me deeply. I was deprogramming old beliefs from my years in a fundamental belief system. Beliefs that were based on fear, guilt and shame. I was having nightmares along with daily anxiety and was seeking for deep inner peace myself. As well, I was looking for a way to take what I was learning out to the world in a practical way. It seemed like the entire course was set up to take me step by step back into the peace I had previously experienced, without the underlying edge of fear and shame.

We often hear the sentence: “Be the Peace you want to see in the World”, and yet many I meet still do not have this at a core level where it holds. We continue to project our hurt and fear outward. These projections hurt us, hurt others and show up in the reality we create.

Our conscious and unconscious warped beliefs, make our life what it is (personally as well as collectively). Mostly we don't see them, or we deny them. Sometimes they are hidden by the beliefs we want to have, and have done affirmations to change, but are still inside, holding us with a grip we haven't been able to loosen. We don't know how much our “ancestral patterns” drive us, because they are in our DNA - not our conscious minds. We don't know how strongly the “collective patterns” affect us, because we don't yet get the reality of the collective mindset.

Don’t give up. Just get at it and do the deep work. It isn't that difficult and there is so much help available. We know through science that our DNA can be changed. We have power to do that. I can know I am GOOD and not BAD. I can rid my core of the belief that I am BAD and live free.

Through my own deprogramming I have come to know my GOODNESS. I think that if we all - one by one, and collectively could know our goodness, we would produce goodness. As we are now, we are still (for the most part) rooted in a belief that we are intrinsically bad, and so, that is the fruit that is produced. This is what manifests the fruit of violence and war that is showing up in the world. The good news is - it is changeable.

Even many that I have met who are working to make the changes in the world, project this shame and fear without any awareness. I don't know if we can effectively make the change outside of us if it is not done internally first? I just don't know. What I do know is how freeing it is to be grounded in, and live from my GOODNESS. I AM this peace and it holds.

This is my aim in the Be Peace Intensives - to take women into and through their fears and shame to deep “self love” and “goodness”, so we can all “Be the Peace we want to see in the world”.

Daneen Burk is a Canadian woman, now retired and living in Costa Rica. She was raised in a fundamental Christian home and church, married into that faith and raised her children the same. She studied part-time and got her degree in Theology. Her interest grew to embrace Palliative Care and Pastoral counselling, which landed her as a Hospital Chaplain. Chaplaincy in Canada involves in-depth personal work and deep examination of your belief system. This moved her away from fundamentalism into a void. Around the same time her husband of 25 years died suddenly, and she was thrown into a deep personal process.. Shortly after she moved to Costa Rica to recover, and discover who and how to BE. Now, ten years later she is involved with the Rasur Foundation, carrying with her the childhood prayer to be fully alive and make a difference in the world. Daneen is a graduate of The Shift Network’s Peace Ambassador Training.