From “Peace Shield Meditation/Prayer Campaign: Spiritual Defense Initiative,” a brochure distributed by the Pentagon Meditation Club. About two hundred Defense Department employees have participated in Friday lunchtime meditation sessions at the Pentagon.
The purpose and vision of Peace Shield is to give each of us the opportunity and inspiration to contribute to Peace.
What is this Spiritual Defense System? In the spirit of brotherhood and unity among representatives of many different spiritual paths, we are drawing attention to a simple, effective plan for experiencing peace within ourselves, our community, and the world.
The Peace Shield Meditation is an alternative, citizen-based spiritual program, fostering a person-to-person and nation-to-nation atmosphere of loving cooperation. It offers a meditative strategy that will produce a collective, world-affirmative vision as a basis for peace.
Peace Shield’s way of healing what we may perceive to be “threats to security” is to create a “peace treaty within” each individual.
The goal of unity between North and South and East and West is still only a vision of the future, of what can be. The principal accomplishment of the “global village” in this generation can be peace, harmony, and unity in the family of nations for all generations to come. The vision can be realized when positive changes can be sustained for every nation without any nation losing stability.
The Peace Shield Meditation Campaign is based on the understanding that peace is created when:
we think and act with balance and in harmony with nature;
we first are at peace with ourselves; we recognize that all unloving acts are a call for love;
we resolve conflict via peaceful means; we wield power with compassion and justice;
we support what sustains peace, rather than assail what does not.
The Peace Shield Campaign therefore:
presents a “defense plan” of a loving posture which is a powerful “strategy” in resolving interpersonal and international conflicts;
shows that a clear, loving heart can pierce the “armor” of imagined differences between individuals, groups, and nations;
realizes that fear is a basis of “defense” and that love can remove in others the need for structures and thought patterns believed to be “fortifications,” and weapons believed to produce “security”;
practices détente within to pave the way for the international cooperation which must follow;
is the high touch, counterbalancing human response to the “high tech” defense systems that we have traditionally relied on for “security”;
offers heart energy to balance the power of “arms” and reduce tensions.
Here’s how to do it: Sit comfortably and begin by taking a few deep breaths. Imagine air entering the lungs and center your awareness in your heart. Allow any thoughts or feelings that come to you to pass effortlessly from your mind without judging, resisting, or dwelling on them.