A Practical Path to Peace
I remembered what I am, and peace followed.
One of the most important chapters in Lightworker is Chapter 13 - Love (p 189). It is also the most misunderstood.
Several friends have said that some of the ideas in this chapter (and in the book itself) are difficult to understand. Looking back, I can see why. I was trying to put words around an experience that was almost impossible to describe.
And while preparing this piece for my website, I realized that I was making the same mistake while trying to explain the sequence of mindset changes that led to my breakthrough.
Although acceptance and surrender came first and are equally critical to the process, perhaps the order matters. Acceptance was not where I began.
Surrender came first.
Before I could accept a belief that was new to me, I had to surrender my ego and break the attachment to an old belief - a darkly destructive story I had been telling myself about who I was and what had happened to me. My ‘victim story’ had become the absolute truth of who I was, to the extent that I was tragically addicted to the belief that I didn’t matter - a belief that drove an insatiable need for validation.
The very thought of surrendering this belief was unimaginable.
I couldn't simply decide to stop needing validation. I couldn't command myself to stop feeling like a victim. I couldn't force myself to stop judging or blaming. These patterns had been deeply embedded in me for decades. However painful, they were the way I understood myself and the world around me.
Over time, the belief that I didn’t matter grew to the point where it was threatening my life, so I couldn't just surrender it, I had to hammer that beast into the ground. That was the hardest part of the shift. I was quite literally fighting for my life.
Even though surrendering my ego was one of the most difficult things I have ever done, in the end it came down to switching up a negative belief for a positive one. At the time, I was unaware of Einstein’s Law, “Energy cannot be destroyed, only changed.” Despite an ignorance of all things scientific and spiritual, in the midst of the battle I somehow managed to replace a poisonous core belief with a belief that had just been introduced to me - that I am a being of Divine Love. Even though I didn’t quite believe it yet, the willingness to believe must have been enough to break the attachment I had to my ego.
In the wake of this surrender, something unexpected appeared.
Hope.
It was only a glimmer at first. But it was enough for me to entertain a possibility that seemed like pure fantasy at the time:
What if I actually do embody the energy of Love?
As this glimmer of hope began to take root, my entire perspective shifted. If I am Love, then none of the negative beliefs can be true. Maybe I’ve been wrong about everything. Maybe I DO matter. What if everything that had happened - including the really painful parts - had somehow brought me exactly where I needed to be? What if my experiences, my losses, my depression, my relationships, my loneliness, and even my darkest moments had all been part of a journey that allowed me to finally wake up and remember my true Self?
I didn't have to pretend that painful experiences weren't painful. I simply began to see my life differently and accept that everything had happened for a reason.
And that changed everything.
Acceptance opened the door to forgiveness.
This is another part of my experience that is easy to misunderstand - I didn't force forgiveness. Forgiveness rose from acceptance.
When I began to accept my life as a whole (not just the parts I liked, but all of it), the need to blame disappeared. I could look at myself and the people who had hurt me without judgement. No one was hurting me…every relationship was meant to help me find my way back to my Self.
As forgiveness rose up, peace flooded in.
Not because my past had changed. It hadn’t. Not because daily responsibilities and challenges were no longer there. They were. But because my understanding had shifted. I could now accept that, no matter how painful, every relationship held an important life lesson for me to learn. Seeing those who had hurt me as those who had helped me changed everything, yet again. I was no longer fighting against - or protecting myself from - everything and everyone. I didn’t have to be afraid anymore.
And… I had never been alone. Signposts from Spirit, that I’d missed entirely, were now clear to me - sprinkled throughout my life as obviously as puzzle pieces. As I acknowledged celestial help with gratitude and love, a door opened. Enveloped in warmth, comfort, and safety, I experienced an out of body experience and dissolved into the energy of light and love - at one with all that exists.
And then I remembered who I am.
This is where the spiritual heart of my experience may be difficult to understand or accept.
I didn't just assimilate a new way of thinking. I experienced what I can only describe as a reconnection with Source energy. In this state of unity consciousness, I remembered my soul and knew at a cellular level that who I am, is the same as everyone else. We are all beings of Divine Love walking around in human bodies. Sounds like science fiction, right? But it was (and still is) more true to me than anything else I have ever experienced in my life.
The shift felt less like acquiring something new and more like a homecoming - remembering something that had always been there. I don't believe I became something I wasn't. I remembered something I had forgotten. And that remembering changed my relationship with myself, with other people, and with life itself.
This is the part I most want to clarify - I am not suggesting that we can simply tell ourselves to stop wanting things, stop judging people, stop blaming others, or be more loving.
If only it were that easy.
I spent decades striving to be the kind of person who was worthy of love, desperately searching for happiness from somewhere outside myself.
It didn't work.
The shift came through surrender.
Once I surrendered the ego's grip, the things I had struggled so hard to change began to fall away naturally.
The need for validation ended.
My identification with victimhood disappeared.
Judgement lost its grip, and blame became irrelevant.
Dark thoughts (shame, fear, depression, resentment) were gone because the negative belief was gone.
Desire for acquisition of material “stuff” just vanished.
Forgiveness emerged and peace became possible. I didn't force those things to happen. They happened as a consequence of surrender.
So what does Love have to do with Peace?
Everything.
If my understanding of the shift is correct, then Love isn't only an emotion we feel. It is something much more fundamental. It is what we are.
I believe that each of us is an expression of the same Source energy - Unconditional/Divine Love.
And perhaps being human is heartbreakingly difficult precisely because we have forgotten this connection.
We become so identified with our names, bodies, histories, personalities, roles, wounds, successes and failures (aka the ego), that we forget what lies underneath all of it. To make matters worse, there is unfathomable global suffering, human trauma, and fear.
We forget that we matter.
We forget that Love matters.
We forget that we are connected.
And perhaps awakening is, at least in part, the process of remembering.
Because my shift happened so quickly and so completely, I couldn't keep the experience to myself. I had to write it down. I had to try to make sense of it. And ultimately, I had to share it with you. What I know now is that the sequence matters. If there is one thing I hope this post makes clearer about Chapter 13, it is this:
Surrender came first: I had to let go of the ego and the story that had kept me trapped.
Then came a glimmer of hope: The possibility that I might embody Love opened a door to my Self.
Then came acceptance and forgiveness: Accepting that my life had unfolded exactly as intended, so I could wake up and remember my soul, brought me clarity and understanding. Forgiveness allowed me to release decades of suffering.
Relief and gratitude opened the door to Divine connection.
And then came peace.
Not manufactured; not forced. Remembered.
🙂 🩵 🌎 🕊️ 🕯️
I don't know what you will make of my experience. You don't have to believe what I believe.
But if you've spent years trying to fill an emptiness, fix a sense of brokenness, trying to stop judging or blaming, trying to become worthy, or trying to find happiness outside yourself, perhaps there is another way.
Perhaps you don't need to become something new. Perhaps there is something within you that has simply been forgotten.
What if you are Love?
That question changed my life.
Perhaps it could change yours, too.
D 🩵
