Current Initiative:

Join millions of peace-loving hearts across the globe in a world-wide prayer vigil for peace! The vigil will begin on February 1, 2003 and continue for 15 weeks until May 16—bringing people together in prayer from every religious faith and spiritual tradition across the globe.

The peril of our times is enormous. Humanity stands at the brink of war, yet millions of peace-loving citizens in every nation across the globe share the same, heart-felt prayer: we want peace, not war. We know in our hearts that “Hatred never ceases by hatred, but by love alone.” We share a deep prayer for peace, and a vision of humanity living in harmony, despite our differences, on this precious planet that is home to all of us.

Every measure to stop this war must be taken with no delay. Human resources and institutions are striving in a noble effort to stem the tide toward war, but they are insufficient to the task. There is an urgent need at this time to go beyond human resources altogether, and appeal directly to higher planes of spiritual reality. An infusion of spiritual light and consciousness is needed now, for which humanity must to appeal directly to the Divine source of all life in this hour of profound need.

For this purpose, we are launching the Global Interfaith Prayer Vigil to organize a formal appeal to peace-loving people across the globe to join in a three month long prayer vigil for peace. The Global Interfaith Prayer Vigil activates the universal healing and transformative power of the shared heart of humanity—by linking spiritual traditions and faith communities around the world in conscious, focused prayers and other spiritual practices for peace.

The collective power of millions of hearts yearning for peace in every corner of the globe is potentially enormous. In this hour of need, the Global Inter-faith Prayer Vigil seeks to bring millions of people together in prayer across the planet as a way to reach beyond human institutions and resources, and appeal directly to higher spiritual realms to transform the global crisis. The prayer vigil begins on February 1, 2003 at sunset local time (all across the globe) and continues through midnight on May 16.

 

People from every religious faith and spiritual tradition are invited to join their hearts in this world-wide prayer for peace. This global inter-faith vigil will be a period of intensive prayer, meditation, ceremonies, and other spiritual practices for peace that will continue uninterrupted for nearly 15 weeks. Spiritual communities and monasteries in several religious traditions will hold prayers and spiritual ceremonies every day throughout this period. Some larger monasteries will maintain prayers for peace 24 hours a day.

This appeal to join the prayer vigil is directed to spiritual leaders and aspirants in every religious faith and spiritual tradition—priests, ministers, monks, nuns, roshis, rabbis, reverends, gurus, masters, sheiks, shamans, swamis, healers, lamas, rinpoches, etc.—and their respective followers, parishes, and congregations. Practitioners in different faiths are asked to draw upon the heritage of their own traditions to find the most effective practices, prayers, meditation techniques, fasting, mantras, chants, visualizations, or ritual ceremonies for peace.

This website has been created to support the prayer vigil. The website will list various specific groups and the times and practices they are engaged in during the peace vigil. Our aspiration is that users will be able to check this website at any time throughout this prayer vigil to see which groups are praying for peace in different parts of the world at any given hour. In this way, web users may consciously commune with other groups around the world in their prayers and meditations for peace.

The Global Inter-faith Prayer Vigil begins on Saturday, February 1, 2003 at sundown all across the planet. The vigil will continue for 15 weeks, concluding at midnight on May 16, 2003.

This particular timing of the interfaith prayer vigil encompasses special times of worship and celebration in many different traditions. The vigil begins at a holy moment in the Christian faith (Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, February 1) and concludes at a sacred time in the Buddhist tradition (Visakha puja, May 16; celebrating Buddha’s birth and enlightenment). The intervening 15-week prayer vigil includes several major religious holidays, including the birthdays of Muhammad (Mawlid an Nabi, May 14) and Hindu saint Ramakrishna (Ramakrishna Jayanti, March 5), the Jewish Passover, the Christian Lent and Easter, the Hindu New Year (Ugadi, April 14) and Islamic New Year (Hijra, March 5), and the Jewish remebrance of the holocaust, Yom Hashoah (April 29).

If your group cannot begin by February 1, this will not be a problem—just begin as soon thereafter as possible. It is of course possible for your group to begin sooner than February 1, if you so choose.

 

The Inner Net of the Heart is conducting a special campaign to invite thousands of spiritual and religious leaders from around the world to participate in the prayer vigil. We are seeking coordination with several religious leaders, ecumenical organizations, and spiritual networks—these links will be posted on our website at www.innernetoftheheart.org.

Every person’s prayer is crucial, and we are seeking to link up as many hearts in prayer for peace as possible. We are also making a special appeal to highly evolved mystics and spiritual visionaries on the planet who have very deep access to spiritual planes of reality. In the words of the Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi, "The mystic is the pupil in the eye of humanity.” The Inner Net of the Heart is therefore reaching out to mystics and spiritual visionaries across the world, inviting them and their monasteries and constituencies to specifically join in this planetary vigil for world peace.

There is a narrow window of time at this moment—before the war begins, if it does. This moment is therefore especially precious because there is still the possibility to avert this disaster altogether, or at least to greatly mitigate its effects.

Join us where the heart’s longing meets the world’s need.

Join the global interfaith prayer vigil, and may our cherished vision of world peace become a reality!

Inner Net of the Heart is a joint project of the Satyana Institute and the Manitou Foundation; both are charitable organizations based in Colorado. For more information, click here.

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original photo of M31 by Neyle Sollee, sangreobservatory.com    -  click here to view original photo