Peace. It has always been something that we, as humans, have been trying to reach; be it on a personal or collective level.
With the recent rise of self-development, peace, and more precisely being peaceful, has been established as one of the main goals of our existence. We are all aiming to find peace within ourselves, in our relationships and with the Universe around us.
But what does being peaceful really mean ? Does it mean never feeling sad, angry or nervous ? Or on the contrary, does it mean embracing these feelings that we usually qualify as unpleasant ?
What does being peaceful really mean ?
When starting to observe and get to know ourselves in deeper ways, we can long for what we think is inner peace, which is usually seen as always being happy and positive.
However, when we are trying to always feel this way, we are actually betraying ourselves, and are, instead, forcing ourselves to feel « good », even when it does not match our current state.
As Eckhart Tolle once said, “you find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”
Realizing who we are at the deepest level and acting accordingly will not always please our ego and can highlight some of our limiting beliefs.
Let’s take an example here.
Let’s say that you are at a gathering with your friends or your family and one of the people you are with repeatedly does something which makes you feel uncomfortable, you feel your stomach twisting and all you want to do is to scream NO or remove yourself from the situation.
But instead of doing that, which would be what you would need to do to live your truth and maintain your inner peace, you remain in the situation and probably engage with the other person in a way that looks peaceful and composed from the outside but which actually feels forceful and unnatural to you. If you are a people pleaser, you probably convince yourself that this was the right thing to do and that the other person « is not to bad ».
Sounds familiar ?
However now, let’s say that you handle this situation differently and actually speak your truth, which sometimes will actually revolve in you not responding to the other person. By doing so, you will actually maintain your peace, choosing to go with how you really feel instead of how you think you should react.
It is never about the other person or the situation, it is always about you and how you choose to handle it and respond. It is never about whether or not you love someone or something, it is actually about how it makes you feel, and denying your feelings, whatever they might be, will always hurt you in the end.
Peace comes from within
We have now established that inner peace does not necessarily mean being perfectly content all the time, but rather embracing who we truly are.
Much like anything in life, inner peace needs to be tended to, to be nurtured and taken care of. Meditation practices are great to observe and get to know ourselves in deeper ways, which allows us to be more aligned with our true selves.
Doing what we love and carving out enough time in our lives to do so, is another big component to creating and maintaining inner peace.
If we are always forcing ourselves to do or be something because « we have to », or « that’s how things are », we can not feel at peace, since we are not honoring our true selves. What is done by force will never flow, it will always feel oppressive and constricting. Of course it’s ok to do things that we don’t really like sometimes, but if is the majority of what we do, it ends up creating a lot of anxiety and tension within ourselves.
In summary, inner peace is inextricably linked to fully be true to who we are, even when it means feeling angry or sad. With time, care and presence, we can actually go through these feelings with ease and grace.
Our feelings of anxiety, anger or sadness can be so overwhelming sometimes that we are looking for ways to dismiss them completely from our lives. It is actually by fully embracing them through loving presence that we create peace within ourselves.
The full spectrum of our human experience does encompass these feelings, not for us to feel bad but to enable the in-depth expression of who we truly are.
I will finish this article on a quote from Buddhist monk Geshe Kesang Gyatso : «without inner peace, outer peace is impossible. We all wish for world peace, but world peace will never be achieved unless we first establish peace within our own minds. »
With love,
Elodie