By the time we are well into our adult years, peace for most of us feels like a maybe someday dream.
When I have more money, when I can go on vacation, when I don’t have to work, when I’m finally able to retire........
True inner peace is unavailable to the vast majority of us, not because we can’t have it, but because our mind has created so many strict requirements for its presence that it feels like an elusive goal.
Undoubtedly, you know what peace feels like in your body. You have likely experienced it at least a handful of times throughout your life. Remember it now. Remember a time when you felt the most amount of peace in your body. Feel the ease in your breath, the relaxation in your muscles, the quietness of your mind, and the softening of your nervous system.
Now notice what the memory of that sensation is tied to. For me, I immediately go to sitting on the pier at the lake where I spent a lot of time growing up. It’s early in the day or late in the evening so there isn’t a lot of activity on the lake. It’s just me and the fishes. The sun is just coming up or just going down and the other humans in my life are tending to other things allowing me to just be, just breathe, just feel, and just flow.
Ahhhhhhh….
It still feels amazing to go there.
The only problem for me was that as an adult, I didn’t know any other way to access this peace other than to sit on a pier at sunrise or sunset with no other human beings getting in the way of my peace. This means that on a perfectly planned day, .07% of my day I would get to spend in peace. And that is only if I live on or near a body of water and am able to watch at least 10 minutes of a sunrise or sunset on a particular day.
Now let’s be realistic and factor in that I maybe was able to watch 30 sunsets by the water in a one year span of time, that would mean that I was spending .06% of my year in a state of being that was peace.
You can laugh at my cynicism and maybe even think that I am being a bit dramatic, but I can assure you that I am not.
This is a real thing. Our mental requirements for peace ensure its scarcity in our lives.
I did an experiment this week.
I scheduled time for me to work on my book. The finishing of this book is something that I believe will bring me a deep sense of accomplishment, joy, and perhaps even peace, because of which for the life of me, I can’t understand why it’s not already finished.
But here is how these scheduled times usually go. A number of other things come up. This week my water heater started to go out, my toilet stopped flushing, my headlight in my car went out, I ran out of things that I needed at the store. Literally a laundry list of emergencies presented themselves to me on the morning that I had scheduled. And to top it all off, I stayed up mindlessly scrolling my phone the night before and slept very poorly. Oh and I ate oreos (please don’t judge me).
My mind went into an anxious frenzy. You’d have thought I was dying from time scarcity. My body wanted sleep, my emotions just wanted to cry, and my mind wanted to just start checking off the boxes to get it all done.
And in the past I would have given all my energy to those three things (in no particular order).
And knowing that I had crossed all those things off my list would have eased my anxiety and quieted my mind…. but I would have made zero progress on my book.
But on this particular morning I could feel another part of me. The Best Selling Author in me was standing a little taller, speaking a little louder, and gently nudging me to forget everything else. To just sit and write.
So I did. I sat and I wrote.
I listened to all the voices in my head reminding me of the to do list. I felt the anxiety about not being able to take care of everything continue to wash over me. I heard my ego tell me “what’s the point, you don’t actually think you are going to sell any books do you.”
“You're so lame.”
“Nobody wants to read what you are writing.”
“Nobody cares what you think.”
“Look isn’t that cute, Cassie thinks she can be a best -selling author, what a joke.”
I kept going through it all. I didn’t stop writing until it hit me that this IS peace.
I realized that through all the mental chaos, my body was actually at peace. My soul was right there with me cheering me on.
I believe that this is why we don’t experience peace as profoundly as we desire, because we confuse it with mental peace. We take action to quiet all the voices in our head effectively cutting us off from our soul desires.
I learned that day that the louder the voices are in my head in protest of what I am doing, the more I am making peace accessible to my spirit.
So go ahead mind, get a little rowdy.
You can’t throw this cowgirl off her bull anymore.
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