Start Being True to Yourself (and Others)

As human beings we form relationships and then, when the form or dynamic of these relationships change, as they must, we blame these unwanted changes for our loss of peace. Such behavior is like getting mad at the wind that catches our hat and whisks it away.

Our sense of lost peace, along with feeling the loss of one's freedom that was tied to it, has never had anything to do with peace withdrawing or withholding its goodness from us. What we must see is that such a sense of loss is inescapable as long as we accept the limitations of our present nature as being the extent of our possibilities. Its only peace is a derivative one -- a borrowed sensation taken by identifying itself with passing forms, be they things or thoughts about them. It is this level of self, and nothing and no one else, that is the thief of our peace.

One thing should be clear about true peace of mind: Either we are at peace wherever we are -- because this peace goes with us -- or what we call our peace is a product of some pleasurable condition over which we have temporary command. In situations like the latter, though largely unconscious to us, we sense that our peace is conditional. We know that we must work to keep certain prevailing conditions in place in order to remain at peace. And this, of course, means that we will resist any movement that threatens our desired estate. Clearly such a tentative peace is not true peace at all, because it dwells side by side, in league with an unseen conflict that is a basic requirement of its very existence!

What does this insight teach us? True peace is never a sensation. Its hidden nature is the expression of a timeless stillness, a silence not born of, and therefore beyond, the play of the opposites. This silence cannot be possessed. As it cannot be gained, neither can it be lost, which means that whomever it embraces lives in a world free of fear.

What does this mean to us? True silence may be called upon, but as it is without cause, it always appears on its own, remaining only as it pleases its purpose. Nevertheless, one may court this stillness through a quiet wish to understand its life within one's own. For this reason, our moment-to-moment meditation becomes a revelation if we open ourselves to truth and listen to what it reveals.

Allow your heart to remind you what the mind so easily forgets: there is a peace. There is a shelter. There is a timeless place in each of us that no darkness can shatter or dispel. Make it your one intention to spend your time there. Prefer its ever-present company to that of any promise of peace to come, and watch how your life grows happy and whole in stillness beyond compare.