Inner Peace
Peace is a universal inner state that has preoccupied us since time immemorial. We all enjoy it and desire for it, but what do we need to really feel at peace inside ? Is it simply the absence of outward conflict ? It may help a little but probably not that much. Great spiritual people who were widely acknowledged as sources of peace itself had to go themselves through outward conflicts and yet that did not change what they felt and radiated around them. Conversely, we all have the experience of being in what would appear as excellent worldly circumstances and not feeling at all at peace inside. And, as our inner state always reflects outside, sudden unexpected arguments and conflict can arise seemingly out of nowhere.
Does peace require a level of wealth ? If anything, more wealth appears to endanger our inner peace to a larger degree, individually and collectively. Of course, at the other extreme, when not meeting basic needs it is as hard to be at peace. So the relationship with wealth seems more like a U curve with most of us somewhere in the middle and no obvious “proportional” effect on inner peace.
Do we feel more at peace when we have lots of people around that we consider our friends and family? Looking around it seems that solitary as well as averagely connected as well as people with very large numbers of seemingly close connections do not appear to enjoy more or less peace because of that. Many times we try to “go away from it all” equating peace with solitude. On the other hand, when we have been alone for some time we look for more company. Those transitions themselves can trouble our feeling of peace. So probably it’s not so much about company either.
Can peace have something to do with the senses ? We all enjoy a spot of great natural beauty that appeals to all our senses. But no matter how good we feel then, it almost always lasts only a short while. Alas, this is the case for anything related to senses and what we perceive as a pleasure - it can never last. And it’s a widely known fact that when we run after pleasures we can often end up in a state where peace is really nowhere to be found…
But is peace more like a hidden thing we need to find, or a construct that we need to build ? Most traditional knowledge suggests that it is something like a vast inner lake and what we feel is the state of its surface. So what wrinkles an ideal mirror-like surface ? More on that in our next post !