One Simple Practice To Help You Be At Peace With Who You Are By Guy Finley

Key Lesson: Don’t look back, nor ahead. Peace can’t be made, let alone seen with eyes blinded by time. Patience and conscious suffering travel in unseen lockstep, together… or not at all. Only the foolish look for one, and away from the other.

For Further Study

If our intuition can perceive that the peace we long for is inherent in this perfectly present moment we call the “Now,” what is it that keep us from knowing the fulfillment of its promise within us? Let’s look.

Through even casual observation, we can see that the primary governing body of our present self seems to be a mental and emo­tional construct whose sole occupation in life seems to be an ongo­ing consideration of what was and what will be. This activity amounts to what we experience as an endless weighing of our past and sub­sequent planning of our future. Stated in another way, our lives are currently made up of what we name for ourselves as being good days or bad days. Of course these “good” and “bad” days are labeled as such based on how they measure up to our desired expectations. Good days “happen” when we get what we desire, and bad days are … well, you know!

Now, one of the strange features about this present nature of ours is that even on “good” days – when we manage to achieve what we desire and feel a sense of satisfaction – this conditional peace often turns against us; triumph becomes a kind of torment as we end up fearing we will lose the thing just gained. Poof goes our peace! There is no profit in it, and its promises are equally empty.

We have another nature, one whose life and whose peace are the same character. This order of Self, and the Now that is the back­drop of its being, are as the branch is to the life-giving vine. No true peace can survive apart from this relationship. Any other form of peace is its earthly expression.

This peace confounds the lower level of mind that only knows stillness by what it imagines its qualities to be. The mind asleep to itself – and hence to the reality of the stillness upon which life is seen dancing – cannot conceive how its own images of winning in life deny it the victory over life for which it longs. In order to know peace and its promise, we must release ourselves from this sleeping self that is always struggling to put pieces of peace together in the vain hope they will stay united!

We have all tried sewing pieces of peace together, thinking through what we must do to rid ourselves of whatever nags at us. You know the dialogue one is ever having with oneself: “Hopefully this career change will make things better; maybe going to the gym will get my love life going; once I make him under­stand my point of view…”

“As soon as” becomes the chant and the source of our confidence. We all know how this goes. The chattering is as endless as one’s fear of feeling empty. And the more of these “pieces of peace” we juggle, the more anxious we become, all the while hoping that life won’t break up what we would assemble. Even though this approach has proven itself fruitless, still we cling to the hope that next time things will be different. What we must see is that our lives cannot change until we do – from the inside out.

To succeed in our quest, we need a new and higher under­standing of our own being. For this peace that we seek resides within us; it is not to be found anywhere else, which leads us to the next step. To enter the silent world of peace requires that we learn the secret of being still. We must discover and enter into our own still being.

So the next time something dark or disturbing tries to steal into you to wreck your contentment, do not consent to be drawn into its seemingly important considerations. Instead of sinking into this yawning abyss, rather than running after something to resolve that rift, better to remember this truth: the peace you long for also longs for you. Then, whatever you must do, find your way to it! Here’s a good place to start. Catch the thieves of peace in the act. What does this mean?

Come awake to the backdrop of stillness within you, and while being aware within it, watch your own thoughts and feelings trying to drag you into the noisy world of their worry and fear. If you will go silent before them, they have no choice but to enter into the silence, the light of higher self-awareness, with you. You can work at this exercise anytime you remember it. Try it now.