“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.” (Eckhart Tolle)
Inner Peace
Importance of Inner Peace
Inner peace is all about tranquility of mind and spirit. When we have inner peace, we are calm, serene, content. As opposed to hectic, disrupted, disaffected. We have more joy in our lives. We have better health.
Inner peace really is not a luxury; it’s a necessity! For it improves our ability to handle stress, to fight disease, to sleep restfully. Further, it improves our relationships with other people. Who would you rather relate to? A tense, perhaps even angry, individual? Or someone who is calm and even-keeled?
Success Consciousness details 20 reasons why we need inner peace. Saratoga Ocean cites both collective reasons and personal reasons for seeking inner peace. For me, however, the top three motivations are that it improves physical health, facilitates healthy relationships, and fosters world peace.
How to Gain Inner Peace
So inner peace is important. How does one go about achieving it?
Well, the first thing is that it’s a process. It requires that you make it a priority and that you work at it. That said, there are different routes to inner peace, and different individuals would find some routes more compatible than others.
In Episode 10 of The Peaceful Woman Program podcast, I discuss several routes and some individual steps that progress toward inner peace, one from Saratoga Ocean and one from Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements. Both methods are really life strategies. It’s not as simple as “meditate for 30 minutes a day” or any such circumscribed activity. It is a lifestyle.
My own preference for developing inner peace is to cultivate self-love. For if you truly love yourself — unconditionally — exactly as you are, you automatically live in all the ways that nurture and grow inner peace. Further, if you truly love yourself, you can truly love others. You can be kind to yourself and others, refrain from judging yourself and others.
One of the best ways I know of cultivating self-love is to practice metta, or lovingkindness. Metta is either a meditation practice or a prayer, depending on how you want to think of it. It’s simple and beautiful and powerful. This particular version is taken from Sharon Salzberg:
May I be safe and well.
May I be happy and content.
May I be healthy and strong.
May I be peaceful and at ease.
It’s okay to adjust the wording to your own style. The idea is to repeat the prayer as a meditation over and over for as much time as you have to be with yourself, in loving relationship to yourself. Even if it’s only for five minutes a day, practice metta toward yourself. Bring peace into your soul. And in so doing, bring peace to the world.
Peace and blessings,
Carolyn
Great podcast! We know that stress breaks us down at the cellular level – making us susceptible to illness. Our intention is to be accepting and not create “stories” that lead to stress. Thank you for sharing!
Thank you, Lisa. Stress is the root cause of so many illnesses and disorders; it’s the scourge of our times. Inner peace – deep acceptance and unswerving love and compassion – is the best antidote for this dis-ease.