Where Do We Find Inner Peace?

What disturbs our inner peace? There are external and internal factors that lead to the loss of inner peace. But with effort, we can return to our inner peace, regardless of what is happening in our lives. Please note this is talk, not a guided meditation.

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Inner peace.

It sounds so nice,

But how do we find it?

I may be wrong,

But I think there's a tendency out there for people to think that inner peace is found through external work and effort.

For example,

If everything in my day goes just right,

I wake up in a good mood,

I have an excellent breakfast,

I spend time doing things that I love,

There aren't any bumps along the way,

And then at the end of the day I lay my head down and I think to myself,

All is well.

But then those bumps do come and my day doesn't go well and sometimes my day goes horrible.

So we think,

Well maybe if I study meditation or start doing yoga,

I'll find peace,

Inner peace.

And we do that.

And we do get times where it's like,

Wow,

I feel so good,

I'm so relaxed,

There's no worry at all in my mind.

But then our drive home,

Someone cuts us off and we get really upset and the inner peace is gone.

So then we think,

Well maybe if we did it longer,

So then we try perhaps a weekend retreat or a whole week retreat.

And we see again that,

Wow,

We can get so peaceful during these week retreats.

And we do.

But once again,

Once we enter the world,

It doesn't take much to rock our world and we lose that inner peace so quickly.

Some people even go so far as to enter a spiritual community where they can do these steps of finding inner peace all day long.

But again,

If you've ever been to one,

You'll know that their inner peace too can be rocked very easily.

Maybe not as easily as most of us,

But it still doesn't take much to change the inner peace to inner turmoil.

Or maybe we don't go the spiritual route.

Maybe our approach is to get everything right in our world and then we'll find inner peace.

For example,

We work really hard,

We save our money,

We pay off our home.

We reach that point where,

Wow,

We made it.

We have enough in our retirement account.

We don't have to work anymore and we can just explore the world.

But again,

It doesn't take much to rock that inner peace.

We start feeling the aches and pains of life and perhaps we get a medical scare that says we have to treat cancer now and our world of inner peace is no more.

So with these examples,

Then what is inner peace and how do we find it?

Have you ever visited a beautiful lake or perhaps pond that is very deep and it's that perfect day where everything is calm outside,

The wind isn't blowing,

And the water hasn't been disturbed for a very long time.

And you notice then that when the water is very still and clear,

You can see all the way down to the bottom and it can be so beautiful.

I've been to quite a few geysers around the world and sometimes you get those pools that are so beautiful and when the water isn't bubbling and there's no steam coming out and the water is just crystal clear,

You can see so far down and the water and the bottom are magnificent.

Inner peace is like this.

We at our core are beautiful deep down but what happens is the external world disturbs our inner peace and we get all riled up and we stop realizing the inner peace is always there.

But when our minds get agitated and they're agitated often,

Then that inner peace seems so elusive and so far away.

So for example,

In meditation when we sit and we're quiet,

We reach a point when we've done it for long enough that we get very peaceful inside because what's happening is the thoughts are thoughts about what is right and wrong with the world are quiet.

And what's left is the silence of the inner self and the inner self is very peaceful.

Another example would be going on vacation.

Let's say we go on vacation to a beautiful tropical island for a week or more.

It may take us a day or two to quiet down,

To let go of the worries back home and to just be still and notice all the beauty around us.

It isn't that we find peace.

We discover that we bring inner peace with us and it gets disturbed by our thoughts.

Inner peace is something we always have with us but our thoughts,

Our engagement and interactions with the world,

Disturb it.

So in today's podcast I want to talk about how we can cultivate inner peace throughout the day.

Of course it may be disturbed very quickly but when it is disturbed,

How do we get back to inner peace?

Well the key word here is inner.

We have peace with us at all times.

It gets disturbed by us engaging negatively or even positively with the world.

When we are still,

When our minds are quiet and we just become the observer of life instead of the commentator of life,

Then we find inner peace.

Because inner peace is always with us but what we do is we are commenting about the world,

Good or bad,

Throughout the day and those comments keep us from inner peace.

It's like the wind blowing or the water being disturbed and when it is,

We don't see the inner peace anymore.

Instead all we see is the rough water or the murky water and the inner peace seems like a memory from long ago.

So what we do is we realize that we have to stop being the commentator of life and instead being the participant of life and just flowing with life.

If you go back to my two examples,

Why we're peaceful sometimes when we meditate or on retreat or on vacation is because our mind stops giving commentary about life.

Instead there's just a natural flow with life and we stop saying is it good or bad.

It just is.

Because when we label things,

We disturb things.

We just don't let them be anymore.

So by labeling we lose our inner connection with our inner peace because we say this is right,

This is wrong and the second we do that our inner peace goes away.

So practicing this would be like this.

When throughout the day we notice that something is disturbing us and making us not feel good,

Whether it be external,

Watching a show,

Participating in something or hearing something that causes us disturbance or inner thoughts that are commenting or critiquing the world around us,

We will realize that that's going to disturb our inner peace.

So what we do is we take a deep breath and we just slow down and we just look.

Look without the commentary.

Look without engaging.

Engaging in internal dialogue of right or wrong or we like this or we don't like that.

We stop that and instead we just let things be the way they are.

So how this might look is that we go to the store to get our groceries and when we get in the checkout line we realize it's longer than normal.

And normally we would say well why don't they put more cashiers at the counter or why are there so many people here?

Why does that person have so many things?

On and on our mind goes which disturbs our peace.

Instead when we get in that line again we notice we just take a deep breath and we notice other things like perhaps just our breath or we look outside to the window and see the wind blowing through the trees or we see the beautiful child in the cart in front of us laughing and our hearts laugh with them.

It's a sense of being still,

Being present and flowing with life instead of critiquing,

Commenting or saying this is right or wrong.

That's what disturbs our inner peace.

Another example would be in the United States we have a lot of cars and in California where I live we drive a lot and so sometimes we can come up to a light and when it turns green we're ready to go but the person in front of us is on their phone and they take so long noticing that it's time to go so that by the time we get to their light it turns red again and we have to sit through a whole other cycle of waiting.

Now normally we would get mad,

We get upset,

We might scream and holler,

We might even honk at the person in front of us for taking so long to move.

Now we're stuck there for a whole other cycle.

Instead we breathe and again we notice,

We notice our breath,

We notice the things around us that are beautiful and there's always something beautiful around us and we give our attention to that.

We just notice.

We just are and we'll find that that time that we waited that light now instead of being stressful,

Upsetting and disturbing our inner peace,

It's a time to find quiet and calm.

So the two main things that disturb our inner peace which is always there is the external world and our inner thoughts engaging with the world.

So when it comes to the external world we do have some control over it.

We can decide whether we're gonna come home,

Sit outside and enjoy a beautiful evening in nature,

Perhaps just quietly reading a book or just sitting,

Enjoying the outdoors or we come home and spend hours on our electronic devices,

Perhaps even watching things that are very disturbing and upsetting to our inner peace because everything that we expose ourself to disturbs our inner peace.

It's like the wind blowing or the waters churning.

These exposures to negative or constant engaging activities on our electronics are gonna disturb our inner peace and it might be time to not spend so much time on them and instead have pockets,

Perhaps many throughout the day,

Where we're just still.

Again,

It may just be watching our breath or maybe finding things to do that are peaceful and calm like being in nature or going for a gentle walk or sitting and meditating.

But things that calm us and don't disturb our inner peace,

Those are the things that we do.

Now internally,

The second part,

We also have some control over our inner peace too because this is about our thoughts,

What we think about throughout the day.

If we're constantly engaged with our thoughts,

Saying this is good,

This is bad,

Planning,

Executing,

Just constantly going and going and going,

Then there is no time to experience that inner peace and that's why I'm such an advocate of meditation.

That's why I'm such an advocate of spending time in nature and just being still,

Allowing ourselves moments of quiet so that we can realize,

Oh yes,

That inner peace is with me at all times.

It may not be on the surface but when I quiet the mind,

It's there.

And one of the best ways to quiet the mind is to stop engaging with right and wrong,

Good or bad.

It's more just life is.

Life brings us a variety of things.

Sometimes they may be things that we wish weren't there but they're still there.

Sometimes we may really like them but we don't hang on to them.

They're just there.

There's far less grasping,

Far less pushing away and far more just being with what is.

Choosing to be okay and accepting and even loving what is.

When we go down this journey of quieting our thoughts and stop critiquing our world and making sure that our external world has many pockets throughout the day of quiet,

Of calm,

Then we'll find that that inner peace that is always there will become an old friend of ours who's with us often and we get to spend time with.

And it is so many moments of beauty throughout our day and throughout our life because inner peace is our natural state and who we are.

Thank you for joining me on the happiness podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

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Thank you for this podcast! Exactly what I needed to hear 🙏🏻