“Although hundreds or thousands of explanations are given, there is only one thing to be understood. Know the one thing that liberates everything. Awareness itself is your true nature.”― Dudjom Rinpoche,
When I offer free meditation taster sessions to the public, it never ceases to amaze me how people who have never meditated before often experience profound peace the first time they try it.
Even deeply unhappy people are able to experience peace and inner calm the very first time they meditate.
How is this possible?
It is because peace is already there. It is your true nature, no matter how troubled you may be.
We simply don’t notice it because we are so fixated, so compulsively pre-occupied with the mind.
The mind is like a noisy radio station that drowns out the peace that’s always present in depths of your being.
If you’re suffering from anxiety, depression, sadness or other debilitating patterns, the mind will naturally tell you that peace is far away or impossible to reach.
In truth, however, there’s no distance between you and the peace of your true nature.
It only appears so.
If you can find a way to still the mind, even for a moment, you will discover that peace is always there, waiting to be noticed.
“Peace is not something to find or create but something to recognise.”
Stress, anxiety, unhappiness etc. exist in the form of thoughts alone.
When we are fully attentive to the present moment, (through meditation for example), thoughts subside — for a moment anyway — and, in the absence of thoughts, what remains is peace.
Of course, most people will pick up their unhappy stories again the moment they leave the meditation session but nevertheless, the fact they were able to be free of turmoil, for even a short time, is quite revealing.
With practice, you can learn to deepen and extend these moments of peace.
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Looking In The Wrong Places
“There is no such thing as peace of mind. Mind means disturbance; restlessness itself is mind.” — Nisagadatta Maharaj
Most people are searching for peace in the wrong places (in my humble opinion at least 🙂
When you’re experiencing negative thoughts, it makes total sense to believe the solution lies in trying to fix or change them.
You look for peace of mind through attempting to convert anxious, sad or angry thoughts into peaceful, happy ones.
I tried this approach for many years and discovered two things:
- it takes a huge amount of effort, hard work and perseverance (for very limited returns)
- it takes years
When I had an awakening experience in 2004, peace arrived in an instant…. like a thunderbolt!
Actually, it was me that arrived. Peace had been there the whole time, patiently waiting.
There was no need to change a single thing about the mind.
I discovered what I now call making peace WITH the mind.
As Nisargadatta states in the above quote, the mind is restless by nature.
Trying to find peace in a mind that is inherently restless is like trying to iron the surface of the ocean.
Thankfully, there is a far simpler, far quicker way— an approach that doesn’t require changing or fixing the mind… and which takes no time at all.
The moment you connect with your true nature, peace is instantaneous.
Your true nature and peace are one and the same thing.
The Peace of Your True Nature
”Don’t be a peaceful person. Be peace.”
When you’re sitting in the cinema, waiting for the movie to start, all you see is the screen.
When the flickering images of the movie begin, you soon become immersed in the story and lose sight of the screen.
The screen hasn’t gone anywhere but, absorbed in the movie, you no longer notice it.
In this analogy, the flickering images are your thoughts and the screen is your awareness or consciousness. We can use different words to name this.
Essentially, there are two parts to your experience in any moment—the part that is constantly flickering, constantly in motion (the mind) and the unchanging screen that it plays out upon.
We are in the habit of identifying with the flickering part rather than the substratum.
The substratum, your true nature, is ever at peace.
In the Indian tradition, they use the term Sat-Chit-Ananda which means Truth, Consciousness, Bliss to describe who we are. In the absence of mind, this is what remains.
Let’s take the screen analogy one step further.
When there’s a fire in the movie, the screen doesn’t burn. When it rains, the screen doesn’t get wet.
The awareness that is your true nature isn’t touched at all by the thoughts, feelings or emotions that pass across it. It is still, unchanging and always at peace.
This is why, no matter how turbulent or agitated the mind may be, peace is always available… and why it takes no time at all. There’s nothing to fix.
The Simple Solution
When you’re looking for peace within the restless mind, you’re fighting a losing battle. The mind is restless by nature.
Also, as thoughts are constantly changing , even if a peaceful thought does temporarily appear, it won’t be long before it’s gone again.
At best, you can find a flicker of peace here and there, sandwiched between restless thoughts— nothing that will last.
Feelings of peace come and go. The peace of your true nature is eternal and unchanging.
This is what the Indian spiritual Master, Papaji means when he says:
“Don’t try to be a peaceful person. Be peace.”
Peace is who you are… no matter how far away it may seem. It’s your true nature.
What’s needed to access it, is a vehicle to take us from the surface level of the mind into the depths of our being.
The ocean provides an excellent analogy.
On the surface, there’s always movement but in the depths, it’s calm and peaceful.
I’ve spent years helping people connect with the peace of their true nature and would love to help you too. Click here if you’d like to arrange a FREE, zero obligation coaching call… no strings attached.
Or you can book a slot directly through clicking on the image below.
And peace is only one benefit of getting to know your true Self. Until we discover who we are, there will always be a sense of feeling incomplete, of feeling there’s “something missing.”—which indeed there is.
But you’ll never find the answers in your mind.
