|
Today's
quotation:
Peace is not
something you can force on anything or anyone-- much less
upon one's own mind. It is like trying to quiet the ocean by
pressing upon
the waves. Sanity lies in somehow opening to the chaos, allowing
anxiety,
moving deeply into the tumult, diving deeply in the waves,
where underneath, within, peace simply is.
Gerald May
|
|
Today's
Meditation:
To find
peace we must allow anxiety and chaos? That sounds
incredibly contradictory, but on second and third
thoughts, it makes a whole lot of sense. In my
experience, the times when I've felt the least at peace
have been the times when things have been going wrong and
I've been upset at my inability to control what was going
on. Once I learned that this need to control
situations was one of the things that was preventing me
from feeling peace, though, life became different, and I
was able to find peace even during some of my most trying
times.
We
can't force peace. If we have a friend who is
stressed out and anxious, we can't cause that person to
have peace. We might teach some strategies for
finding peace and give our support by listening and trying
to help, but we can't bring that person to a peaceful
point-- we can only help them to try to find the peace
inside themselves.
I
absolutely love sitting in a warm home while storms rage
outside-- thunderstorms, blizzards, hailstorms-- whatever
they may be. There's a huge contrast between the
calm indoors and the tempest outdoors, and it's
lovely. And it's possible to feel that way when the
storms are family conflict, work issues, fear, or any of
the other things that we go through in life. In a
storm, I have faith that the home I'm in will keep the
weather from harming me; in another type of storm, I can
have faith that I will get through anything that life
throws at me, and get through it well.
As
Plutarch says below, if I keep my mind untainted, I can
experience peace in any situation in which I find
myself. I can face the storm and know that things
will be okay because I'm ready to face the storm on my
terms. Finding our inner peace is one of the
greatest gifts we can give ourselves, but it does take
time and effort to reach it.
|
