Peace Is Who You Are
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It took me a while to understand that being at peace doesn’t mean you never experience emotions that might be considered “un-peaceful.”
Peace is All That Is, consciousness, awareness, fullness, emptiness, being. THIS.
THIS is peace… and THIS is what we are.
In reality, there is nothing but THIS peace—it is All and All is everything. Which is to say: Peace/THIS can’t in any way be affected or changed by what might be considered “un-peaceful” emotion because any-thing that temporarily rises does so from within THIS/peace. You see?
THIS is the perma-screen upon which all experience, including emotion, comes and goes, much like images come and go on a TV screen.
But if this is true—if my essential nature is peace, why do these other emotions like anger, anxiety, and annoyance still show up?
Because THIS/peace includes being human! Why would you come equipped with emotions you weren’t meant to feel? That would be like buying a fancy new phone with all the bells, whistles, and apps but not allowing yourself to play with them.
The problem isn’t that emotion is experienced. Emotion is simply passing weather on the screen of peaceful awareness. Passing weather isn’t a problem. (After all, imagine what the earth would be like without rain!) The problem arrives when we believe the mental narratives that say the emotion is a problem… that there must be something wrong with us to be experiencing it. And/or we over-indulge the story around the emotion which only causes more suffering.
For example, let’s say an emotion like anxiety pops up. Maybe fear-based thought patterns/conditioning led to the anxiety, maybe not, but let’s table that for now and focus only on what happens when the emotion itself is experienced.
First, there will likely be some kind of bodily sensation—maybe a tightness in the chest, a contraction of some kind, a raised heart rate, etc. As the sensation is felt, it will seem almost simultaneous that the mind labels it: “emotion” / “anxiety.” Right off the bat, the sensation is no longer just a sensation. It’s no longer simply what’s happening, THIS appearing exactly how it is. Now it’s some-thing that has been labeled and categorized as “anxiety.” If we stop right there, there’s still not a problem, but the mind usually doesn’t stop there.
Next, mind brings the judgment. It says this sensation/emotion called “anxiety” is “bad” or “unwanted.” Mind/ego loves judgment because judgment validates its existence. It validates the story of a “me” that needs to fix something out there in order to be okay, which keeps the story alive, keeps the whole charade going.
Once the sensation has been labeled “bad,” next comes the seeking/desire to get rid of it—> “what’s wrong with me?”… “ifiwassuchapeacefulspiritualpersoniwouldn’tfeelthisway”…”howdoigetbacktofeelingpeaceful?”…”i’llnevergetit”…”i’mgoingtofeellikeshitforever.”
Sound familiar?
This is how a little passing weather, a little bit of rain, gets turned into big suffering. The labeling, judgment, and seeking happens so quickly you may not notice it’s happening. If you look only at the weather, at the sensation itself, ignoring everything mind has to say about it, you will see the actual sensation is neutral. Harmless. It’s only the labels/narrative wrapped around the emotion that turn it into a problem, something broken that needs to be fixed. The moment it’s turned into something that needs to be fixed, you are rocketed out of the NOW, out of awareness/THIS/peace, and into some projected future where mind says you will find the peace you are looking for. But that can’t possibly be true, can it? Peace, THIS, can’t be anywhere other than herenow because it IS herenow. Even if a different, more pleasant emotion and/or life situation were to arise in the “future,” guess what? It would still be experienced NOW!
Believing the egoic story that says you should feel anything other than what you feel right now, in this moment, and any stories of judgment/seeking that go with it, is what obscures the peace that’s always here. Not the temporary sensation/emotion. Being at peace is about accepting and allowing yourself to feel whatever arises, even if it happens to include emotion that the mind might call “unwanted.” Without that mind story, it’s simply passing weather. (E-motion, from the Latin: to move!)
As Joan Tollifson puts it: “The wonder of life is in presence, it’s not in the scenery that happens to be showing up. That’s why you can be looking at the Grand Canyon and feel miserable, or you can be looking at trash blowing down the street and feel ecstasy.”
❤️,
KB
