What is your IP (Inner Peace) Feeling.....

 

To begin with, sorry for not writing an article last Sunday. Some of my readers actually mentioned it to me, that tells me that you all are reading and looking forward to the articles. That makes me feel good. Thank you for that. It was busy work with customer visits, so had to get all the things in order. Customer liked our facility and gave us Kudos making it all worth it.

Back to the blog, one of my peeps and friend asked me about Inner peace. I thought I would take this opportunity to write about what I think about Inner Peace since it is directly related to happiness (if there is any difference).

Throughout human history, great lives have graced this earth and talked about Inner Peace. From the great Rishi Munis (saints) of subcontinent to Buddha to Tao to Plato, everyone has taken a dig at it and lived their lives exemplifying inner peace. They have gone deep into meditations and found out answers to the worlds sorrows and given us a guide line to attain inner peace. BUT, those guide lines and their thought structure is hard to understand for people like me. As a matter of fact, when I read some of their teachings, they seemed much harder than trigonometry and calculus.

I am not going to write about what they thought inner peace was. The greats have already dissected and given a manual for that. I am not at that level. As a mere mortal, I would like to convey my idea of inner peace and what I do to attain it from time to time.

Inner peace to me is sleeping peacefully at night. It is sleeping like a child without anxiety, fear and regret. It is a feeling that runs through your body at different times during the day. It is a feeling when you finally find a clean restroom when you had to go for 4 hours but couldn’t because you kept on stopping at rest areas in western Nebraska. It is a feeling when you see your loved one home safely when you just saw that accident on the road they travel. It is the feeling you get on the last day at work before going to your dream destination. It is a feeling……….

There are two things about feelings you need to know:

a)      Feeling is a physical sensation.  You feel an emotion in your body or a thought in your body and that is why it is called a feeling. Everyone here has had butterflies in stomach or sinking heart or heart pumping faster during different events in their lives. What is that? It is your body reacting to your thoughts. It is a feeling to your thoughts….

b)      Just like thoughts can change feelings, feelings can change the thoughts as well. Diving into science, just as sound creates vibration, vibration can create sound. You cannot feel happy and think sad at the same time.

Inner peace is a feeling and works the same way. Instead of focusing on mind and thoughts and controlling them, you can actually control your body’s reactions which will lead to correct thoughts to maintain the inner peace. For me, inner peace has always felt like my heart is smiling. It has always been a sensation at center of my heart. Whenever I am feeling inner peace, there is a certain vibration that is being felt in heart area. Over time, I have got aquantied with what inner peace feels like in different parts of my body. So when I get bogged down by the external reality and understand that my mind is going down the sad track, I focus my concentration on my heart area. The more I focus there, the more awareness is created of its existence. The heightened awareness emits the vibration that gives me inner peace. As soon as heart area attains a certain vibration, my thoughts start changing. And more and more peaceful and calming thoughts start emerging in my head. This leads me to momentary inner peace. Then it is up to me to control the timing of it. It’s a continuous improvement on attaining longer periods of inner peace. This all sounds simple, because it is!!

So what should I do? For starters, start observing your feelings. Throughout the day, you are bombarded by a lot of thoughts and feelings. Observe feelings that make you at peace. Observe every aspect of that feeling. How does it feel in your heart area? What thoughts arise when you feel it? May be certain music triggered it, or a memory triggered it……etc. Once you have observed and recorded that feeling, try to recreate it as many times as possible. Whenever your mind is in chaos, try to focus on your heart area. Let the awareness of your heart take over.  Try to trigger the feeling you have recorded. It will be a little difficult at first, but more you try it, you will start getting better at it and soon you will be at a point where you will be able to experience momentary inner peace whenever you want it.

Inner peace is not something to be attained at the end of 20 years meditation or by living a complete astute life for 38 years. Inner peace is something that you can achieve right here right now. As a matter of fact, you already feel it several times a day. You just need to be a little observant and start playing with it.