PROBABLY love and joy’s companion, peace, is the most misunderstood of the three and the one that we seek most. There are many ways in which we believe we can find peace. Most of us would say that a suspension of world hostilities would probably rate as the main objective for achieving it.

We believe that peace can be experienced by the elimination of many annoyances in our daily life – if our rowdy neighbors would only stop their arguing or turn down the volume of their music, if the kids would shut up for a minute, if the person using the leaf blower would drop dead, if our daily work load wasn’t so hectic and so on.

As with our concept of love and joy, our experience of peace and quiet relies on something happening out there, someone or something must stop the annoying disturbance, which is not really peace at all, but only a desire, that if achieved, will give us pleasure. There it is again, that same old sneaky pleasure prancing about in yet another disguise.

We need to stop being a seeker of peace and become a finder. Peace can only be found within, it will never be found on the outside, with anything happening – or not happening – although most of us spend a great deal of our lives vainly searching for it out there.

In reality, it is not you who is searching for peace anyway – you don’t have to – you already have it – you just have to find it within. It is the ego that is doing the seeking and it always searches outside where it can never be found.

Why? Peace is not a commodity, you can’t have it, it is not an acquisition or an emotion, so it cannot be made into an image, labeled and stored in the egos library of the past for later reference when an event happens out there.

So when the ego searches for peace, it rummages frantically through its library looking for it, but the only images it can find that resemble peace in any way, is the images of pleasures from the past, which even though they are inadequate, are opted for instead, which is a poor substitute for peace.

The ego is very sly and only puts on the appearance of a genuine search, in reality, the ego doesn’t want peace at all, it wants pleasure. The ego cannot survive in a world (inner or outer) that is peaceful. The ego thrives on drama – in fact drama is a necessity that gives the ego the illusion of being alive.

It loves to be at war with something. The war against terrorism: The war against crime and drugs: The war against cancer: The war against poverty and so on. Whilst the ego is in control of our lives, we will never experience peace. There will always be strife in our world. That is the egos way!

The degree of peace that you see out there in the big wide world is exactly the same degree of inner peace that you experience. There is no difference because it is your inner self that dictates what the world you see is like. Change yourself and you change your world!

Peace is the easiest of the three to examine. We are face to face with peace (or more commonly, the lack of it) in the world every day of our lives, partnered with the feelings of peace (or more commonly, the lack of it) that are down there inside our gut.

Those feelings of edginess, disquiet, depression, uncomfortableness etc are symptoms of our lack of inner peace. Those riots, wars, marches, protests and crimes are the symptoms of the lack of peace in the world.

Both inner and outer are the same. Those of us who experience some degree of inner peace will see a world that is fairly quiet and stable. Those, who have no inner peace at all, will see a world full of turmoil and unrest. There are many degrees between those two extremes. What is your degree of peace?

We can never achieve peace by changing anything out there. If we identify with something in the world that we believe is wrong and we march in protest against it, or go to war over it, or try to eliminate it, kill it or complain to others about it, we must become aware that all of these feelings of wrongness in the world comes from within us, not from out there.

Out there is only a reflection, a mirror of what’s inside of you. The place to work is inside your own mind. Become consciously aware of how unhappy and lacking in peace you really are, realizing at the same time that you are doing it all to yourself, not someone or something else that you are trying to blame. The cause of it all is your identification with the ego.

Love, Joy and Peace are your eternal states of being. They are who you really are. There is nothing wrong with this world or the ego. They are here for a purpose. They allow you to gain a contrast to who you really are – To experience the opposites so as to gain a better appreciation of your eternal true nature. You just have to become consciously aware of that truth.

This means of course, that in reality, everything is going along exactly to plan, even though you do not realize it at the moment. You are learning the lessons of life… All is well in your world!

Dan’s Quote: “Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.”- Buddha

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