Discover How Inner Peace or Pain Can Be a Choice
- Author: Meera Ishaya
Most people live in a world of pain and suffering. They’re stressed, overwhelmed, angry, anxious, or all of the above. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There is another choice: peace. Learning how to find inner peace is simpler than you might think, and it’s available right now. You just have to know where to look.
In this article, you will explore the essential principles of choosing peace over pain. You will uncover how to cultivate inner peace through practical techniques and insights that guide you back to your natural state of presence.
By understanding the dynamics of thought and awareness, you’ll learn how to still your mind, embrace acceptance, and simplify your experience. This journey will empower you to transform challenges into opportunities for growth, ultimately leading to a more joyful and fulfilling life. First, let’s delve into the inner growth that demands your attention and awarenes
The Inside Job: Understanding the Source of Peace
You may already know this: peace and happiness are an inside job. It’s not just a nice sentiment; it’s actually true.
Everything we’re looking for, we already have. We’re just looking in the wrong place. Therefore, we don’t see it or even know it’s available. The journey to find inner peace begins with this understanding.
Attention and Awareness
It’s all about where you are putting your attention, what you are aware of. We’re always aware of something, but typically we have trained our attention to focus only on thought, emotion, body sensations, other people, and the material world.
Quietly hidden in plain sight is a field of awareness, and you are that. The ‘you’ that is looking out through your eyes right now, reading these words. This ‘you’ was already there when you were a baby. The body and world around you has changed, but you remain the same.
The problem arises because we have developed the habit to think. There’s nothing wrong with thinking. However, thinking is just a part of your experience, and we’ve made it the totality. We literally live in a thought-created reality. This reality appears to be all there is. But it’s not. It’s only a fraction of our complete experience.
You just need to retrain the mind so you can be alert and attentive and come back to the Presence mode of operation. This is a crucial step in learning how to find inner peace.
Presence vs. Thinking
Presence is our original mode of operation. It’s powerful, infinite, unlimited, and peaceful. Presence is peaceful because it’s natural and requires no effort. Thinking, on the other hand, requires an immense amount of effort. Learning how to find inner peace involves shifting from constant thinking to a state of presence.
Thinking is the content which exists in and passes through a field of pure awareness, the context. We are that which is aware of thought. Unfortunately, we have learned to identify with thought, so we are governed by it. We aren’t free to choose what we want. There are limited choices, but we are often doomed to repeat the same choices and behaviors again and again. That is, until we recognize that we are more than that. Not just as a concept, but as a direct living experience.
The Power of Presence
The good news is, there is another way. You just need to retrain the mind so you can be alert and attentive and come back to the Presence mode of operation. This is a crucial step in learning how to find inner peace.
You could look at it this way: Thinking is like using hand tools to renovate a house. Presence is like using power tools. You can complete the task, but it takes a lot longer and uses up much more energy. Another example is: thinking is like driving your car with the handbrake partially applied, you can still drive it, but the wear and tear is eventually going to make the car unusable. Presence is like free-wheeling down a hill, effortless, easy, and much faster as well as being a lot more fun.
Finding Inner Peace at Work
Yes! Work can actually be fun. We all have times when we enjoy what we do. But what about the tedious tasks and those jobs we just don’t like? When I’m operating from Presence, I get a huge amount done without using up energy, and I enjoy every moment. No matter what I’m doing. When there’s no thinking, there’s no problem. You have to think to conjure up a problem. There are challenges, yes. But they don’t feel like a problem when there are no thoughts about them.
You may not believe this to be true. That’s because you are thinking about it and your mind will come to a conclusion based on past experiences. In order to experience this for yourself, you will need to still the mind so you can access Presence. This is a crucial step in learning how to find inner peace.
Suffering stops because we are no longer referring to the past to inform our senses. The experience of this moment is pure, clear, and untainted by any concept or belief. This is the ultimate goal of learning how to find inner peace.
Stilling the Mind: A Gateway to Inner Peace
It’s actually really easy to still the mind. This is because it’s natural and it’s our birthright. All we need is a technique to redirect the attention onto the still, silent backdrop of pure awareness. I often relate this to the way our vision works. In order to have a clear point of focus, we need to have a strong peripheral vision. It’s the same with Awareness. We need to have a strong peripheral awareness to see our point of focus clearly. Clearly equals wide awareness, which is experienced as gentle, peaceful, and joyful.
The still, silent field of awareness does not move or change. It is wide and expansive and acts like an anchor. A bit like an ocean. When the waves are turbulent and chaotic on the surface, there is a stillness in the silent depths of the ocean. When we retrain our attention to incorporate the still, silent backdrop of pure awareness, our experience is anchored in the depths of our being, calm and stable.
Ascension Techniques
The techniques I practice and teach are called Ascension Attitudes as taught by The Bright Path Ishayas. They are simple, easy, and incredibly effective. We often refer to these techniques as being beyond meditation. This is because they are mechanical in nature, so they automatically draw our attention inward onto the still, silence of pure awareness. Even if we don’t believe they will.
They are structured in such a way that just by thinking the technique, the focus is naturally drawn away from thinking back onto the still field of awareness. This happens immediately, as the Ascension techniques are very powerful and quickly reestablish our attention back onto awareness where life is experienced in its purity. The experience is calm, contented, fulfilling, and clear. With persistence and repetition, the original mode of operation is stabilized and we are able to function much more smoothly and easily.
The way to stop resisting is by accepting what is happening, is what is happening. To agree with reality for a moment, so we can stop fighting and work with the circumstances we have been presented with.
The End of Suffering
Living from a state of Presence is gentle, rich, and delightful. More importantly, suffering ceases and we are freed up to be much more creative and efficient. Suffering stops because we are no longer referring to the past to inform our senses. The experience of this moment is pure, clear, and untainted by any concept or belief. This is the ultimate goal of learning how to find inner peace.
Suffering only happens when we resist. Yes, you read that correctly. Put another way, resistance causes suffering. It’s never the thing we are resisting which causes the pain, but our reaction to it. I learned this the hard way, when pain became so intense I had no choice but to let go. Like picking up a hot coal, it’s so painful we automatically open our hands and let the hot coal fall away.
Acceptance
The way to stop resisting is by accepting what is happening, is what is happening. To agree with reality for a moment, so we can stop fighting and work with the circumstances we have been presented with. This is often hard to actually put into practice. This is because acceptance has been redefined as being something you have to put up with. That isn’t what acceptance is at all.
In accepting something is the way it is, we free up our creativity and intuition, making change easier and more likely. A great stepping stone to acceptance is acknowledgment. If we can acknowledge what is happening it takes away the top layer of resistance and naturally leads to acceptance. Acceptance purifies our perception and creates space. Space to see things more clearly, and the space to choose to make an effective change which solves or improves the situation.
Simplicity: The Final Step to Inner Peace
The more we learn to accept and allow, the more we tap into creativity and intuition. If you break everything down into bite-size pieces, it makes everything easier and much less stressful. Keep things simple. Work with the natural flow and address things one at a time. This simplicity is a crucial aspect of how to find inner peace.
Come back into the room you’re in and be where your body is. Notice what you can see in the room. Pay attention for a moment to take it all in. Notice what you can hear in the room, then beyond to the rest of the building and outside it. Then notice the sensations of what you are in touch with. The chair or ground supporting you, the clothes you are wearing, the feel of air on your skin. What happens as you pay attention? You may notice everything has quietened and calmed down.
An even easier approach to keep things simple, bite-size, and easy for me is using a meditation technique such as Ascension to re-establish a fuller awareness which stills the mind and allows me to instantly be present. It’s much faster and easier to apply when you have a lot of work to complete. You don’t have to stop to access peace. An eyes-closed practice cultivates and stabilizes a new foundation in peace. Then you can use it eyes open to bring your attention back when thinking takes over again.
This keeps my life, my work, and my experience, simple, gentle, easy, peaceful, joyful, and fulfilling. By following these steps and practices, as shown in the image below, you too can learn how to find inner peace and transform your life.
Connect with me on YouTube or explore my books to deepen your journey toward inner peace and understanding.
Meera Ishaya
Meera Ishaya is an insightful author known for her transformative books, including Peace or Pain: Discovering the Unbroken You and Changing Your Relationship with Pain, Surrender is Good for the Soul: The Art of Surrendering to Gain Fulfillment in Life, and Peace or Pain Workbook and Journal. Her writings focus on personal growth, emotional well-being, and the art of surrendering to achieve fulfillment.
In addition to her books, Meera shares guided meditations and video shorts on her YouTube channel, providing valuable resources for those seeking inner peace.
