How to get Peace of Mind?
People spend their entire life,
Peace of mind to find.
Alas! They don't realize the truth…
The thief is their own Mind.
We human beings are searching for peace of mind, but it is the mind itself that steals our peace. By constantly producing thoughts, the mind is creating stress, worry, and anxiety. In fact, in the beginning, we are very peaceful. Recall those days when you were a child. You had all the peace of mind that you could dream of. Then what happened? Then came alive the rascal mind and stole your peace away. It produced so many thoughts that eventually, your peace broke into pieces!
We all want peace of mind. Then, why do we lose our peace? What causes turbulence in our still life? We human beings are designed in a manner that we have 5 senses. Our eyes, nose, ears, tongue, and skin are constantly sensing and triggering thoughts. Each sense creates ripples in our still life. It creates desires and may also cause jealousy or other negative emotions like anger to erupt. What do these negative emotions do? They rob our peace of mind. How do we control our senses? We must learn to tame them. We must learn to discipline our senses so that they can help us live a happier life, rather than cause stress, worry and anxiety. There will be times when we are able to tame our senses, but the monkey mind will not sit still. It will still create ripples of thought that will disturb our peace and tranquillity. Somehow, we grow up believing that it is these desires of the body and mind that will make us achieve happiness. We don't realize that we were already in a state of peace and bliss. When the body and mind create ripples of excitement, we disturb our peace, the very foundation of our happiness.
Sometimes we fulfill our desires and feel a sense of achievement and the peace returns. But that peace was already there. We had momentarily lost it, creating ripples of desire, excitement, and achievement. After all that, we only returned to our original state of Ananda, Divine peace that we were already experiencing before.
It is our foolishness to lose our peace of mind and crave and desire. We are ignorant about the truth that peace is the foundation of happiness. Where there is no peace, there can be no joy and bliss. Therefore, creating turbulence in our life for achievements only makes us go round and round in circles where we first lose our peace of mind and then restore it.
Those who are blessed to understand the importance of peace as the very foundation of happiness, do not become slaves to their desires. Unlike those who crave till their grave, they don't let their need become their greed. They try to create peace in their mind as they discipline their senses and faculty of thought. How do they do it?
The mind is constantly producing thoughts. These aggressive thoughts create a lot of anxiety which steals our peace. It is like throwing several rocks on a still lake and creating many ripples that disturb the calmness that prevailed. Unless we stop this agitation in the mind, we will never be able to create the stillness that is needed to be peaceful.
To attain Peace of mind is not difficult, if only we realize the truth about how we can achieve that state. If we program our life and live it with contentment and fulfillment, we will largely be peaceful. If we realize that life is not a race, for us to chase and be an ace, then we can live with grace, with peace and tranquillity. It is not impossible to live a peaceful life. But this is only possible if we make the 'monkey' mind into a 'monk'.
The moment the mind stops jumping like a monkey from thought to thought, creating ripples that destroy our peace, we can regain our tranquility. If we make the monkey into a monk by silencing the mind, by reducing this constant thinking, rather than worrying, craving, hoping, and desiring, we can reach that point of stillness where we will experience Divine peace. It is for us to realize that it is the mind that robs our peace.
Today, the whole world is talking about meditation. They believe it is some magical way of attaining peace and tranquillity. What they don't realize is that true meditation is not about sitting in some fancy posture and doing some exercises of the body and mind. True meditation is making the mind still, using any method that can calm the mind. It doesn't matter how we bring the mind to a halt. What matters is to stop the aggression, and this is what true meditation does. Those who succeed in meditation attain a state of peace and tranquillity. They contemplate a thought and experience bliss that comes from being conscious of their Divinity within. While it seems easy, the problem is that most of us do not know what peace of mind truly is and how we can attain that state of blissful tranquillity.
How does one attain peace of mind? One must become conscious of the truth. We human beings live in ignorance, and because of this, we lose our peace and tranquility. We believe in the myth and this hides the truth. This is the main cause for the mind to be agitated. If we want to overcome the agitation of the mind, we must evolve into that state of consciousness where we become the witness, the observer, and we watch the mind jump from thought to thought. This is consciousness and this is guaranteed to give us peace.
IN A NUTSHELL