I’m thrilled to say Peace Talk podcast has gotten almost 10,000 downloads. Three episodes per week, only 5-7 minutes, of how to return to peace if you wing yourself out of it through stressful thinking.
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Peace Talk: peace right here and now
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Enjoy last week’s shows on death, or the one that came out today on being nervous about honest conversations with people, right here:
I would love you to review and a comment!! It would mean so much!!
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From time to time, I share that I have thoughts about quittin’ it all and going to live in a monastery.
Yeah, that’s right.
Head to Nova Scotia to live in the place Pema Chodron sometimes resides. Or figure out how to stay at Cheri Huber’s monastery.
Or what about the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky where Thomas Merton lived.
It sounds sweet. Gentle. Relaxing.
But I couldn’t do THAT. Noooo way!!! I am needed where I am, I have things to accomplish, I can’t stop now!
Right?
But do I really have to make a lot of money, finish that book, exercise, mow the lawn, do laundry, pick up the kids, pay that bill, become enlightened, etc?
Can’t I just stop?
As in, entirely.
And Do Nothing?
It’s interesting to take a look, using self-inquiry.
Pick anything at all that you believe you HAVE to do, or else. You HAVE to do in order to survive, or to have a successful life.
And you feel grabby about it. You don’t believe you have it yet, or you feel trapped and stuck. It’s eluding you.
You have to do it, or have it…..
…..is this true?
YES! It will be sooooo disappointing if I stop going to work, or give up the pursuit of success in business.
It will be a shame if I stop striving for self-realization.
If I don’t find that perfect true love, I’ll be a failure. If I don’t get published or invent the creation I’ve dreamed of, it will be terrible.
If I never have a kid, if I don’t get the perfect career, if I stop going for it….just terrible.
Are you sure?
No.
How do you react when you believe you really need to accomplish something, that you’re in hot pursuit, and that if you stop or change your intensity and give up, you’ll be a failure?
I doubt myself and my ideas.
I get all kinds of pictures of disaster, or unhappiness. Like I’ll feel regret later, in the future, if I quit “x” now. I renew efforts to get what I want. I don’t entertain the idea of stopping. I keep the fire going of “I must” and “I have to”.
And I feel tired.
I flip flop around in dreams of changing everything, and dreams of succeeding in what I’m doing now.
But who would you be without these kinds of thoughts? Without the beliefs that you must, you have to, you can’t stop, you needa push, you shouldn’t quit?
This can take a moment to imagine.
Wow, though.
Without the belief I need to get over there, instead of simply being here where I am?
I neither think of escaping in monasteries nor sticking the current thing out with no deviation.
I’m back to the present, right here.
I let go.
It’s like a surrender of everything.
There’s no control of the future, no tightness about which direction to take, no agonizing about where this life moves.
Turning the thoughts around: What is present, here and now, is what I want. Nothing more, nothing different, is required for peace.
There’s no reason to either escape or commit…unless this becomes clear as the next step of love and integrity.
“In most societies you are well rewarded for how good you are at clinging and building. If you get that model down absolutely right and behave consistently every time, you have actually ‘created’ someone. And if the someone you create is what others want and need, you can be very popular and successful….But if you’re willing to let go, you’ll fall back and it will open into an ocean of energy. You will become filled with a light that has no darkness, with a peace that passeth all understanding. You will then walk through every moment of your daily life with the flow of this inner force sustaining you, feeding you, and guiding you from deep within.” ~ Michael Singer in The Untethered Soul
All I know is, dreaming of somewhere else, something different, whether giving up or pushing on….
….both feel stressful in different ways. Both have focus in the future, not here.
Coming back to here, now, I notice I have no idea where life is going.
But it sure is fascinating.
And it’s possible to be at peace, now. Now. Now.
Much love, Grace