Do you know what it is you’re looking for in your life? It’s a strange question to ask, but what’s stranger still is that we often don’t have any idea how to answer the question. The closest we can come is often some version of, “I’m looking for something different from what I have; something that will make me feel better than I do right now.”
When you feel you’ve lost something (let’s say your keys), where do you start to look for it? Probably in the place that seems most logical. If you don’t find it there, you’re likely to look in the next logical place. You’ll keep looking in places that seem logical until you run out of them. Even then, you may hesitate to look in what strikes you as a place you wouldn’t logically have left your keys.
It’s only when you open the refrigerator and find your keys on the shelf, exactly where you left them when you were putting away groceries, that the value of looking somewhere you’d dismissed as illogical is revealed.
As different as we may seem to one another, the strange thing is, whatever name we give to it, what all of us are looking for is essentially the same thing. We’re looking for a sense of peace and well-being. And if we think about it at all, we’re likely to believe attaining peace and well-being will be a long, hard search.
It’s funny how many of us are unable to name the thing we long for, but here’s a question that might make it clearer to you: if you had an abiding sense of peace and well-being, would it even occur to you to want the things you believe will make you happy once you get them?
The different partner/job/house/circumstances/object/life may give you a temporary taste of the peace and well-being you were born with, but maybe you’ve noticed that after the novelty of getting that thing you believed would solve everything wears off, and it tends to happen quickly, the old longing returns. So most of us spend our lives in a cycle of seeking and resisting: we resist the experience we’re having at this moment, and we seek something else, something different.
This is how we confine our search for peace or happiness to the world outside of us (relationships, activities, experiences, substances, objects). It seems like the logical place to look, but no matter how long and hard we look, we don’t find it there. But that doesn’t stop us from continuing to look in the wrong direction, outside of ourselves.
It’s like saying, “I’ll look to my life circumstances to see what’s wrong with my life.” This seems to make sense initially. Except that, however much it may seem otherwise, the circumstances of your life, whatever they may be, are not the problem.
The life you experience is a result of the feelings you have as you go through life. And those feelings are a direct reflection, a physical manifestation, of the thoughts you’re thinking, and how seriously you take those thoughts.
Here’s another way to say essentially the same thing: if you’re unhappy with your life, the circumstances of your life are not to blame. You are unhappy (which is another way of saying you’re missing peace and well-being) because your view of life isn’t supporting you.
What is a view of life that supports you? Think about it: is the unhappiness, the lack of peace and well-being you may be experiencing really a function of the world outside of you? If you’re experiencing unhappiness as a feeling within you, can it really be solved by attending to the world outside of you?
Looking inward is usually confused with rifling through the inventory of your personal psychology. That’s not where peace is to be found. The biggest answers that provide the most relief never come from within your personal psychology. Looking to your personal psychology puts the focus on what you believe is wrong with you, rather than allowing you to see the peace that’s always already there, underneath your personal psychology
Whoever you are, whatever has happened to you, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that deepest part of you, the part where peace and well-being live. I can say that categorically because that part of me, you, and everyone can’t be hurt, can’t be damaged, can’t be traumatized, can’t be destroyed. That’s the place where peace and well-being live. You only find it by letting yourself go quiet. Why do you think peace and quiet are often used in the same phrase? The answer is simple: Because they’re the same thing.
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