Peace
"Peace is not something you wish for; It's something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away" - John Lennon
Photo by @christianw
We are now looking at impediments to Being. The clue that you are not in control of your being is when what you say doesn’t happen (which is the practice we introduced a few chapters ago).
Now, assuming you have started getting some great ideas on stuff you would like to do (things that you didn’t need to do). You may see that, at times, you don’t end up doing the thing you chose to do. There may be many valid reasons for this, but consider that not-doing is a symptom of weak creation muscles.
Technically, you can say that your integrity (again from a previous chapter) is high if what you say happens mostly, and low if what you say seldom happens. Integrity, in this book, is not a moral term, you do not become a bad person if you have low Integrity. It is just a measure of how well you and your life fit. We will discuss Integrity in detail later.
Didn’t get time or Didn’t feel like it
One possible reason you didn’t do what you chose is because you didn’t get time or you didn’t feel like it. Both these reasons are actually the same, and the root cause is usually a lack of peace.
Peace
Many people have the misconception that people don’t have peace because they have so much work to do. The truth though, is that many people keep working because they are not at peace.
Peace is the mindset that I am ok and I will continue to be ok.
Logically, If I feel I am not ok, or that there is a chance I won’t be ok, then I will do something to either fix the problem or distract me from the problem. Not doing anything will just increase my stress and in some cases become intolerable.
The Three Truths
Not feeling like doing something, or not making time for it is a symptom of a lack of peace. Lack of Peace is usually because we have forgotten 3 fundamental truths.
I am enough
I have enough
There is nowhere to reach
I am enough
The opposite of I-am-enough is I-am-not-enough, which can be interpreted in myriad ways, I will list the 2 most common (mis?)-interpretations.
One interpretation of I-am-not-enough is that “I have got here by luck and I need to work really hard to survive”. It immediately creates the stress required to work really hard, ALL.THE.TIME. The other common interpretation is that “where I am in life is not enough and I need to work harder so that I become enough of a person”. Again, this forces you into action and puts you in alert mode for any danger lurking around the corner that could derail your plans.
This may sound awesome. It would push you to accomplish what you mean to accomplish, right?.
While it does help you achieve amazing accomplishments, the question you need to ask is at what cost? Remember that What you seek is what you will find. When you are seeking reasons why you are not enough, you will find them. Life, then, becomes a constant search and fix operation. Fix your weight, fix your nose, fix the way you talk, fix, fix, fix.
If you need to be fixed ? then you are _______.
Fill in the blanks. Did you say a synonym of broken ? You could spend your whole life fixing but you will remain broken. Your way of being will be that you are broken. Being the victim, being powerless, being depressed (not the clinical term) all stem from being broken.
Remember that all this is subconscious self talk which you are not aware of, but which drives your moods and feelings, which ultimately drives actions. They are self-fulfilling.
if you believe you are not enough, you will be.
I have enough
The opposite of “I-have-enough” is “I-need-more”. This is “beating the joneses” at a subconscious level.
When you are being “I-need-more” nothing will satisfy you. In fact you will find fault with everything. Your house, your spouse, your coworkers, anything that is yours to find fault about.
A human being has nutrition needs, shelter needs, emotional needs. These needs are not the problem. The problem is that the mind slowly raises the definition of these needs. That’s why teenagers “need” cell-phones. They believe that without a cell-phone they will die.
Collecting Junk
Another side-effect of “I-need-more” is that we start collecting junk. We start adding things to our life that we don’t really need (because we subconsciously feel we do). This is what Marie Kondo is really talking about. It’s not about the mess around you. It’s the mess inside that makes you need more and more and more.
There is nowhere to reach
There is only one destination, each and everyone of us has to reach. That is our death. Your life is right now. You don’t need to get anywhere else. There is no finish line.
The moment you feel “I need to achieve this” or “I should have become that” means you have forgotten that there is nowhere else to reach.
Just trying to make a living
Most billionaires got to where they are by just trying to make a living.
In the beginning all billionaires were simply trying to pay rent. Yet what they added to it was curiosity “can I do better?”. They did not start with a multi-billion dollar deadline - “I will be a billionaire by x years”. Life doesn’t happen that way. It happens in the moment, being the best version of you and being curious how you can be better.
It really is so simple. Just be where you are and express yourself in your work.
Should we not have ambition ?
Depending on your bent of mind, you may have interpreted this whole article as yet another reason to not be ambitious. That is not what I am trying to say. (if that came to your mind, a good question to ask is, why do you dislike ambition?).
Being ambitious from the perception of “I am not enough”, “I need more” or “I need to reach” is akin to a slave being whipped to accomplish a task. In order to reach your goal of being enough, you whip yourself with “you are not enough!”. Even worse, the goal may not be what you wanted! Driven by “I need more” you may have chosen something your friend wanted as your goal!!!!
On the other hand, being ambitious from the perception of the 3 truths allows you to play and be creative in the moment. It allows you to play all out as you know that you will be OK. This doesn’t mean that the game becomes less important, only that your way of being becomes playful and curious.
What if I really NEED to change my life?
The three truths don’t condone living a shitty life either. Even in a life where you are miserable you must understand that you are OK. There is nothing wrong with you and everything is not wrong with the world.
What you have is X which is OK and what you want to have is Y.
Why do you want Y ? (because you want Y). (Remember choice).
Let’s take a real life example. You have a job that makes you miserable. If you live your life under the constant pressure of I-need-to-leave-this-job, I-hate-this-job etc. Your reason for leaving becomes -
I want to leave this job because I hate it.
This is a decision. As we saw previously this gives power to your circumstance, your job in this case. Further, now that you are focused on getting a job not-like-this-one, you will see evidence that every job is exactly like this one.
The better way, then, to look at the problem is to say
“ok, this job has these aspects which I like and those that I don’t like.”
then ask yourself
“if it was not like that, how would it be ?”
For example, maybe it’s too stressful. Looking for not-stressful is not going to help because you are looking for evidence that jobs are stressful and you will find it in every job. A better yardstick is, maybe, I want to have real flexi time (not the all-the-time flexi-time thing).
Now after finding the job that you feel fits your criteria you step back and say
“I choose X job, because I choose X job”.
Solutions
This post is already quite long, so we won’t go into Creating these truths in your life, but will talk about that at length in succeeding chapters.
When we don’t believe the 3 truths, we are constantly in turmoil. There is always something to change, something to fix. There’s never enough time and real life wilts away under neglect. Where will you find time for you in this whirlwind? You don’t. Your real needs are suppressed and replaced by your manufactured needs. Later in life, when your body and mind start to complain because of your neglect, it may be too late to change.
The practice we described earlier will catch this very early on. If you are not able to do the thing you wanted to do (but had no reason to do it) then you may have no peace. To get peace, you seldom need to change the outside world, you need to change what’s inside. We will see how you can do that in succeeding chapters.
You need peace in the present, to change your future.