Another Swing at Inner Peace

I have said that inner peace is a physical phenomenon. Start with the physical sensations inside your body and hold your focus there because that's literally what inner peace is (see The Pain-Body label for more articles). And that's good advice.

But we can also look at it another way. As our good friend Eckhart Tolle puts it in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61),"Being at peace and being who you are, that is, being yourself, are one." (p. 114-115)

What we are trying to get to is feeling like ourselves again, uncluttered by ego and pain-body and any kind of background unhappiness that is common to most of us."

A recent experience brought this home to me in a personal way. I received word that an old girlfriend of mine got married, and when I found out about it I could sense that it had ignited my pain-body.

That used to generate negativity in me and maybe negative behavior. But now after a few years of whittling away at it, my pain-body is but a shadow of its former self, as the saying goes. In fact, I shouldn't even call it a pain-body anymore; it's more like an irritation-body.

Nevertheless, its re-engagement and my awareness of it only served to dissolve it even further, and this time was no different. Each time that happens it's a great feeling of perhaps limitless depth.

And I really do feel like myself more and more; more like a kid again when I was next up to bat in Little League, without a thought in my head other than to try to get a hit. Maybe we all have some image from childhood when we were completely ourselves. That's mine, pre-parental divorce.

This is an interesting process, because I thought I felt completely myself before. Is there more to go? I don't know. I'll keep you posted.

Photo Credit: nj.com

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