Lack of safety puts us in fear. And when we are in fear, we enter survival mode. This often triggers a fight or flight response propelling us to run forward, fast, sometimes even manically, toward a safer, better future. Whether our idea of that better future rests upon us having more, or being better, essentially what we really want is to experience the sense of safety and peace that we imagine will unfold when we get there.
But here is the thing, we live with five main misconceptions that prevent us from experiencing peace.
It’s an experience, not a thing. The peace is not in the career milestone, bigger house, the loving relationship, it’s in how we feel. What we are after is an experience, a felt-sense—not a thing.
It’s not in the future, it’s here. It’s available right now. And only right now. There’s no peace in the future, because anything we experience, we can only experience now. Paradoxically, when we’re fearful, we are always future-oriented.
It’s not without, it’s within. Peace is within. We don’t get it when, we already have it.
It’s not in changing, it’s in accepting. We feel peace not when we change what is, but when we accept what is.
It’s not in accumulating, it’s in removing. We experience it when we remove all that’s standing on the way, beginning with the misconceptions about what we actually are looking for.
We’re not finding what we want to find because we don’t know we’re looking for it.