Inner Peace and Serenity
May 10th, 2011
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by admin · Filed Under: Blog · Faith · Prayer · Spiritual Health · healing
In the Matthew Arnold poem, Empedocles on Etna, he says, “We would have inward peace, but we will not look within.”
We are spiritual beings, bringing with us a life to unfold, power to release, love to express, and a pool of peaceful serenity at the heart of it. The root of reality is really within. It is the core of our being. Living life at the circumference, living superficially, we get all caught up in tension and hurry and rush . . . and in emptiness.
A key to serenity is the word “surrender.” In Semitic languages the word “shalom” means peace, or surrender, and there is no more appropriate form of greeting than “I surrender to you.” We have thought of surrender as coming at the close of a struggle, but the idea of “shalom” is a spiritual state that promotes brotherhood, and thus it comes first. Shalom!
True serenity is manifest in the person who has surrendered to life, not in the sense of being defeated by life and thus imbued with futility, but rather someone who has let life happen, who does not try to “unhappen” it. Then he or she can deal with a happening at the level of his or her own need, and find a growth experience through it.
Another important requisite to serenity, to inner peace, is the determination of each person to live his or her own life. When a person conceives life as seeking in the world that which will fill his or her emptiness, (s)he becomes totally “other-directed;” then the person is happy and serene when people and circumstances seem to suggest these conditions, and unhappy when the world is in confusion.
One’s moods and feelings and sensations – one’s total consciousness – may be likened to a barometer that simply records atmospheric conditions. You could say that one has an antennae out, to inform one what is happening and how one is supposed to act and react; and he or she rarely feels composed and peaceful and serene. The need is to change the other-directed pattern to one that is inner-directed. One must cultivate the “Silence,” take time at the start of each day to meditate, to get in tune, to feel the inner guidance working.
In the Bhagavad-Gita we are told: “The man of unstable mind hath no knowledge of the self, nor hath he an insight of meditation. To him who hath no inner vision there is no peace, and without peace, whence comes joy?”
The art of peace and serenity is the art of being before doing. Doing can be truly successful and personally enriching only if it is built on being. Develop the art of doing nothing, in a sense. This is the art of being. Joseph Pieper once said, “Leisure is not only the occasion, but also the capacity, for steeping oneself in the whole of creation.” Many of us feel insecure because we have not cultivated the art of being, the art of knowing oneness with the whole of life, the art of being simply in the flow of life.
For many of us, doing is totally other-directed. We do what we are expected to do, that which outer experiences call upon us to do. When we have nothing to do, we can feel secure only if we are inner-directed. A useful test is to take time to turn off your television, your radio, your cell phone, your computer, close the doors and windows, get away from other people, and just sit alone, for perhaps ten minutes. Now, how do you feel? Serene and peaceful? Often the busy, busy person is really running away from inner emptiness.
Robert Louis Stevenson once observed: “Extreme busy-ness – whether in school, college, church, or market – is a symbol of deficient vitality. It is no good speaking to such folk, for they cannot be idle; their nature is not generous enough.”
When we know that life is an inward-out process, we know in times of challenge that the need is to get turned on from within. Instead of rushing and fuming and fretting, or resisting and fighting, the need is to be still and meditate on the Source of all good. This kind of meditation is not a prayer to do something, to achieve something, or even to think something. The Infinity of good is always where we are; we need simply to discover it, to establish a unity of consciousness with it, to get into the flow of it, and to let it turn us on. A person who begins his or her day with this kind of meditation-preparation, this inward stillness, is going to have a happy, profitable, orderly, and inner-directed day.
The key to serenity and power is the awareness of that Source of light and power within us; it is our own Divinity. So take time to meditate, to be. Then you will do things effectively, in peace and serenity.
Remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now,
Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham
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Rev. Alan Rowbotham, a Unity minister for over thirty-nine years, invites you to enjoy more articles and/or subscribe to his free inspirational newsletter, “Spiritual Solutions,” at www.spiritualsolutionsblog.com
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