How meditation helps with inner peace

What is peace actually? A quick glance into the Thesaurus will inform us that peace is a feeling of tranquility, when we are not in any way disturbed or perturbed.

If you ask most people what they truly want with life, the answer will most likely be money or fame; but the woke person will say, they want peace! Now what is peace? Are we at peace, as individuals, as a society? Are we at peace with ourselves? Makes you ponder, right!

Let's read how meditation helps with inner peace(pexels)

What is peace actually? A quick glance into the Thesaurus will inform us that peace is a feeling of tranquility, when we are not in any way disturbed or perturbed. Do you agree that you are in fact not disturbed by external scenarios, other people or your own thoughts? I doubt anyone can truly be at peace with the pressures of the modern era and the technological age.

On a particular morning you might be feeling chirpy and vivacious, but then you open your Facebook page and see your ex has hooked up with a supermodel! Or your high school sweetheart married your best friend of yore! These situations disturb you; you bang the computer shut or just swipe the page but you cannot shake off the unpleasantness. Why? Why does the outside world affect us so? Why do we get so affected? Most importantly, can we stop feeling all these negative emotions through external stimuli? What do we do?

The vaccine to this malaise is inner peace! If we possess this elusive inner peace, we can deal with any external challenges without it destroying us. This inner peace is elusive because none of us actually spend time cultivating it. The minute we hear meditation helps with inner peace, that’s it, we’ve lost interest. Who wants to spend copious amounts of time holding posture, position and breathing? That’s such a time waste, right?

Maybe, maybe not! Isn’t breathing something we do unconsciously? Isn’t it the breath that keeps us alive? Then maybe it’s not such wild speculation to presume that conscious breathing can indeed be greatly beneficial in controlling the life force, give us more energy and make us more productive.

Awareness is always the game-changer, for once we become aware of situations, habits and things we can make a conscious effort to reprogram ourselves for optimum efficiency. My point is that awareness or focus can calm the mind, it can help you connect to the NOW, the present moment.

The present is all there is, don’t you see? It’s tangible as it’s happening now no matter whether it is pleasant or unpleasant. The "now" commands us to react and often we find ourselves “reacting” more than “acting”! Our reactions to negative experiences elicit anger, fear, sadness, whereas with positive experiences we feel a sense of validation, or excitement or pleasure. In both cases, be it positive or negative the emotions are temporary, not permanent. They are like waves that will ultimately crash on the shore of our consciousness. Which makes us realize every moment, every experience is like that wave. It will surely come crashing down. One minute you’re euphoric, the next minute you’re in the dumps and you find yourself ricocheting from emotion to emotion which in turn drains all your inner equilibrium.

When you’re swinging wildly like a pendulum, peace is a slippery slope. You can lose balance and fall down the slope at any moment. Then what to do? Stop swinging like a yo-yo and augur your core energy. This is called Grounding, when you feel safe and everything seems okay. From that state of grounding, you need to develop awareness. If meditation is not your thing, just practice the art of gazing at a dot. Draw a red dot on a piece of stick-it and put it at eye-level. Then wear loose clothes and sit comfortably. Then gaze at this red dot for as long as you can, even if your eyes hurt temporarily. This gazing will help you remain focused in the present and when you’re grounded in the now, you have the ability to accept your fate. This gazing practice builds clarity and helps you gain a better perspective on life. This helps you adjust better with yourself and others around you. Once you have an open mind and focused clarity, you can deal better with the world and its stimuli. This brings inner peace!

Stress is eating away at us, our hopes, our dreams and our creativity and when we discover inner peace, we come in the presence of serenity and we can maintain our composure and not be overwhelmed by physical and mental stress. You can take Xanax and a hundred other Big Pharma drugs, but remember that material solutions are only temporary. You will have to find a way to tune into the state of bliss and peace that is infinite and is within you, and yes, no matter how grossed out you feel, meditation is the best long-term solution. Mental tranquility equals inner peace. it’s simple really. The body is after all controlled by the brain, so any physical or emotional distress can easily be controlled by mindfulness and meditation, so bend your course inwards to reflect on how you can find the direction towards inner peace. First and foremost, stop harboring grudges and negative thoughts about people. Let it go and stop agonizing about your future or lamenting about your past. What’s gone and done is over and what is about to come, let it remain a mystery.

What you have is this moment, as your eyes gaze through these words. Do you understand that being present in the now is possibly the most natural state of being for human beings, but somehow this idea has been perverted. How many of us can remain in the "now"? Not struggling against your situation and circumstances in the present moment are counter-intuitive. Why resist? Not accepting only adds to suffering, instead figure out what needs to change and implement these changes. It’s not as easy as it sounds, right? Confusion leads to agitation and melancholy, but a prepared mind can transform confusion into choices and necessary action.

Preparation of the mind is a by-product of meditation as it shifts our perspective from turbulence to stillness. Stillness is the condition where no force is found to be agitating. This stillness is the gift of meditation and is the secret ingredient of inner peace. Add a dash of stillness to the turbulent mind and stir, et voila, you have inner peace!

Gazing at that red dot described above is a way to counter the chattering of the monkey brain. Yet, while gazing you’ll notice that thoughts appear, so then what is the point if thoughts appear anyway? Don’t worry about the thoughts, they’re like clouds that move across our conscious mind and watch them go by without concentrating on them. You’ll see, they’re here now and gone the next minute! Poof! Like they were never here to begin with!

The gazing prepares you for mindfulness and watchfulness. It gives you the emotional endurance to weather any storm created by thoughts or external stimuli. Train the mind repeatedly to find value in this instant. Meditation also trains the willpower to choose thoughts with some modicum of understanding on whether those thoughts will agitate or provide serenity.

These practices will not only cement us as fully functional and happy citizens of society, but will help us ace interpersonal relationships and take them to a whole new level, so let the inner peace happen! I mean, come on, we don’t have all day!

The article has been authored by Tina Mukerji, a soul guide working with Astrology, Tarot, Psychism, Yoga, Tantra, Breathwork and Mantras. She works to discover the inherent archetypes, by studying astrological charts.