we experience peace. But this kind of peace occurs outside of that domain, when life hands us bologna sandwiches, not surf and turf. Or, for my readers who are vegan, tofu and kale.
Imagine you are sitting on your favorite Caribbean Island with a frosty adult beverage in your hand and your favorite romantic partner by your side. Your retirement is set, you have millions in the bank, you are healthy and vital, your children are successful in school or at work, you have the best friends in the world, and you feel . . . well, pretty freakin’ good! Satisfied, maybe even peaceful! And most everyone would say, “That’s understandable.” That is the peace that is understood by all.
But what about a peace that is beyond understanding, when things are bad? How could we possibly have peace? Wouldn’t we just be repressing our feelings? Isn’t that denial? Or just plain Pollyanna?
My dear friend Kathy, I often joke, is the most spiritual atheist I have ever met. She was diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer and, understandably, her feelings leading up to her surgery and chemotherapy were a mix of terror, anxiety, depression, and confusion. Simultaneously, her mother was on hospice, death lurking around the corner. There was no guarantee her surgery could save Kathy’s life. Like most of us, she had some difficult family relationships. Financial stability was an issue; her inability to work due to illness and the medical costs were a one-two punch in the purse. Her life was a perfect storm of bad news and tough circumstances. We would talk at length about how life would still continue, even while the crisis would move toward some resolution and her life was still right there in front of her. While I encouraged her not to avoid her painful emotions, I also reminded her that even in the worst of times, there were things to be grateful for.
One day, she called me excitedly. “I was at Whole Foods Market today,” she told me. “And I was looking at all the beautiful fresh fruits and vegetables and enjoying all the people around me shopping, and the music they were playing was just incredible, some of my favorites from the eighties. I was literally dancing down the aisles. And suddenly it dawned on me that I was happy, genuinely happy. I was amazed. How is that possible? For probably fifteen minutes, I “forgot” that my Mom had just died a month ago and that I was about to have major surgery and one of my best friends is getting a divorce. How is this possible? And even when those things came back to me, I still felt good!”
Kathy “did not mind” her life circumstances in that moment.
It was the peace that was beyond all understanding. Yet here it was. “My peace I give to you . . . not as the world knows it.” And it was happening to a “godless atheist!”
By the way, Kathy did live through her surgery and continues trying to be grateful for her every moment. She has good days and she has bad days, but without question, learning to think this way has made all of her days better days.
These experiences should throw a steel wrench into the gears of our typical thinking. It does not mean that we should feel peaceful or can always feel peaceful in the midst of a crisis. Nor does it mean that if we do not feel peaceful or calm when things are difficult then we are a failure. It does mean that peace really might be possible even in our most painful moments.
That is good news, because life is going to hand us a lot of crap.
Oh, I am sorry, what I meant to say was “opportunities for growth.”
Yeah, right.
But it means something even more powerful than that. If peace is possible during times of trial, then we can train the mind, with practice and effort, to catalyze that state. And, by extension, this means we can live in the world in such a way that, increasingly, we are not the emotional victims of our circumstances. Instead of all the frenetic, anxious, exhausting, and crazy things we do to control the uncontrollable in our world so that we can feel okay, we could give that up. We could begin to really “accept the things we cannot change” and experience that peace that we all aspire to. Right now.
It is a revolutionary, radical way to think that is as ancient as Buddhism and as fresh as the latest Eckhart Tolle bestseller. Now, this does not mean we don’t have goals and preferences, sitting listlessly about. It does mean that, en route to those goals, we are not relegating our experience of peace or happiness to something that will happen someday in the future “when I [fill in the blank]” but instead bring more enjoyment to the moment right now. As the T-shirts say, “The journey is the destination.”
Strangely, I remember one incredibly successful individual saying to the media, “Getting here was a lot more fun than being here.” If that is true, aren’t we missing a great ride on the way to the top?
I think traditionally when we talk about cultivating a quiet mind, we think in terms of endless meditation or centering prayer. In the Cayce tradition, we think of the readings that advise us to “watch self go by,” meaning we step back and create a conscious awareness of the flow of our crazy thinking. The notion of “mindfulness” has become integrated with newer forms of cognitive behavioral therapies and is changing the way people think, literally. But still . . . it takes time.
To be sure, it would be nice to have the peace that passeth understanding twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. But, if you are like most people, that seems to be something that would take years of meditative practice. Maybe, at present, you can barely sit still and say, “There’s no place like OM” for five minutes. It would be nice to have it right now. Too bad there is not some mental switch we can flip that would kick us over into Guru Consciousness.
As it turns out, there is a switch, and we can learn to flip it. And relatively quickly, too.
First, we would have to know—qualitatively and quantitatively—what was going on at a neurological level for someone who was experiencing a deep peace, so we could figure out how to reproduce it in others. It would be wonderful if we could look into the head of a Tibetan monk, who has been meditating hooked up to a Peace-O-Meter, and find out how blissed out he is . . . and then figure out how the heck he got there. I wonder what that would look like. Cue the harp music as Gregg strokes his bearded chinny-chin-chin, his eyes looking heavenward . . .
Futuristic computers flash and beep nosily in a control room that overlooks—through a plate-glass window—an experimental station straight out of the Jetsons. A slender monk in ochre robes is seated in a single futuristic tubular chrome and leather chair illuminated by a solitary down light and hooked up to electronic dealie-bobbers, while other monks solemnly chant long “Ooooms” in a semi-circle behind them with one of those big-ass horns blowing a long low note, filling the room with harmonic resonance. Our experimental monk, deep in meditation, smiles ever so subtly and as we gaze at him . . . is that a soft light gently emanating from him? Meanwhile, behind the plate glass, uber-geeks with pasty complexions in starched white short-sleeved shirts and skinny black ties intently monitor scores of screens and winky-blinky lights. They gaze dumbstruck at the read-outs until one head honcho, sporting a burr haircut, a pocket protector, and black horn-rimmed glasses (sounding amazingly like the pilot on your last trip to Atlanta with his mouth too close to the microphone) ominously breaks the silence.
“Uhhhhh, Mission Control . . . I’ve got Thupten Rinpoche here hitting an 8.9 on the Dalai Lama Scale. Uhhhh, yeah, he’s red-lining right now. Roger that, we’ll keep monitoring him, but at this rate, we anticipate an ETE [Estimated Time of Enlightenment] of about ten minutes. He’s gonna start bending the needle and may well vibrate out of his body. Affirmative, we are talking about a total Celestine wave dispersion here. He’s throwin’ an awful lot of low Theta waves here and kicking up some Hypergamma besides. Let’s move to Yellow Alert and have chanting monks and the horns stand down and the Reiki Masters on deck to attune him so he doesn’t Nirvana outta here. Uhhhh,
