What is interfering with your peace of mind today?
If you read my blogs consistently, you no doubt think this topic is often on my mind. And that would be true. I do blog about peace and its attainment on a regular basis. There’s a very good reason for that. It’s what eludes me often and I figure I am pretty much like many of you who have turned to this page. Letting some one else rob me of my peace of mind is all too common. It can become habitual in fact.
The minister at my church, the Unity Church of Naples, talked about this topic today too. Peace and its importance to each one of us and the human community as a whole really can’t be stressed enough.
I lived in a chaotic world for much of my life, a world that had me dancing around the behavior of others on a regular basis, and I don’t want to slip back into that world any more. But it can happen. In the blink of an eye it can happen. Letting some one else’s behavior get under my skin is a sure sign that I have just given my peace over to them. And they probably don’t even know it.
Why does this happen so easily? I think it’s because we “attach” ourselves too willy-nilly to the whims, perhaps the values and opinions of others because of our own uncertainty, our own unsteadiness in regard to personal values, our own insecurities. Clinging to the ideas of others, and attempting to adopt them as our own, for any reason, prevents us from developing into the men and women we have been called to be.
As I have said in many books and other posts too, those individuals we meet have “joined us” intentionally but that doesn’t mean, it absolutely doesn’t mean, that we have encountered one another in order to become one another. Our encounter is designed to bring each one of us to a higher level of self awareness. In the process we become much better witnesses to the presence of our “teachers” too.
I believe every thing in life has been beautifully orchestrated actually. No opinion is unworthy. Every opinion can shed light on “the moment.” But each one of us must accept responsibility for our own enlightenment. Knowing that whomever is present is “the gift” we are seeking is the message I have grown to cherish, the message that thrills me on a moment by moment basis in fact. And when I look at life from this perspective, I know that my peace is my responsibility too. It can never be given to me by others. Nor taken from me either. And that’s a truth I can count on! You can count on this too.
