Peace

After 99 days, I have finally arrived at one of the pillars of a celebrated life, and that is peace. It is peace that allows our thoughts to flow into imaginative ideas for manifestation. It is peace that provides the calm cultivation of love, and together, peace and love are a force to be reckoned with. I gift you this written piece to aid you in cultivating, nurturing and sharing peace. 

1. A Piece of Treasure

Peace is more valuable than gold. Think about it. Those who mine gold, do so in order to cultivate a better life by selling that gold for a hefty profit. It is for money, and money aids in creating freedom for those bound by bills and financial chains that prevent one from freely choosing to do whatever one wishes to — freedom is peace. This kind of freedom may provide peace for someone, but peace can also provide freedom without the need for gathering resources. It is important to learn how to find that piece of treasure. The best and most effective way of finding this hidden piece of treasure is by completely letting go and accepting life as it is in its simplest form. The need for little provides for an unyielding feeling of peace within us. This type of empowering calm enhances our effectiveness when it comes to achieving goals also. So if your goal is to mine for gold, you might stress that you may not find any, but had you cultivated your peaceful treasure already, then you would just simply enjoy the mining process regardless of the result. Funny thing is, you would probably find more gold this way. Peace is treasure.

2. Deeply Rich with Breath

When we become stressed, our heart rates increase and we breathe fast and shallow. However, most of us do not realise this, and due to this mass unconsciousness, we may lack the awareness of the fact that we can de-stress quite simply by changing how we breathe. Those who are deeply rich with the treasure that is peace, are deeply rich with breath. They tend to dedicate much of their time to meditative breathing practises. We all have lungs, and yes we all use them to breathe. However, how many of us consciously connect with our breath? How many of us sit down and focus on it, rather than leaving our subconscious to take the reins. Depression and anxiety exist in our society because everyone has a habit of allowing the subconscious to take the reins. We gotta take back the control. And to do that, all we need is mind-body control practices. Practice makes perfect. You don’t even need to sit down in order to practice controlling your breath, but it is easier. Next time you experience some stress, I’d like you to take a minute and breathe deep into your diaphragm. As you inhale, imagine you are inhaling peace and exhaling stress. Do this for 5 to 10 minutes, and I guarantee you will feel your stress levels begin to decrease so you can think with clarity on how to solve whatever problem that was causing the stress. Enrich yourself with breath!

3. Inside

Folks tend to go looking for peace as if it is some destination to reach. After years of searching, they realise that it was inside them all along — much ado about nothing, eh? Rather than physically travelling around the world in an attempt to find something that is already inside you, you have the option of travelling the world within you in meditation. Meditation is like a cheat sheet for life through self-mastery. Not only does it enhance the mind-body connection, but it allows one to disconnect from the noisy interconnected technological world that is invading one’s peace. It’s not that we must perpetually disconnect, but just as to re-charge before returning with full focus. Peace is always there by the way. Peace perpetually resides in us, but it can become shrouded by dark energies that we absorb from our societal environment of chaotically negative people. Once we sit in meditation and take the time to realign ourselves, we begin to create order from that chaos, and thus we uncover peace that has always been there. It’s like lifting the veil off of a treasure chest to then find a mountain of dust covering it. Much like the treasure chest, we must dust ourselves off to uncover the beauty. Our minds become filthy with dusty thoughts and ideas about ourselves that stress us out, so we must use meditation to highlight which thoughts and ideas we now need to wipe away so that peace becomes clear to see, feel and hear. Just remember and hold onto the fact that peace does in fact reside inside.

4. Strategic Detachment

We are bound to this planet and to these bodies, and there are certain things that we must commit to in life in order to enhance our focus on a meaningful path. However, it can be a solid strategy to detach from everything once in a while in order to recharge our focus when we reattach to our envisioned path. This creates more alignment with what is meant for us by enhancing our focus on what really matters. We spend less time on distractions — things that do not serve our mission. But most of all, we recharge the peaceful energy inside us that instills a calm, sustainable release of productive energy on the path to making our dreams a reality. This type of energy-flow allows us to accomplish things with ease like a leaf riding the waves of a cool breeze in autumn. Take the time and detach once in a while through some form of meditation. Unplug yourself from the rat race and the matrix of technology so that you may return and play the game better. We had to detach from our mothers in the beginning in order for us to experience the trials and tribulations of life. It certainly can be a frightening endeavour to pursue detachment, but combine it with the right breathing techniques, and you can use it strategically for your advancement as a human being. 

5. Becoming the Witness

There is so much chatter in our minds. Sometimes it can be an overwhelming stress; an anxiety-enhancing mess. People lose sight of their inner peace when they become too involved with these noisy thoughts. It is much like becoming involved with rowdy people in a stressful situation, rather than standing back as an observer. Observing is a way to disconnect from the situation and analyse it so that we may understand what exactly is happening. Becoming the witness of one’s thoughts allows one to realise that we are not those thoughts. Those thoughts are absorbed subconsciously and seep into the conscious mind causing one to consider that it was us who created that thought, or that it is us that are stressed. It is actually our environment dictating our thoughts. All we must do is find a way to dictate our own thoughts by taking back conscious control. Meditation is the perfect platform for practising the witnessing of thoughts. It is highly effective in aiding us to disconnect from the emotions that are associated with those thoughts which manifest in our body in a painful way. Our thoughts are mere symbolic illusions that need not mean anything apart from the meaning we consciously choose to give them. By becoming the witness, and through thought-analysis, we can begin to reprogram ourselves into a more positive way of being. We have the power to find peace in just witnessing our subconscious filter the meaningless words through our mind. There is a peaceful power in becoming the witness. Watch and learn.

6. Outdoors

Ah, the great outdoors. Home to the poly-cultural perfection of nature. We sure do have a little piece of Eden residing within but, we are also surrounded by peace-inducing pieces of Eden, outdoors. The greatest peacekeepers are the trees. It is the trees that shelter us from the rain. It is the trees that provide for us the calming hormones. It is the trees that feed us life with the richest air that can be found. We have so much to thank trees for. When we stress, our body releases a steroid hormone known as cortisol. When we walk among trees in nature, our cortisol levels dramatically decrease and we activate our parasympathetic nervous system which is responsible for slowing the heart rate. I am personally completely at peace when I am outdoors in nature. I can definitely cultivate my own peaceful calm by meditating in my home, but there is something unnatural about being confined between concrete walls. I believe we are brought peace when we are where we are supposed to be. I certainly believe that we belong in the wilderness, insofar as to say that all humanity must live closer to wild grounds in order to stay connected with nature. Losing touch of nature will just result in losing touch with ourselves.

7. Choose People Wisely

Ever find yourself hanging out with people that make you feel like shit? Not directly of course. Not exactly insulting you or attacking you (but stay away from those fools too), but really just the people that continually complain about life. Most people — because they are ruled by their subconscious — are stuck in a loop of negativity. They believe it is completely normal, not realising that their negative repetition is in fact programming a negative reality in their mind and body. Spending time with these types of people is awfully draining, and it can really affect your health. It deters your health by infiltrating your subconscious which in turn will filter through all the negativity into your conscious mind. You do not want that. You do not need that. Choose people wisely because if you want to have peace, you need to surround yourself with peacefully vibrating forces. Surround yourself with peacefully vibrating people and you will enhance your own vibration of peace. It’s kind of like when you place multiple instruments together. If all instruments synergistically play in tune together, then symphonic music is created. If only some instruments are playing synergistically while other instruments are out of tune or just making noise, then the band becomes out of sync, and thus we have chaos. Within that type of chaos, even the positive ones become upset, so don’t allow yourself to be that person. Don’t stick around just because you care for someone. You must know when to cut out certain people for your own good. It is better that we accept the suffering of those who will not accept advise, rather than joining them in victimhood. Choose your tribe wisely.

8. Pendulum Swing

Life is a pendulum swing of emotion. One day we can be happy as Larry, and the next we can be down in the dumps. This is perfectly normal. Some call it the law of rhythm. The law of rhythm is based upon the idea that we are rhythmically swinging back and forth through different emotional frequencies as we pass through life. Some days, everything just clicks, everything goes right; other days, everything fails. The wisdom in understanding and accepting this phenomena is what really enhances peace. How many people panic when they’re having a bad day? How many people fail to take a step back and realise that everything is temporary? Even those that may have a series of great days can begin to lose track of themselves by forgetting that the streak must always come to an end. We can become complacent in forgetting this law, and when things change, instead of understanding that this wave of bad days must happen in order for the next wave of great days to happen, we instead become frustrated, upset, and even angry. Like the air, we must move through all seasons and terrain calmly with an all-knowing sense of direction. Allow the pendulum to swing. Inhale; exhale.

9. Activation

Not all peace is found from sitting still in meditation. I do tend to preach the art of meditation, conscious breathing and stillness quite a bit however, I am also highly active. I love walking in nature, cycling, lifting weights, hiking, climbing and dancing. When our body is being used for movement, it is happy. And when our body is happy, we feel calm. Peace can even be found in much of the seemingly hostile actions found in sport. A rigorous, blood-pumping, t-shirt drenching workout does wonders. It really is another form of meditation. I also love to jump in the sea in winter-time. Such a highly stressful moment of dealing with freezing cold somehow brings my body and mind to complete stillness. Essentially, peace is found in doing whatever feeds your soul through enjoyment. We must have multiple ways of activating peace. When we only have one way of doing something, we create a reliance. Relying on anything can be a fast-track to stress, as when that thing we rely on goes missing all of sudden, our panic stations are alerted. Creating multiple streams of peace means that even if you lose one stream, you still got other streams to feed you that calming energy. 

10. Humour Yourself

Take yourself seriously and whatever criticism or humorous insults you receive in life, you will take to heart, and it will hurt. Hurting yourself does not seem too logical now, does it? On the contrary, if you just humour yourself, no insult or criticism ever hurts. It becomes a form of energising entertainment. As an Irishman, I was brought up on the notion of never taking myself too seriously. We were all babies once upon a time, so it is important to remind ourselves that we have all shat ourselves at some point. How can anyone that has ever shat themselves take themselves seriously anyway? Laughing at myself serves me well because I can genuinely laugh no matter the situation. I tend to laugh at quite a lot of things — maybe some things I should not laugh at like people falling over, though I also laugh when I fall over. It is important to humour yourself in order to create peace. Otherwise, you just stress yourself out when you will inevitably face criticism and insults from others. None of those criticisms or insults matter one bit, and you might as well laugh along with them. Life in itself is one big silly joke. Laughter is medicine for the soul. I remember being told that 10 minutes of non-stop laughter is equivalent to 2 hours of sleep by my old drama teacher. I am not sure how true that is, but it sure did lift our spirits in drama class back in high school. What I do know for sure though is that, life is a bumpy road and if you can’t have a laugh, then you are fucked. Laughing at yourself is the most important part because it creates an infectious humility that draws others to you, because they feel less threatened by you. You come across as harmless and nice to be around, and so that is quite a peacefully welcoming energy to give others, and so it shall be returned. Laugh at yourself!

To watch the full playlist of 1-minute videos, click the link below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKBUdEybaWk&list=PLlXZaBJSGPT4hAXsHq91n1r6fuTPAr-cJ