Everyone in this world strives for peace of mind. Its loss results in depression, tension, and many mental crises. Inner conflict within an individual and outer dispute between individuals eats away at the joy and peace of life. Peace of mind is so vital that we strive to find ways to attain it.
People adopt various practices to get peace of mind. Some people join meditation centers, and some try to find out the reasons for the crisis through astrology. Some people run after various fun giving or entertaining activities to feel peace by beating worries and tension.
Trying to attain peace of mind through external sources is like providing opium to the brain. It works asa pain killer, resulting in temporary relief. However, it can’t remove the crisis from the root. Finding reasons for problems in astrology is looking for the remedy outside by ignoring the ‘Self.’ Moreover, we start taking the help of various means to attain peace when we have already lost it.
We look for it without knowing the secrets, of where peace comes from. What snatches peace from us? How does the presence of peace make the body feel? Is watching a movie to forget worries for the time being give peace to us? How does the relief our mind experiences while watching movies differ from the peace of mind?
Losing peace of mind is drastically affecting relationships. Lack of peace of mind in an individual leads to losing the peace of those connected to him. It is like a chain reaction that can quickly create tension in the atmosphere. Introverts, timid persons, enter into depression by losing peace of mind, whereas extroverts may get aggressive. Problems in workplaces, families, and social organizations drastically bear the consequences of this crisis.
In this article, I am trying to envision where peace lives in us. How do we feel its presence in the body? By which process, do we lose peace of mind?
Vision about peace
Peace dwells within us. It marks its presence by making us feel light. A soft feeling of silence mixed with happiness flows all over the body. This state of the body is just the opposite of the state of tension. Screaming with joy by hearing good news is not a state of peace of mind.
Such expression reveals that joy and sorrow can take over the person’s mind to break the harmony of body, mind, and spirit. This harmony only has the power to give a light feeling to the body.
Peace of mind has no connection with excellent or bad news. A person can retain peace of mind in an adverse situation too. It is a skill to bring heart and mind in harmony to feel the presence of the soul in the form of a light feeling of the body. It consumes all the nerves to feel relaxed.
When some people drastically want to feel it, but they cannot get this sense from within, they take narcotics to realize the effect. Egocentrics or those who are unaware of the existence of the inner world fail to identify the work they need to do at the internal level to attain peace of mind. So, they suffer the most.
Process of losing peace of mind
We are not born with tension and worries. In the course of life, they enter us. Children are usually free from it. So, we say, ‘Keep the child in you alive.’
The five sense organs are like doors and windows of our body. They allow thoughts and talks from the external world to enter our minds. If the mind is not trained to choose the positive ones and discard the negatives, it gets dumped with all kinds of thoughts.1 If the individual does not practice cleaning the mind through meditation or any creative work, the negatives get deposited in his energy body (the subtle body connected to our mind) and become thicker with the entry of new negative thoughts or factors.
These negative elements give rise to harmful desires on the one hand and the other hand, putting the mind in unrest, pushing it to fulfill the desires created by the influence of the outer world. The filth deposited in the energy body never lets the heart feel free.
The existence of the soul is so subtle that it gets buried somewhere under filth. In such a state, the body, mind, and spirit can’t feel unity. As a result, a person feels down, depressed, tensed, and life seems burdensome. The pressure on the heart, mind, and finally, on life reflects the filth deposited on the energy body. We experience this state as a loss of peace of mind.
A way out to feel mind’s peace
Those who are experiencing the loss of mental peace can delve deep into themselves to identify the thoughts or desires that are creating pressure on the heart and mind. Take a conscious drive to understand their roots, keeping in mind that it will surely bring pain if the fulfillment of the desires depends on someone else or the situation. We can modify our thoughts but expecting a desired situation or getting a person to behave as per our expectations is out of our control as many factors influence the situation and a person’s behavior.
We can feel relieved if we throw faulty desires and thoughts out of our minds. Healthy practices like meditation or any favorite creative work can work as a cutter on the filth deposited on the energy body. The more we delve deep into the inner world, the more the subtle breath that is electricity lying subtly in our regular breath will clear the energy body, and we can feel light.2
Conclusion
Peace of mind dwells in our inner world. We can attain it by working on our energy body by gaining control over our breath through meditation or creative works (creative works take up the meditative state by gaining control over our mind.) This practice purifies the body, mind, and spirit. In this process, we become conscious of the external factors that affect our mind by entering through our sense organs.3 & 4
- Control the organs of the senses and control the mind. (Swami Vivekananda)
https://vivekavani.com/swami-vivekananda-quotes-senses-indriya/
- Breathing is intimately linked with mental functions. In the millenary eastern tradition, the act of breathing is an essential aspect of most meditative practices, and it is considered a crucial factor for reaching the meditative state of consciousness. The breath is called “Prana,” which means both “breath” and “energy” (i.e., the conscious field that permeates the whole universe).
- A recent study in the Journal of Neurophysiology may support this, revealing that several brain regions linked to emotion, attention, and body awareness are activated when we pay attention to our breath.
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_focusing_on_the_breath_does_to_your_brain
- We can cast our attention as a “net” to capture the energy and carry it into us as we inhale. Alternatively, we can use attention as a “filter” placed in the nostrils to release the energy as the air enters the nose. The energy that we can breathe forms an inner atmosphere, the air of our inner world. We reach out, with our attention and intention, into this inner atmosphere and draw the energy into us with an inner breath, the inner side of our ordinary breath. As we exhale we hold our attention on our body, allowing the energy from the breath to find its own place.
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