peace is not a product

real peace (the experiential aspect of self-aware awareness) is not the product of anything. it need not be sought through achievements. it has no prerequisites attached to it. true peace is a natural state accessible to one and all regardless of circumstances. it is the unconditional, ever-present quality of consciousness resting within itself.

the perceived lack of peace, on the other hand, does come as a result of conditions. although peace is always present and accessible, it becomes obscured by mind-noise. when the mind and its stories loudly take over, the undercurrent of peace is overlooked and forgotten. all attention becomes diverted away from the infinitely fulfilling and nurturing experience of pure consciousness. distracting and often meaningless thought structures take center stage, are invested with overdue importance, and with the reference point of self-aware awareness receding from experiential memory, the experience of existential confusion and suffering sets in.

the human experience can become extremely complex and fraught with stress, yet even at its most challenging and chaotic moments the simplicity of peace has not gone anywhere. it is where it always is and always will be: here, now. the experienced absence of peace is only an illusion created by the inability - or often the unwillingness - to perceive it as the basic underlying quality of existence.

although the undercurrent of peace is profoundly simple and subtle (and therefore easy to miss), it is nevertheless extremely powerful. it is much more powerful than any product of mind since it endures absolutely everything and remains unchanged and perfectly unblemished throughout it all. it cannot be touched or altered in any way; it always, perfectly, indestructibly, is.

it is precisely this quality of permanent presence and accessibility that simultaneously allows us to take the experience of peace for granted and makes it the most powerful force in our lives. it is sadly ironic that our greatest asset is the one we most readily devalue, forget, and lose touch with.

personalizing pain

life's not always easy or comfortable. this is an unavoidable fact for every being on the planet - none excluded. the egoic mechanism, however, has a particular way of reacting to pain and discomfort that elevates these natural and passing phases of experience to chronic, obsessive issues.

there's one reason for this: ego attaches itself to everything it experiences and derives a sense of identity from it. experiences now mean much more than mere experiences; they become invested with the absolute seriousness of defining who we are. the ego takes pain and makes it personal, and in so doing takes any experience of suffering that would normally be associated with a painful event and magnifies it to an unimaginable degree.

unsatisfactory experiences take on dire significance because they reflect directly upon the sense of self, casting a dark shadow over it. pleasing experiences take on a stressful nature because more and more of them are needed to counteract the negative ones and maintain a satisfying identity. an unhealthy obsession develops on both fronts: an obsession to avoid the negative, and an obsession to retain and amass more of the positive.

the entire approach to life is thrown out of whack and becomes an imbalanced effort to let in only a particular slice of experience. pain and loss are seen as unacceptable; a sign of weakness and failure. they become much more than what they are in reality - simple, natural aspects of life in our universe - and develop into grotesque characterizations fueled by our obsessive, unrealistic need to retain strength and success indefinitely.

that which wasn't a problem, because of our unnatural response to it, becomes the source of a tremendous complication that holds the potential to destabilize our entire experience of life, further and further obscuring the natural state of being experienced during infancy and early childhood (and seemingly at all times by other animals).

this natural state is not devoid of challenging or painful experiences, but it takes them as it does any other experience and moves on, not becoming obsessively fixated upon them (a difference that expressed in words may not seem great but experience-wise is huge). it's so significant that the concept of "suffering" as traditionally employed in prosperous Western societies points almost entirely to the reactions toward perceived negativities and hardly at all to the actual source of the reactions themselves. this means that the larger share of our suffering - that which is psychologically generated - can be eradicated by a simple shift in perspective.

of course, one can't just decide to stop reacting unnaturally to life and hope that such a radical and fundamental change will somehow just come about. there is a specific cause for our difficult relationship to life that must be addressed before a restoration to natural functioning becomes possible, just as a breakdown in any mechanism can always be attributed to identifiable problems with concordant solutions.

the only way to end this problem is to locate the true source of our identity. this truth is not some concept or some far-off possibility. it's what is true right now. it's not merely an interesting thought or an entertaining philosophical distraction to engage an idle mind. making unequivocal contact with our fundamental nature is of profound importance to each and every one of us. nothing could possibly be more relevant.

the moment of convincing

there is a very specific time in our lives where the pressure of society to begin creating a definite personality finally sets in.

faces grim and leaving behind the easy naturalness of childhood, we get to work carving the grooves of our lifelong suffering.