A lot of people are going to be on the move in America this week as they celebrate Thanksgiving.

Planes will be full. Roads and airports will be jammed.

People will be connecting with loved ones. Tummies will be filling with good food.

But there is one thing that won’t be going anywhere this holiday season — or any other time. And that is the beautiful, timeless peace at the core of your own being.

It’s who you truly are — the very source of authentic happiness and well-being. But how can we become more conscious of it? How can we say “yes” to the peace that is our true home and birthright in this world, as the Buddha learned many years ago?

Here are 7 suggestions to help you find greater peace in life.

How to say “yes” to peace

1. Put real value in silence.

Obviously silence in an external sense is not so easy to find in the world anymore. There certainly won’t be a lot of silence in our nation’s airports this week. But if we really want more peace in our lives it’s critical to open our heart to silence — both within ourselves, and beyond ourselves. And of course it’s also critical to face any fear of silence that may arise in us.

 2. Don’t let thoughts dictate what you do

Our mind is a wonderful instrument, a marvelous creation, but sometimes it takes itself too seriously. It likes to think of itself as the manager of the universe. It likes to puff itself up and assume the role of a dictator. If you really want to find true peace keep an eye on your thoughts. They may be beautiful, helpful, and inspiring — but they may not.

 3. Love nature

Take time to love nature, and connect with nature. Nature has taken a lot of hits, particularly in recent generations. But it is still a friend, one of our best friends. It will keep on giving its gifts to us as long as it is able to do so, and one of those gifts is its ability to remind us of what is true and beautiful — the unfailing rhythms of life.

 4. Give your world a hug

Remember the power of a hug. I love hugs. In the right context, at the right time, with the right person, hugs are a sure route to peace and happiness — not to mention healing.

So when my wife JoAnn came to me last night and said she’d like a hug, I didn’t hesitate for a moment. I dived right in. What I didn’t know at the time, because JoAnn didn’t tell me, was that she had eaten something that didn’t entirely agree with her, and was feeling a bit “quivery” in her tummy. This morning, when we woke up, she told me that right after the hug she’d had a wonderful sleep and her tummy was just fine.

 5. Learn to change your mind and “let go”

When we cling to troublesome thoughts or feelings, whether present or past, we harm only ourselves.

We erect a barrier between ourselves and the peace that is natural to us. Learn to change your mind quickly and easily when it is your own peace and well-being that is really at stake. Learn, too, that it is quite safe to “let go” — whatever is changeless and true in you or another person is never lost.

6. Be quick to forgive

Learn to forgive quickly. I suppose this is an add-on to number five really. But I have found the ability to forgive quickly is crucial to inner peace — and comes very naturally when I cherish inner peace more than I cherish anything else.

7. Be patient with yourself

The profound peace that already exists at the core of your being is not going anywhere. It’s who you truly are. It’s the one thing you can never lose. It was there before you were born, physically speaking. And it will be there after you release your physical form and “die”, as it is put, to the world.

So be patient with yourself as you take whatever steps are necessary — whatever steps your own inner wisdom shows you – on the path to a more perfect oneness and union with yourself.

Warm welcome to new subscribers

I want to express a warm welcome to the approximately 170 new subscribers who subscribed to my blog after reading a guest post that I wrote for Mary Jaksch, of Good Life Zen. It is wonderful to have you “on board.”

The title of this guest post, by the way, is “How catastrophe can open a door to a new life.” If you haven’t seen it yet, please hop on over to Mary’s blog and have a look.

Along with this welcome to new subscribers I also offer great thanks to Mary for her mentoring and for her kindness in inviting me to write a guest post for her blog.

Mary is cofounder, with Leo Babauta, of the A-List Blogger club, a marvelous community and resource dedicated to helping bloggers succeed in the fascinating realm called the blogosphere.

Also, please remember my free e-book, The Wisdom of Serenity: Reclaiming Authentic Happiness, is available now. Simply click the download button on this page.

Love and blessings to all, and if you have any thoughts or experiences on saying ”yes” to inner peace please do share them.

Picture credits — Water lily:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3140/3045029671_b37bf65e70_m.jpg

How to say “yes” to the peace of your own being is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

Eat, Pray, Love is a hit movie – so much so that many people plan to follow in the footsteps of the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, and travel to exotic places in pursuit of happiness.

There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. But we each come into this world with a unique gift to give — a unique mission to fulfill. Do we not each have our own path in life which, if we follow it, and are true to it, will bring us the authentic happiness and peace we all seek?

Here are some suggestions that may help you find your true destiny and follow your bliss, as Joseph Campbell liked to say.

 1. Listen to your heart.

Our heart is our connection to God and the wisdom of our own spirit. It’s because Elizabeth Gilbert listened to her heart that she has such a great story to tell.

But our heart does not only speak to us when we are in trouble. It speaks to us in little moments too.

And it’s as we listen to our heart in the little moments of our life that we draw closer to the truth of our own being, and the real magic of our own “hero’s journey” becomes increasingly apparent to us.

2. Cultivate compassion.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that you must be aggressive to succeed in life and be happy.

There may be a place for aggressiveness. But the truth is that only the strong can be gentle — and when you align yourself with an attitude of genuine compassion you are aligning yourself with the strength of the universe. Miracles happen. The entire universe is on your side, ready to help you on your way.

 3. Look for what is right.

If you really want to be happy, don’t focus too much on all the things that are wrong — in yourself or anybody else.

Look for what is right. It’s the only real starting point there is. Even if it only seems like a very small starting point indeed — go for it.

Authentic happiness does not come and go

A fairy tale from a long time ago comes to my mind, something about a young boy called Jack and a beanstalk.

From a humble beginning, the beanstalk grew to an incredible height. Your own life will flourish and you will find the happiness and bliss that is rightly yours as you pay attention to what is right, and true, and beautiful.

Go to Bali by all means, if you want to. I’d like to go there myself sometime.

But enduring happiness, authentic happiness, does not come and go. And it doesn’t depend on our external circumstance. It’s the core nature of our own being — and it calls to us in every moment to be expressed in our lives.

Picture credit:http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2428/3753659066_9916302409_m.jpg

Eat, Pray, Love: Is authentic happiness in Bali — or in you? is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

This happened about six years ago. It’s embarrassing as heck, but what can you do?

Our RV, a nice little 22 foot Winnebago that we call Tanner, needed an emissions check. I drive the RV by the way, because JoAnn isn’t comfortable with it.

We took Tanner over to a nearby garage and sat in the waiting room with a bunch of other people who were also waiting to get their vehicles checked out. Eventually the service guy came to us and said it had passed the test and was good to go.

JoAnn waited inside a few minutes while I went outside to start the engine and get Tanner turned around so that we could leave. There wasn’t a lot of space to maneuver and I had to really focus on what I was doing.

The trouble is that after finally getting Tanner turned around – without hitting anything — I just kept on going. That is to say, I proceeded out of the exit and drove home.

As I opened the front door of our house I heard the phone ringing. “Who could that be?” I asked myself. And then, in the same breath, “And why isn’t JoAnn home?”

This all happened very quickly, you must understand. The penny was beginning to drop, but hadn’t gotten all the way to the ground yet.

“Did you forget something?”

I picked up the phone. “Did you forget something?” a familiar voice asked.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear. “Embarrassed” hardly describes how I felt as I whipped back to the garage at a very hasty clip.

Good job that JoAnn is such a good sport is all I can say. Good job we were able to have a good laugh as we drove home together.

I suppose it’s only fair that JoAnn got quite a bit of mileage out of this story when she shared it with her local quilting group a week or two later. They all roared. Apparently quilting groups like telling husband stories and this one brought the house down.

Reminds me of a joke I heard a long time ago when I was still living in England. A vicar is traveling somewhere by train. When the conductor comes along and asks for his ticket, the vicar starts searching his pockets. After awhile, he gets a bit flustered.

“It’s all right sir,” the conductor says kindly. “I know who you are.”

The vicar looks up indignantly. “My dear man, that’s not the point. I need the ticket to remind me where I’m going.”

Key to a happy marriage?

I always share my posts with JoAnn before I send them out. As she sat down to read this article she had a good laugh and then she said: “What turned that into a funny experience rather than a disaster or fight was because we understand each other.

“The other people in the garage were quite worried for me when they saw you driving off without me, and if I wanted to, I could have been really mad when I called you.

“But I think we’ve learned to be thankful for each other’s strong points while at the same time we understand and accept each other’s idiosyncrasies.”

Is this a key to a happy marriage? I think it is.

The magic of complementation

I’m a poet and dreamer. Imagination is where I live — though I’m happy to say I’ve become more connected to earth since I met JoAnn. One of the blessings of complementation, I suppose you could say.

As you may suspect, I’m definitely capable of being a bit absent-minded at times.

JoAnn, on the other hand, is very focused — very practical, and down to earth. Imagination isn’t really her thing. Ask her to read a poem, for example, and her eyes immediately begin to glaze over.

If you were to ask me what has held us together despite these differences since we first met 15 years ago — I would answer this:

We both love inner peace.

We cherish truth more than anything else in the world — and this gives us a basis for agreement.

Somewhere to turn when we are in trouble

It doesn’t mean we don’t run into difficulties, of course. It doesn’t mean we don’t get into arguments and fights once in a while.

But we have somewhere to turn when we get into trouble together — which so far has never let us down.

As JoAnn said, we have been learning to understand each other better, and appreciate our differences. And while that is all very uncomfortable at times, it is also quite magical and wonderful.

If I’m having trouble trying to make my office look a bit nicer — or if I’m getting nowhere trying to open a difficult package — it’s a pleasure to know I have a partner who can bring a little more practical expertise into the situation.

Growing toward light and happiness

It takes a heap of patience and integrity to learn how to love and appreciate another person without sacrificing our own truth and individuality.

As my mentor said one time: “Perhaps it shouldn’t be live and learn. Perhaps it should be learn and live.”

But as far as I’m concerned, it’s worth every bit of hardship and discomfort that may come along.

What greater joy could there be than to share in a relationship that is growing toward wholeness – toward light and happiness?

To quote the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke:

“For one human being to love another that is perhaps the most difficult of our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof; the work for which all other work is the preparation.”

Or as George Eliot put it:

“What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined… to strengthen each other… to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.”

Picture credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ferranp/

The surprises (and delights) of a complementary relationship is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

I was sitting at the breakfast table with JoAnn this morning, wondering what I was going to write about in my blog today — feeling a bit pensive, too, about some challenges that have come up for us in recent weeks — when JoAnn got up from her chair and put her arms around me. “I love you Papa Bear,” she said. It’s a term of endearment that we often use. I call her Momma Bear — she calls me Papa Bear.

It was just a sweet little gesture of affection and love, but it touched me. And it made me think of something. If this blog is to have any real meaning, it will be because to whatever extent is possible to me I offer a current of comfort and assurance – enjoyment, too, hopefully — to those who visit.

Are you facing a challenge in your life? A difficult circumstance? A troubled feeling? A feeling of futility, perhaps, or anger, or hopelessness, or loneliness –”quiet desperation,” as Thoreau once expressed it? Whatever may be going on in your life, I’m here to say that integrity and persistence will bring you through.

I see integrity as the willingness to listen, really listen, to what the voice of truth in my own heart is saying in the moment, and follow that impulse no matter where it leads. Mind you, I have to be still enough to hear. Does it want me to change my mind on something? I will change my mind. Does it want me to return, in a moment of mental or emotional turmoil, to stillness? I will return.

Persistence? Persistence, of course, is the gift, or quality, present in every one of us, which makes it possible for us to be true to ourselves and our dream — to our own integrity. Of course, persistence can be used wrongly, like anything else. Hitler, I suppose, was a persistent fellow. But we will not be true to ourselves and our true mission in this life without it.

There is a beautiful quote from the British poet, William Wordsworth that goes like this:

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that arises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.”

Is fear a burden? Is financial distress a burden? Is illness a burden, whether physical or mental? No matter what challenges face us — these two great friends, integrity and persistence, will bring you through

What is called for by spirit in the moment may be a very simple thing – like putting an arm around our spouse. But little steps add up. We find increasingly, in the words of St. Catherine of Siena, “every step on the path to Heaven is Heaven.”

Integrity and persistence will bring you through is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age

We don’t pay much attention to stillness in our culture. We are so busy, after all. There is so much to do. We may enjoy the stillness of Nature once in awhile, but for the most part, stillness isn’t high on our list of priorities. We may even see it as a void, or a threat — something to be avoided at all costs.

Indigenous peoples like the Alaskan Eskimos, for example, had a very different view.  They recognized the potential of stillness as a source of profound harmony and power. In stillness, they knew they could access wisdom and inspiration that was unavailable on any other basis.

Consider the words of Majuaq, an Alaskan Eskimo of the early 20th century, as recorded by a visiting Danish anthropologist named Knud Rasmussen, and made available to us in this day and age at  www.humanistictexts.org/eskimo.htm.

“In days gone by, every autumn, we held big feasts for the soul of the whale, feasts which should always be opened with the new songs which the men composed. The spirits were to be summoned with fresh words; worn-out songs could never be used when men and women danced and sang in homage to the big quarry. And it was the custom that during the time when the men were finding the words for these hymns, our lamps had to be extinguished. Darkness and stillness were to reign in the festival house. Nothing must disturb them, nothing divert them. In deep silence, they sat in the dark, thinking; all the man, both old and young, in fact, even the youngest of the boys, if they were old enough to speak. It was this stillness we called qarrtsiluni, which means that one waits for something to burst.

“For our forefathers believed that the songs were born in the stillness, while all endeavored to think of nothing but beautiful things. Then they take shape in the minds of men, and rise up like bubbles from the depths of the sea, bubbles seeking the air in order to burst. That is how the sacred songs are made!”

Are you facing a difficult situation? Looking for fresh inspiration in your life? Think about Majuaq’s words. Find a place where you can be safe, and undisturbed, for a few moments and be still, utterly still like the Eskimo elders of old.

Let your breathing relax and slow down by consciously breathing with your belly. Put a hand on your chest to make sure it stays still.  Breathe with your belly for 15 minutes, and watch how your breathing rate begins to come down.  As it does come down, to ten breaths a minute or less, what is sometimes called ‘therapeutic breathing,’ you should find yourself relaxing quite nicely. As you let go of anxiety and busyness, concerns about this and that, and become still, you automatically give space for your own inner wisdom to flower.  You are opening a door to new things, good things to happen in your life.  They may not come all at once.  But in the easy, natural way a tree or flower grows — they will surely come, if you stay patient and steadfast.

We live in a time of great change, and change, as we all know, is often very uncomfortable. Yet at the core of change is stillness. And at the core of stillness is all the strength and courage and wisdom we could possibly need to bring us through the crises and perils of our lives and guide us on our way.

Finding power and wisdom in stillness is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Living with grace at any age