Is the internal peace really something I want and need? On my New Year wish card, I crossed out peace and replaced it with a wish for changes that will help me to find a home. If only I knew what kind of avalanche I started…
Ahinsa is the moral principle in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism which recommends respect to all forms of life, non-killing and refraining from harming any living creatures. Ahinsa is one of the main moral principles of yoga. In the contemporary world, where do we apply Ahinsa? On the mat or meditation cushion, we start with ourselves. We stop harming ourselves, we make peace with ourselves. It does not mean that you lose your edge and become a holy spreading blessing all around.
When I am trying to make peace with myself, I stop blaming or shaming myself. I have a bit of a crazy way of releasing myself from guilt and fear. But, hey guilt and fear are hard enough, so any wild idea to deal with them would do.
Here is what I do: when a difficult situation from the past comes to my mind, I visualise myself at this moment. I try to project it in a most detailed way. Then I imagine myself as I am now, approaching myself from the past and I hug myself. I stay there for as long as I can hold the vision and simply give myself a hug. I visualise myself from the times when I was a little girl and was absolutely hopeless in social situations. I am not sure where this social awkwardness was coming from. I guess I never had a guide through my childhood and teen times. Every time I see her in one of those weird situations, that were driving my mother crazy I just come closer and hug her. I hold her as long as she needs. It works a miracle!
Ahinsa can be a radical life model embracing the right of every creature to live and thrive. It is radical in a way that it is hard to keep if we understand it in a literal way. We can get stuck in avoidance, aversion or simply sidestep from what the real ahinsa is.
Jeannie Lee in True Yoga writes: “Moving beyond the traditional translation of “non-harming” we see that Ahinsa means to eradicate anything that undermines peace and to actively start helping. Staying detached is not enough. (…) To begin we learn to relax in our own minds and bodies. Rather than curse the people or things that are frustrating us, if we intend to practice peace, we develop the ability to release stress and hold onto behaviours and thoughts that bring us back to serenity again and again”
I had to spend some time thinking about what takes away my peace.
When I find it difficult to be peaceful?
- When my calendar is full of meetings and I have no time in between to relax and eat.
- When I have no time to cook and eat.
- When I have a lot to read and I just discovered that there is another book or magazine that I want to “consume”.
- When I commit to something and then discover that I don’t want to do it.
- When I don’t have time to sit and write what is in my head.
- When I give too much energy for social life.
- When I talk nonsense just to fill in the silence.
- When I travel in a rush or I go somewhere where I don’t really feel to be.
- When I get stuck inside and have no time to walk, bike or run outside in fresh air.
Wojciech Eichelberger, a psychologist said that the most important things we need to live are: air, water and food. If we have those three items we can do all the rest important things. Half joking, he added that it would be a great name and program for a political party.
Active cultivation of peace requires knowing myself and knowing what helps me to be peaceful. I need to spend hours analyzing my feelings and emotions. I need to look close to my health and cycles. I need to learn how to speak to others about what I feel and what I want.
What makes me feel more at peace?
Walk-in a forest, swim in a lake, food that nourishes, well-done work, clean home space, massage, bath, yoga asana practice, long walk in a new neighbourhood, having no plan for a day or weekend, listening to soundtrack of rainforest sounds, having only pleasant things to do:
- Baking a cake
- Walk on a beach
- Hike in mountains or forest
- Lying down in the hammock
- Reading book
- Having unlimited time to write and then rewrite
Peacefulness is not about stillness in the outside world. The turmoil of the external world will continue no matter how long we will sit on the meditation cushion. The neighbours will keep drilling, the cars will continue honking, kids will be yelling, people and brands will continue shouting for our attention. Peace is something we need to find inside.
Sometimes to achieve internal peace I need to dig deep. I know when I am getting deep. This is the moment when I want to leave and I get angry. Cleaning the internal mess that I accumulated over 35 years of my life is not an easy job (I started the cleaning four years ago, and still there is a lot hidden in the corners and under the carpet). I was a queen of stealing and misleading. I mastered lying and selling half-truths. I won a gold medal in ghosting people and projects. I was the leader in aggressive attacks on people, who accidentally got involved in my storm.
Calming the rage is a hard job. I failed many, many times. I was relapsing into an addiction to untruthfulness, dishonesty, speaking behind people back and all spectrum of deceitful behaviours. That applied to my friendships, work relationships, family connections.
When one day I listen to Yoga Girl podcast where she was talking about doing only things that are 10 or 9 in the ten-point scale it was like a blow of fresh air. Because why not? It does not mean that form now on I only eat vanilla pudding and live unstructured life jumping from one pleasure to another. Not at all. The thing is that being active in areas that do not drain me from energy brings more joy and the results are simply better. When I need to do something I choose things that spark my interest or I know they will lead me into something interesting, new and eventually I will find peace in them.
When I feel at peace:
- When I cook something really good (eg. tarka daal or lentils pate)
- When I put a cake into the oven and I know it is going to be amazing.
- When I have enough time to read and write. Every damn day. I don’t need to stretch in asanas, but I need to touch the keyboard and the page of text.
- When I come back from a long walk or the bike ride or SUP-ing across the lake.
- When I wake up and I feel no pain (and it doesn’t really matter how long did I sleep).
- When I can sit on the beach.
- When I know that my family is safe and not hungry.
- When I can light a beautiful candle or turn on a scent diffuser and can write. Everything that comes to my mind.
- When I stopped telling myself that sitting and writing does not make sense because none would read it anyway.
(and so what? It is just about the pleasure of writing, re-reading and writing again) - When I admit to myself that I don’t need to do anything that makes me feel sick. That I don’t need to make unhealthy compromises between what I do and how much money I get.
Removing everything that undermines peace helped me to get on track with my peace. I started with small steps. The first step was to get the lies out to the daylight. I had to confess them and acknowledge to myself how big a liar I was. Step two was to observe in which situation I feel at peace and when the moments of fear happen.
