Inner Peace is Out There!

Prefer to read? Here’s a transcription of the video:

Let’s talk today about experiencing a greater sense of inner peace, and how you can meditate on inner peace, not just when you’re sitting cross-legged on a cushion, trying to empty your mind, but throughout your day as you’re going about your regular day.

I’m Anna Gatmon, and wherever you’re watching this, this is coming to you from The Expansive with Anna Gatmon YouTube channel.

We all want to experience more inner peace. We all want to experience more tranquility and ease and relaxation and contentment and less stress and overwhelm and depression and fear. And so, we’re often told that the way to inner peace is to meditate, empty your mind, sitting cross-legged on a cushion. And sometimes that’s the hardest way to meditate and to experience inner peace.

I hear from numerous people these days that they’re having a really hard time meditating and quieting their minds. There’s so much going on. There is social unrest. There is financial stress. There is an ecological threat, and there’s the world pandemic. So there’s the COVID-19. We’re coming out of shelter-in-place, but it’s still here, and there’s still cases.

And in the fall, they’re predicting that it’s going to rise again. And so there’s so much going on outside, and we’re all trying to live through these very challenging and overwhelming times and deal with all these specific personal issues that we are dealing with both personally and professionally and do it with a greater sense of inner peace.

So the challenge is big and yet, inner peace is what is going to help us to solve our problems from a more calm attitude, from a perspective that we can look at the situation from a more holistic and calm and relaxed way, and it will help us solve our daily problems in a much better and more efficient and effective way than if we do it through worry, through stress, through overwhelm. And so, while we are told that inner peace is something that we need to find within us, I want to offer you a different perspective.

And that is that inner peace is a quality. It’s a vibrational state that you can tap into that you can tune into just like a radio station where you try to change the switch or turn the switch until you arrive at the channel that you want to listen to. And so you can tap to the sense of inner peace within you, either by doing something internally, like meditating, emptying your mind, thinking thoughts that are calming and relaxing, but equally, there’s inner peace all around you. And so you could also go about your day and find peace by observing the peace that exists all around you. And I’ll give you a few examples.

So there’s peace in a tree that is growing, an Oak tree or a Redwood tree, the peacefulness with which it grows for years and decades. That’s peacefulness. That’s peace. And so when you sit by an Oak tree or a Redwood tree, I have a Redwood tree outside my balcony in my backyard. And when I sit close to the tree, and I even take five minutes or 10 minutes just to look at the tree, I go into a state of peacefulness and that’s what we call inner peace.

But what it is is I’m tuning my radio to the frequency of peace. And I’m paying attention to the peace that is existing in the tree. And by doing that, I am tuning in to the inner peace within me. And so nature is a wonderful way to access peace and to tap into this frequency of inner peace within you.

But I’m going to give you a few other examples where there’s peace in so many other things that you’re doing. So, first of all, there’s peace in your breath. When you focus on your breath and consciously breathe deeper, you are tapping into peacefulness, into relaxation, and so to inner peace within you. So you have access to that wherever you are. If you’re driving down the highway, or you’re standing in line in a supermarket, or if you’re meditating, you can take those moments just to breathe more deeply, and suddenly you tap into inner peace.

There’s inner peace by hanging out with people that you love– family, children, parents, friends– just hanging out. And as you have the sweet moment, pay attention to the peacefulness that comes and a sweetness that comes of hanging out with people that you love.

And so you can, while you’re still hanging out with someone, you can just notice for a moment, “Wow, there’s peacefulness, there’s relaxation. My whole body has let go.” And that will amplify your sense of inner peace.

There’s inner peace in you taking care of yourself. So the meal you prepare for yourself, you caringly prepare for yourself and you’ve decorated kind of nicely, you put different vegetables, maybe, and a protein, and you just, you’re looking at the plate. There’s self-care. There is love. There is beauty. And you’re about to eat and nourish yourself. It’s a healthy and delicious meal. There’s peacefulness in that. And so if you stop for a moment and look at the plate you’ve just created for yourself, you will find peace, and you’ll be able to tap into the frequency of this quality, peace within you.

There is peace in reading a book that you love and you can’t let go of that allows you to forget the rest of the world and all your worries, and you’re just into the story or into the message. If you, at that moment that you just feel this delight– “Oh, there’s another chapter”– and you stop there for a second and you say, “Ah, I’ve let go of all my worries of the bills I have to pay, of my challenges at work… I’m just in the book here. Now for that moment that you are actually paying attention to it, you can amplify the sense of inner peace.

There’s even inner peace when you engage in something that you love doing.

And so, while we are taught that inner peace happens in the silence, when we quiet our mind, actually by engaging in the world and doing something that you love doing and that you’re really good at, you can feel inner peace because you’re aligned to your soul essence. You’re doing what you love doing. You are expressing your capabilities and the world recedes into the background, and you’re just engaged and focused in something that is timeless. And so there’s peace in that. There’s peace in that. And at that moment, nothing else matters. And you don’t want to do anything else about what you love doing, and that can be a hobby, or it can be your work, some activity that just gives you so much joy.

And so at that moment also, while you’re engaged and you have this delicious moment, “Oh, I love doing it,” stop and take a moment and think, “Wow, there’s peace in this. My whole body. And my whole being is relaxed and peaceful because I’m engaging in something that I love doing and I’m aligned.” So there’s no what I should do in the future or what I should have done in the past. You’re just in the moment. It’s timeless.

And that’s when the frequency of inner peace shows up and you can experience a more enhanced sense of inner peace. And in the same way, there is inner peace when you stand up and speak for what you care for, for your values, for your principles, for what you believe in. Why? Because again, you’re aligned. You’re aligned to your essence, to your values, to what you care for, and what is dear to you. And so when you speak up and you do the right thing, you’re in the right place, doing the right thing, saying the right thing at the right time, whether it’s for you or it’s for the benefit of someone you care for, or it’s for a social benefit for people you don’t know, for another group of people, or for nature for the planet. But when you stand for your values, you’re so aligned, that there’s tranquility there. There’s just you being aligned to who you are truly are at your essence. And again, you’re at the frequency of inner peace.

So as you do something like that, and these are the times where we’re all making choices of what we stand for and what we’re willing to speak up for, for ourselves and the groups that we belong to or for other people that we care for that are maybe not the same social or ethnic or racial group that we are part of. But when we stand for what we believe in, there is peace.

And so you see, there’s so many different ways where you can tap into the frequency of inner peace, where you can tap into the channel where inner peace becomes available and accessible to you and meditating and trying to empty your mind can be one of the hardest ways of doing that. Whereas if you’re busy and you’re going about your day, but you stop for a second.

When you sit for lunch at the park, and you look at the beauty of a leaf and suddenly there’s a peacefulness that shows up, then you’re in the frequency of inner peace. Or when you hang out with someone or when you practice self-care, or when you practice your craft or your hobby, something you love to do, or when you stand up for what’s important for you.

There are endless places in the external physical material world that emanate inner peace within themselves. And therefore, when you stop and perceive that peace, it allows you to change your channel and align yourself to the quality of inner peace, which awakens in you. And then you can take a moment to amplify.

So practice this as you go about your day.

Wherever you’re watching this, leave me a comment.

I send you blessings of peace.