It’s becoming one of the biggest trends of the 21st century to seek out Enlightenment and inner peace.  People are buying up books everywhere and running from teacher to teacher to try and find the inner peace they so desperately crave.  Who really has inner peace and how did they find it?  We all can get to feeling a bit lost when it comes to uncovering the Truth.

One surefire method for determining if you are on the right path is to simply ask yourself “Am I more at peace than I was a year ago or six months ago?”  If you feel that you are finding more peacefulness as you progress on your path, then you know it must be working.  If you aren’t sure or you think that maybe it isn’t working then maybe you need to sit still a little more each day.  Sitting still each day and closing your eyes as you sit can be a great way to calm your mind and emotions so that peacefulness eventually becomes more normal for you.  Inner peace only comes from one place and that’s the inner part of you!  If you find that you aren’t feeling peaceful, it’s time to look deeper within yourself.

Most of the time, when people decide to start a daily meditation, they discover that their thoughts and emotions are running wild inside of them and they feel almost instantly discouraged. Common statements from beginners are “Am I doing it right?”, “How should I sit?” and “Should I concentrate on my breathing?”  These are all justifiable questions to have and yet beginners will still be surprised to hear that those questions don’t really matter.  There is no “right” way to sit still or “correct” thing to concentrate on when you meditate.  You’re goal is to simply sit still with your eyes closed and relax.  Don’t fall asleep but don’t worry so much about whether it is “right” or “wrong”.  If you are sitting there with your eyes closed then it is Right!  That’s all there is to it.

The hard part comes in when we start judging everything and analyzing it and get ourselves all frustrated with what we are trying to do.  What are we trying to do?  Nothing!  So how did we get so frustrated about nothing?  The problem that beginners have is they think there is a special “formula” for meditation and a way of doing it that will make them an “expert”.  There is no correct way of doing it and there is no formula.  Everything you do will be correct.  Just sit there and, by doing it each day for a certain amount of time, this will eventually result in more calmness of your mental processes and an equilibrium of your emotions.  The beginning, however, can sometimes be the toughest time.

Did you ever try to teach a dog to sit still?  You can usually teach him to sit but getting him to “stay” is a bit tougher.  This is the same problem for people.  People know how to sit but they never learn how to stay.  If you can teach yourself to both sit and stay you will be among the very few people in the world who have learned a very valuable trick.  For dogs, it takes some extra “Scooby snacks” to get them to do it.  For human beings it sometimes requires a calendar and the fun game of checking off the days of the week as they complete their task of “staying” for 30 minutes or more.  Some humans get to be experts at this trick and can sit still for over an hour and for several different times a day.  These humans are sort of like the dogs you have seen on television who can perform in front of a panel of judges and can sit and stay for long periods of time.  Their masters always love them a lot and they always win the contests they enter.  As funny as this comparison may seem, it actually applies quite well.  If you learn to sit for longer periods of time without having to move around in your chair and without your mind doing cartwheels every moment, you will eventually start to win more things in life.  The “Master” behind your thoughts and emotions will eventually come forward and reward you with a lot of great “Scooby snacks.  Finding inner peace can be as easy as training a dog but you have to be a good dog who really wants to please his master.  Now get out there and “sit” and, next time you do it, make sure and “stay” too!

Amazingly, you have just come across the information that you need to find your own inner peace.  Just look at the page in front of you.  It’s you who is staring out at this page and it’s you that is the Source of your own inner peace.  You just haven’t learned how to see yourself yet and you need a little guidance.  Once you are able to focus in on who you really are, you will reach inner peace.  You will know it because nothing will disturb you anymore and any feelings of dis-ease or “uncomfortableness” will be gone entirely.  It’s not a joke.  This is something that is possible for you and that has already happened for many other people.  They learned to focus their inner consciousness onto themselves over longer and longer periods of time until, Boom!  A breakthrough of consciousness happened that overwhelmed all of their old ways of looking at things and put them at peace with the entire contents of their mind. It’s almost entirely that simple.

If you are wondering how to do this yourself, it’s a pretty good question and deserves a bit more explanation.  All you have to do is watch every thought and emotion that goes through your mind. No matter what it is, if you continue to watch, as simple as that seems, you will become an expert in no time at all.  Go ahead and try it. Just keep to this process of watching each thought and each emotion as it floats by.  There goes a sad emotion, there goes a happy one.  There goes an angry emotion, there goes a scared one.  Watch each thought such as the thought about your mean old mother-in-law or the thought about your newest recipe that you plan to use for dinner tonight. Learn to relax as you do it.  It doesn’t matter what the thought is, just watch it float up out of nowhere and watch it disappear again into nothing.  As you practice doing this each day, you will become better and better at it until one day, Shazzam!  Many people report a sudden eruption of energy inside themselves like a conscious energy that bursts up through their heart and into their head which utterly transforms all of theirr thoughts and feelings like they never imagined.  This is called the Kundalini energy in Indian terminology and the Holy Spirit in Western terminology.  It doesn’t matter what you choose to call it.  The fact is, it brings inner peace and makes you feel like a million dollars every time you raise it up inside yourself.

That’s right.  Raising the Kundalini can be done at will once you have become practiced enough to make it happen the first time.  This energy then becomes the source of all your happiness and inner peace in life.  It becomes the thing that you look forward to each day as you prepare to sit down for another 30 minutes or so of meditation.  In the beginning, if you are just starting out with A Course in Miracles or with any kind of meditation in general, you will find it quite hard to sit still.  Everything inside you will want to move around and get up from your chair to go see what’s on television or happening down the street.  Meditation can be so boring!  Still, if you are one of those people who really believes that there is a great potential locked inside you, you will teach yourself to sit still each and every day for at least 30 or 40 minutes.  Eventually , you will learn to sit for longer and longer periods of time and you will learn to be more and more content as you sit there doing nothing.  It’s a battle with your ego is what it is. Your ego wants to get up from the chair and get back to the troubles of your life.  Your spirit, however, will be stronger and will instruct you to just sit there and let the ego tire itself out.  Over time, week after week, month after month, you will see that your mind becomes more and more contented with just sitting still.  At the same time however, the ego will really get frustrated and try to throw up its worst attacks to try to stop you from keeping to your course.  If you wait it all out and sit still no matter what, finally your ego will be broken and your Spirit will burst forth as the true champion.  That’s basically how it works and you can pat yourself on the back for reading this far and learning what you just learned.  It wasn’t an accident that you came here to read this and it won’t be an accident when you set your mind to the task of finding inner peace.  The inner peace you search for is locked away inside yourself.  It only takes a bit of serious intention and discipline to find it in there and then, you too will have the inner peace you have always wanted.

Every sports professional that ever lived had a good coach at one time or another.  A coach is not always someone who excels at the game but someone who at least knows the strategies and can teach you a lot about your own game before you go out on your own.  Spiritual growth is not much different from a sport.  They both require a lot of spirit and a good coach to help you learn the ropes.

Inner peace isn’t the easiest thing to find.  Some people who are much older and more experienced than you may actually have a few tricks that you never thought of before.  Maybe you don’t envision yourself ending up like them but you might gain a lot of valuable insights into your own journey if you hang around and listen to what they have to say.  Just learning to sit still when someone else is speaking is a great talent to have.  Very few people even know how to actively listen to someone else and to put their own thoughts on hold for a few minutes.  If you can learn to listen to a coach, you will acquire valuable insights that will help you to see into your own personality where you might have otherwise been blind.

It’s easy for others to see our own problems but very hard for us to see them ourselves.  If you give someone the permission to make suggestions for you about your spiritual growth, you may find that you are able to get a much better angle on your problems than ever before.  Choose wisely, however as this is your spiritual future we are talking about!

Listening to a coach has many great benefits. You can take a break from pointing your finger at someone else and take a little time working on yourself. Twelve-Step groups have what is commonly referred to as a “Sponsor” who will listen to your problems and give you some pointed suggestions along the way.  A Course in Miracles, is organized around a teacher who has already practiced the lessons many times before and understands the very complicated text that others may feel lost in.  You can benefit from just listening to the teacher as they speak. Put your own ego on the back burner for a little while.  Just watching how hard this can be will be a great lesson for your spiritual growth!

Most spiritual traditions and practices advocate the importance of finding a teacher who is further along the spiritual path than you.  In India, the guru often sits with his or her students during “Satsang” and offers simple answers to their questions about spirituality and meditation. Students are also said to benefit from the aura of the teacher which can even be felt as a physical sensation in some extreme cases.  Zen Buddhists and other spiritual masters oftentimes speak of a “transmission” that occurs from the teacher to the student which is both silent and extremely powerful.  Advanced monks have been known to have very profound experiences of Enlightenment when they come into the presence of an Enlighteneed master.

Some teachers will even provide a puzzle for many of his or her students in the form of a koan.  This koan is a challenge that is given to the students by their spiritual coach.  Upon reflecting on the koan for a long period of time, the student may eventually have a breakthrough experience and learn the true meaning of life. None of this would have been possible, however, without the help of the spiritual coach.

Inner peace doesn’t usually come in a day.  You may spend years of preparation for the big event and require the help of a coach to guide you along.  Then after years of pursuing your dream, the big day may come where you will find yourself at the most important game of your life.  Will you have all the information you need at that big game?  It may be that the coaches you choose along the way will be the people who will provide you with the information you need and help you to find that inner peace you have always sought after.  You will certainly be glad you pursued their wisdom and be grateful when you arrive at your destination.

Success and inner peace tend to go hand in hand but you may find one before you find the other. Many people struggle early on in life to obtain success in their careers but find that they are extremely taxed and turn to practices and techniques for inner peace as they grow older. (more…)

The chances are very good that you know someone who has a poor attitude and outlook on life. Being around that person is probably very difficult, not to mention depressing. It seems that no matter what you do, nothing will make them happy. You try and try to be nice or to cheer them up, and nothing works. You are going about it the wrong way. (more…)