There is a peace at the heart of your experience that has never been disturbed. You know the ordinary kinds of peace – the calm after meditation, the quiet when the children are finally asleep, the satisfaction of a problem solved. These come and go with circumstances. The peace I am pointing to lives deeper than all of these. It is the peace you already are, always, before any experience arises and during every experience that arises.
Consider the space in the room where you are sitting. Notice how it accommodates everything within it – the furniture, the sounds, the movement of air – remaining itself throughout. The space was there before the room was furnished, it is here now while the room is full, and it will remain when everything is cleared away. It holds all things with perfect equanimity, simply being itself while forms come and go within it.
Awareness is like that space. It is the open, knowing presence in which every thought, feeling, sensation and perception appears. A worried thought arises and awareness knows it. A joyful feeling arises and awareness knows it. The worry passes, the joy passes, and awareness remains. You have been this same awareness all your life, through every mood, every circumstance, every triumph and every difficulty. It is the one continuous thread running through all your experience.
Now turn your attention gently towards this awareness itself. What do you find? Something prior to every idea about awareness: the simple fact of being aware. Rest there a moment. Notice the quality of this being-aware. It is open, it is present, it is here. And it is, most fundamentally, at peace.
This peace is the very nature of awareness itself, as wetness is the nature of water and warmth is the nature of the sun. You do not have to make water wet, and you do not have to make awareness peaceful. Awareness is peace, knowing itself.
The difficulty has been that attention has, through long habit, flowed outward towards the content of experience and overlooked its own source. You believed peace was somewhere out there, waiting in a future achievement, a better relationship, a quieter life. And so you sought it, chased it, lost it and sought it again. Yet all along the peace you sought was the very awareness doing the seeking. It was already the ground on which your search was taking place.
Sit quietly for a moment. Let your thoughts do whatever they do. Let feelings arise as they please. Let sounds come and go. And notice the still, spacious, knowing presence in which all of this is taking place. That is you. That is your true nature. And the peace you have always longed for is already here, shining quietly as the simple fact of your own being.
Next week, we will explore what flows naturally from this recognition – and how it changes the way we show up in a turbulent world.
