How to Access Peace

When do I “feel” peace within myself?

Is it when the bills are paid?
Is it when the weeds are pulled and the grass is mowed?
Is it when the laundry is done and the shopping is completed?
Is it when the house is cleaned, the projects done?

NO! It is when I am pursuing my dream, my passion.

Even though is FEELS like all that “doing” gives me peace that is not true peace. I feel peace within when I am being true to myself. At the moment of this writing, the sound of a woodpecker brings a smile to my face and I have a sense of peace. This is because I feel connected to the whole. My cat, Georgia, sits beside me and my doggie, Rhapsody, happily hunts for lizards nearby. These things bring me peace and I’m doing nothing but drinking it all in. I am being “in”, connected to, all that is.

“When we try to pick out any one thing by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe”.

John Muir.

Eckhart Tolle writes in Stillness Speaks: “We depend on nature not only for our physical survival. We also need nature to show us the way home, the way out of the prison of our own minds. We get lost in doing, thinking, remembering, anticipating – lost in a maze of complexity and a world of problems.

We have forgotten what rocks, plants and animals still know. We have forgotten how to be…
To bring your attention to a stone, a tree, or an animal does not mean to think about it, but simply to perceive it, to hold it in your awareness.

Something of its essence then transmits itself to you. You can sense how still it is, and in doing so the same stillness arises within you. You sense how deeply it rests in Being – completely at one with what it is and where it is. In realizing this, you too come to a place of rest deep within yourself.”

To me this is true peace and only in the place of stillness and peace can I know for sure what my passion is, what my truth is. All the “doing” in the world smothers any awareness that might be at the periphery of my consciousness.

Try it today. Let go of the to-do lists and just "be" in nature. See how that feels.

Pete the Pelican

Last spring I had the delightful and memorable experience of meeting Pegleg Pete the Pelican. Somewhere along Pete's life he had lost his leg. He could have gotten tangled up in fishing line nor assorted other litter and debris, he could have gotten an infection of some type or, horror of horrors, he could have lost it in the jaws of a gator. In any event, he not talking about it. He's doing just fine. He's learned to hang out at a marine gas station that sells bait fish to fishermen along with other supplies. He's after the fish, of course, and he's very selective, refusing anything that is not to his taste.

I'm always amazed at how animals, without whining or complaining, never give up, until the day comes when they must. They accept whatever befalls them with grace and dignity. Oh would I live so cheerfully! Acceptance, surrender...yes, but not with an attitude of defeat. Rather an attitude of cheerfulness and creativity. As it has been said, "When one window closes another door opens."

The smallest and, seemingly, least significant member of the non-human world can illuminate truth, if only we have the eyes to see.

Today take a moment to look, really look. And see.