The Secret to Inner Peace

“The object is simply to let one’s mind alone; to experience but not to try to catch hold of one’s experience in thoughts.” ~Alan Watts

Inner peace is something we all want to experience, yet we often struggle to attain it. We imagine that peace will finally arrive when all our problems are solved and all our responsibilities are met. But even when everything around you is quiet, your mind can stay busy replaying the past, anticipating the future and commenting on everything in between. If peace depends on you silencing both the outer world and your inner thoughts, it will always feel just out of reach. So, what is the secret to inner peace?

The first thing you can do is notice the silence that is present beneath all sounds. Take a moment to listen to the world around you. You might hear a bird chirping, a dog barking or a car passing by. Notice how each sound emerges from silence and then dissolves back into it. Your attention naturally follows the noise, yet you rarely notice the quiet background that the sound is taking place in.

The same is true for your inner world, where all thoughts take place inside an ever-present silence. Imagine a clean chalkboard in a classroom. A teacher then takes a piece of chalk and writes words on the board. As sentences are written, your attention naturally moves toward the words. You become so absorbed in their meaning that you forget all about the board beneath them. Silence is like that blackboard- a background you can learn to be aware of, even as thoughts come and go.

Another thing you can do is become aware of your inner voice. Interestingly, there are some people out there who have little or no inner dialogue. Researchers call the absence of inner speech anendophasia, describing people who think without experiencing a voice narrating inside their heads. For example, you might think to yourself, “I need to pick up milk on my way home.” Whereas someone with anendophasia might picture the milk carton in their mind or simply know that they need more milk, without having to mentally say the sentence.

In the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali defines yoga as “the stilling of the fluctuations of the mind.” Of course, thinking in images instead of words is not the same thing as stilling the mind. Afterall, a chalkboard that doesn’t have any sentences written on it can still be covered in drawings and diagrams. But imagine how peaceful your inner world would be if you were able to recognize your thoughts as they arise, without having to subvocalize them first.

Perhaps the most effective way to cultivate inner peace right now is to be present with what is. As Eckhart Tolle advises, “Wherever you are, be there totally.” Being there totally means not comparing this moment to previous moments or coming up with all the ways this moment could be changed or improved. Ultimately, peace is not something that can be attained through effort, it’s something that is always there in the background, underneath all the noise.