How can we attain peace of mind?

We human beings are searching for peace of mind, but the mind itself steals our peace. The mind creates stress, worry, and anxiety by constantly producing thoughts. In fact, at the beginning of our life, we are very peaceful. Recall those days when you were a child. You had all the peace of mind that you could dream of. Then what happened? Then came alive the rascal mind and stole your peace away. It produced so many thoughts that eventually, your peace broke into pieces!

We all want peace of mind. Then, why do we lose our peace? What causes turbulence in our still life? We human beings are designed in a manner that we have five senses. Our eyes, nose, ears, tongue, and skin constantly sense and trigger thoughts. Each sense creates ripples in our life. It creates desires and may cause jealousy or other negative emotions like anger erupt. What do these negative emotions do? They rob our peace of mind. How do we control our senses? We must learn to tame them. We must learn to discipline our feelings so that they can help us live a happier life rather than cause stress, worry and anxiety. Sometimes we can take our senses, but then, the monkey mind will not sit still. It will still create ripples of thoughts that disturb our peace and tranquillity. Somehow, we grow up believing that these desires of the body and mind will make us achieve happiness. We don't realise that we were already in a state of peace and bliss. When the body and mind create ripples of excitement, we disturb our peace, the very foundation of our happiness.

Sometimes we fulfil our desires and feel a sense of achievement, and the peace returns. But that peace was already there to start with. We had momentarily lost it, creating ripples of desire, excitement, and achievement. It is our foolishness to lose our peace of mind and crave and desire. We are ignorant of the truth that peace is the foundation of happiness. Where there is no peace, there can be no joy and bliss. Therefore, creating turbulence in our life by constantly wanting achievements only makes us go round and round in circles where we first lose our peace of mind and then restore it.

Those blessed to understand the importance of peace as the foundation of happiness do not become slaves to their desires. Unlike those who crave till their grave, they don't let their need become their greed. Instead, they try to create peace in their mind as they discipline their senses and faculty of thought. How do they do it?

The mind is constantly producing thoughts. These aggressive thoughts create a lot of anxiety which steals our peace. It is like throwing several rocks on a still lake and creating many ripples that disturb the prevailing calmness. Unless we stop this agitation mind, we will never be able to develop the stillness needed to be peaceful.

To attain peace of mind is not difficult, but we must realise the truth about how we can achieve that state. We will largely be peaceful if we program our life and live it with contentment and fulfilment. If we realise that life is not a race, for us to chase and be an ace, we can live with grace, peace and tranquillity. It is not impossible to live a peaceful life. But this is only possible if we make the 'monkey' mind into a 'monk'.

The moment the mind stops jumping like a monkey from thought to thought, creating ripples that destroy our peace, we can regain tranquility. If we make the monkey into a monk by silencing the mind, by reducing this constant thinking, rather than worrying, craving, hoping, and desiring, we can reach that point of stillness where we will experience Divine peace. It is for us to realise that the mind robs our peace.

Today, the whole world is talking about meditation. They believe it is some magical way of attaining peace and tranquillity. They don't realise that true meditation is not about sitting in some fancy posture and doing some exercises of the body and mind. True meditation is making the mind still, using any method that can calm the mind. It doesn't matter how we bring the mind to a halt. What matters is to stop the aggression, and this is what true meditation does. Those who succeed in meditation attain a state of peace and tranquillity. They contemplate a thought and experience bliss from being conscious of their Divinity within. While it seems easy, the problem is that most of us do not know what peace of mind truly is and how we can attain that state of blissful tranquillity. So, how does one achieve peace of mind? First, one must become conscious of the truth. We human beings live in ignorance, and because of this, we lose our peace and tranquillity. We believe in the myth, and this hides the truth. This is the leading cause of the mind to be agitated. If we want to overcome the agitation of the mind, we must evolve into that state of consciousness where we become the witness, the observer, and we watch the mind jump from thought to thought. This is consciousness, and this is guaranteed to give us peace.