Finding Inner Peace

How to achieve inner peace.
■ Be aware, accept and love each part of yourself.
■ Know that each part has a positive intent, no matter how negative you think the part is.
■ Each part (that is troubling you) is an identity of a young child trying to survive a trauma and is stuck in that memory. When the part feels that you love and accept it, and it feels safe, then the part can detach from the memory and the part then unites with you and matures. The conflict, separation and fragmentation disappears.

Inner peace is a state of mind that many people are searching for. This implies that they are seeking a respite from or an end to a war or conflict that is occurring and war entails pain and suffering. Where is this war, conflict, pain and suffering? It is all occurring in the mind and of course it wouldn’t be happening if there was inner peace.

For a war or conflict to occur then there are at least two participants and so really you are at war with yourself and that is how it feels, isn’t it? If you are at war with yourself, then you cannot possibly win, for in order to win, some part of you has to lose. So the solution cannot be to continue the war until there is a victor. The solution is for there to be no reason for a war or conflict.

To put it simply, the cause of the conflict is separation and the cause of inner peace is unification. That is the big picture and to achieve inner peace, all the actions we take must fit in with the big picture, anything that helps unification will ease suffering.

There are many techniques and if you are aware of the big picture then you will have greater success.

You are here and you are in conflict with yourself, how can this be? Is there more than one of you??? Surprisingly the answer is yes. As stated earlier, this war, this conflict is occurring in the mind and it is a mental process that is creating the pain and suffering. If you look in the mirror, you will only see one person and there is only one person, so the war is not between two or more persons. It is a war with your self(s) and we all have many ‘selves’.

Now it gets complicated, as we will need to know a lot more about ‘selves’ such as how, when, where, why and what they are and how it is all connected. So there will be much more writing on this later on.

Why is there separation in the first place?

Each self has an identity, a quality and a job to do and they all work together to ensure survival of the person. In fact for every quality, we have a self and we all have every quality, so we each have an awful lot of selves. It is going to be difficult to get all these identities to work in harmony together, since most qualities have an opposing quality!

Each quality such as anger, kindness etc is neutral and beneficial in certain contexts and as such they are useful tools and a human being needs them all. For these tools to be more effective in producing the required behavior associated with the quality, an identity, a part of the ego becomes responsible for the quality. This part (a self) learns certain criteria pertaining to its quality; such as what context to use the quality in.

As the quality has now got an owner that is responsible for the use of the quality, this owner/self has the right and permission to utilize the quality when the right circumstances present themselves. These selves react automatically when it perceives the correct circumstance is present and hence you lose control of the situation while the self takes control and executes its quality and behavior. The external correct circumstance becomes a trigger for the unconscious self and you feel that you are a puppet and people can push your buttons.

When we are describing ourselves, we are describing the collection of selves that have formed a committee like structure and this committee is deemed the most effective to be in charge. This committee is ‘You’ and is in control most of the time, while the external circumstances are in its realm of expertise.

So if you define yourself as kind, caring, giving, trustworthy and happy, then you are a committee of five and this feels like who you are. These selves are the accepted selves and they work in harmony together. The opposite selves that own the opposite qualities of cruel, non caring, selfish, untrustworthy and unhappy will be rejected selves and you will resist their occurrence. If they occur automatically, then you may beat yourself up for being this way.

These rejected qualities and self’s are not negative or bad, they simply do the job that they are programmed to do. Their job is always pro-survival. Because we do not understand what their job or purpose is, we perceive them as bad and unnecessary and may want to get rid of them (more rejection).

So you may be aware of many parts of yourself that you dislike and there may be a lot of conflict between the selves.

If you are in need of emotional healing then your selves are fragmented with most of them rejected. Now these rejected selves languish with the effects of rejection and so the whole body suffers from the effects.

So, what is inner peace? Inner peace is where the selves are not rejected and there is harmony between the selves and you have a mature functioning committee.

Most selves have obtained their identity by the time you are five or six years of age. They prematurely adopt the quality because of a traumatic experience. Because it was traumatic, it then became necessary to attach an identity with the quality that was beneficial to you in the traumatic experience, so that the expression of that quality is instantaneously available, should you be endangered again.

Once the identity is attached because of a traumatic experience, then this is a pattern and an emotional state of being and now resides in the subconscious, where it has access to conscious perceptions and is instantly available. It is like they are looking from behind your eyes, scanning for the danger. The purpose is to keep you safe, but as you grow up, you separate more and more from some of these selves. You mature but these rejected selves remain as a very young child. You reign and live in consciousness and these other selves are behind you in the shadows.

To have inner peace, you begin by being aware of the rejected selves, then allow yourself to accept them, you don’t have to like or approve of them, simply accept that they are present. You then ask or query what their purpose is, what are they trying to achieve, realizing that the intent is beneficial to you, even if the outcome of the behavior is not beneficial. If you get an answer, thank the part and let the part know your age and that you are a mature adult that is capable of handling the situation. As these parts are young children and stuck in time, they see you as the same age and generally they feel older and superior for they were needed for your survival when the trauma occurred. They see you as vulnerable and incapable of surviving.

Get to know these rejected selves, let them know that you are that part all grown up, do not judge, blame or criticize them, and when you are ready – love them for they are a part of you, they are you at a much younger age. Let them know that they are safe, and that you would like to care for them. Feel where they physically are, for example you may sense that a particular part is on your right shoulder, imagine that a little baby or child is there on your shoulder, ask if it is okay to gently pat it. If you get a sense of ‘yes’ then physically pat or stroke the ‘imaginary’ parts head. Let it know that you are sorry for any pain or hurt it has felt.

Now ask if it is alright if you move that part to your heart or chest area. This idea of movement allows the part to disconnect from the memory of the trauma, the part then matures and becomes a part of you. The separation disappears and the quality now just becomes a neutral quality that is under your control.

Do this one at a time and only with parts that you feel comfortable doing this with.