Today's quotation:
No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it, by vigorously willing to have it. Peace is a margin of power around our daily need. Peace is a consciousness of springs too deep for earthly droughts to dry up. Peace is the gift not of volitional struggle but of spiritual hospitality.
Harry Emerson Fosdick
Today's Meditation:
If I could give any gift to anybody in the world, it would be peace. Nothing but peace of mind and peace of heart can help to cure this world of ours or the people in it. Peace is like a medicine that works its magic on our spirits, allowing us to endure things we wouldn't be able to endure without it, and to see things that we wouldn't be able to see without it. Peace is the greatest gift that we can share with others, apart from love, and the two are very closely related. Love without peace is often a demanding sort of love, and peace without love doesn't offer much to the world.
The people that I've most enjoyed being with in my life are those who have peace. Some find it in their spirituality, others who claim no religious beliefs find it in themselves. They can't help but share it, for it is an integral part of who they are, and being with them always has been a great experience. They may ask things of me, but I know they aren't asking because they're needy or manipulative--they genuinely need help. They tend not to react to things in anger, and they tend not to be judgmental or overly critical. Just being with them, I feel their peace, and I feel more peaceful inside. And I know that their examples have been the most important influence in helping me to find my own peace.
Peace is powerful, as you will find in many Zen and Buddhist stories and sayings. Peace gives us a place to work from that is imperturbable, a solid rock foundation that allows us to do what we need to do from a place of strength, not worrying that the end results of anything we do may tear us apart. Peace is within me, and it is within you. Can we allow that peace to be an integral part of our lives, the source of all we do and say? Can our relations with others be based on our own peace, the peace that comes only from within? The answer must be yes, of course, but it has to start with us.
Questions to consider:
Are you fully aware of and in touch with the peace
that is within you?
Why might we tend to try to find peace from outside sources?
How can we get in touch with our inner peace?
For further thought:
The important thing to remember is that peace
comes from within your own heart and mind,
not from some outside source, and when you
refuse to be disturbed by things about you,
life will flood your being with dynamic energy.
Anonymous
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