Hi, welcome back to

your Daily Mindfulness.

In today's session, we're going

to talk about inner peace.

Now these days as practices of meditation

and mindfulness have come up as things

that are important for our health and

wellbeing and our productivity, and

just being a full human in the world.

And it's widely understood

that that's the case.

It can easily become,

you know, another to do.

And inner peace can become another to do.

Something that we're, we're

chasing, we're trying to get to.

But it's really important to

remember that inner peace is

not something you can chase.

It's only something that you

can get when you stop running.

Inner peace is not

something you can chase.

It's only something you can get when

you stop running, because it can't

come from trying to get somewhere else.

It comes from trying to get more here,

relaxing into this moment, settling into

yourself and making space for the many

dimensions that come with being human.

The idea of chasing inner peace or

trying to get to inner peace is in

some way, a resistance or denial

to what is actually true right now.

And the only way we come to a peace

within ourselves is to meet what

is true and learn to relax into it.

It's not some organization of the

internal variables or the external

variables of life that when all of

that comes together, then I could

finally be peaceful with my life.

It doesn't work like that.

There's always going to be thoughts.

Some of them are going to be

difficult and complicated.

There's always going to be emotions.

A lot of them are going to be painful.

There's always going to be sensations.

Some might be pleasurable,

many might be painful.

And that's true with the external world.

And so if our idea of inner peace

is this subtle sense of a future

moment where then I'll be able to

be at ease with the way things are.

We're just going to keep running.

We're just going to end up in

some future moment with a mind

that is still looking for a future

moment, resisting what is here.

And so the journey toward inner peace

has to be a journey toward getting more

in this moment, relaxing more into this

moment, meeting the truth of whatever is

arising right now and softening into it.

And the more we do that, the more we

develop a coziness within ourselves, the

more our mind quite literally expands

in presence to hold more dimensions of

who we are and has the space to do so

without collapsing or being overwhelmed.

So, on your journey of cultivating

inner peace as the nice to-do, notice

if there is a striving forward in

the future and just see if you can

reorient yourself to the recognition

that it has to happen right now.

It's right here.

It's right now.

And each moment we do that, we're making

progress toward this thing that we're

not even trying to make progress for,

but in a paradoxical way, we still are.

So hope this helps.

Hope this gives you

something to think about.

Thank you for your practice and let's

settle in for today's meditation.