The exhausting quest for inner peace

AARP has a terrific magazine with the largest circulation in the world. I was delighted to read a travelogue by Melina Bellows in the March & April 2008 issue. Ms. Bellows, employed fulltime and the mother of two children under four, is offered a five-day jaunt to an Ayurvedic spa in India called Ananda. She accepts.

Dr. Sree Sreedharan, a Vedanta disciple, gives her a private lesson at one point during her stay. In a personal encounter, her burning issue bursts out of her, “My quest for inner peace is exhausting me.”

How’s your quest for inner peace treating you?

Does inner peace simply appear as one more item on your to-do list? I sometimes have clients who feel this way about their spiritual work. It’s just one more thing to accomplish. But is it?

I am a fan of the words of A. J. Muste, “There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.” For me, there’s a message in this as profound as it is simple. Inner peace isn’t something to be sought. Instead, it is a way to live. For peace, especially inner peace, there is no quest. Instead, there is a way to do the quest.

My mama was fond of saying that delivery is ninety percent of life. She was right. Delivery, or how one does whatever one does, makes a difference. That’s why I liked Dr. Sreedharan’s answer to Ms. Bellows. He invites her to dinner and offers her a new experience—an opportunity to wear a sari. That might not seem to you or me like a way to find inner peace, but in the donning of the garment, she sees herself as a vision of her Goddess Self.

It is that Self, God or Goddess, where inner peace resides and thrives in each one of us. Make sure you allow time to glimpse Him or Her every day. That will keep you in the way to peace.