Gratitude and Trust: Six Affirmations That Will Change Your Life

Mindfulness

OK ON THE INSIDE

 

I was in Los Angeles last week, which always means a trip to the hairdresser and seeing the highly evolved Peter Ishkans.

Peter was the inspiration for one of my first blogs here,

“Make Your Mind Your Friend.”

Aside from a perfect haircut I always walk away from Peter with some little kernel of wisdom.

And like the sages, Gurus and other wise folk, it’s never really complicated.  It’s always a sentence, a statement, or a couple of words.

So, this time I asked Peter how he was adjusting to being back in the hustle bustle of life in LA after his year and half hiatus at an ashram in India.  Was he able to keep the peace, the calm, and the tranquility that he had attained in that most closed of environments?  If you have the right temperament, work at it and have the focus you can attain a form of enlightenment in Ashrams and centers for contemplation and worship. When the outside world is removed it is much easier to ignore it and not allow it to throw you off your game.   But it’s much harder to hold onto to all the inner calm when thrust back into the hurly- burly ways of the real world.

When I posed this question to Peter he didn’t miss a beat, he said “I’m OK in here” he pointed to his chest and his heart; his inner most sanctum.  “And when your OK in here, nothing out here can get you.”  He then pointed to the whole space outside his body.

Holy scissors, turn off the blow-dryer – I need to ponder that one.

So simple.  So perfect. So true. Yet so hard to achieve.

Always being okay on the inside.

Aren’t we nudging up to nirvana with that one?

Always being okay on the inside. Then nothing on the outside can get to you.

Having just come through a day last where I was totally thrown off my game from an exterior occurrence that has thrown me off my game since childhood I am really wanting to get a leg up on this one.

Many of us rumble around alright, or a version of alright until something from our past or a direct line to our Achilles heel throws us to the ground and mud wrestles with us until we can come up for air and gather our equilibrium again.

How magnificent if we could remove those moments from our lives.

I want some of that.  Don’t you?

Peter was not born this way ~ that I can assure you. I am going to get him to guest blog for us soon.

Peter has fought and worked his way to this state of bliss.

I think if he were to tell you the main contributor to his all OK on the inside state of being, he would say  his daily meditation and spiritual practice would be it.  That and years of soul searching and wrestling his demons into submission.

Peter has worked to get to this place. Thought I don’t know he would call it work. I need to ask him.

 

He awakens each day at four-thirty am and mediates for an hour. Every day.

He has an ongoing spiritual practice. Ongoing.

 

But he’s not one of those hemp wearing, full on vegan, don’t step on the insects  kind of guys.  He’s bouncy and fun and extroverted when you are around him.

He’s open and honest and funny.  He looks like the could be  the fifth, much younger Rolling Stone. But everything is okay on the inside and that comes through to the outside so when you are around him a bit of it rubs off on you.

There is no question that here on Gratitude and Trust we are working daily to make everything okay on the inside, through self-awareness, right- action, taking responsibility for our lives and choices, and giving back to the world.

But I have known for a long time that sitting in silence daily with only your breath to guide you and silencing your thoughts into submission is one of the surest ways to calm the monkey brain and dig a wide path to that place called constant serenity.

I am always swearing that this is the week I will go back to my historically pathetic meditation practice and work on improving it and making it a part of my daily life.

This time I’m hoping Peter’s words,  “When everything is OK inside nothing can get to you from the outside will continue to reverberate in my brain and will prod me on to grabbing some of that serenity for me.