Monday, May 9, 2011

Peaceful Solitude in a Crowded Room



The negative set is feeling lonely in a crowded room. This is a mind-flipping paradigm — just as easily is solitude and meditational inner-core silence achieved in the proverbial crowded room (or crowded life).


It’s all a matter of what’s in the mind.


What a wonderful reality it is not to feel trapped by time or space, but to be free within the mind, and therefore within the heart also.


The Real Source of Peace


Peace is about heart-space. This sort of peace, where we can feel unencumbered, is attainable anywhere. Peace, thus, is quantifiable joy.


The real source of our peace is, of course, God. There is power that comes from God, like power from no other, which inexplicably frees the mind.


Heart and mind are so interdependent whenever we talk about one who should in the same breath talk about the other also.


So, our heart at peace with God, and a mind also, is able to retrieve solitude and inner silence of spirit anywhere. Infinitely more commonly, however, there is the opposite experience — people experiencing upheaval, instead, no matter how hard they search.


Peace is hence a privilege. A rarely attainable thing it is for almost everyone, but from God, drawing on his strength, it is never more easily attained.


The Ultimate Panacea


Surely the ultimate place any human being can get to is comfort in the heart and peace of mind, the war within quelled, and though there might be struggle, there is harmony — the sense of regaling hope — beyond it.


The crowded room illustration is the notional extreme, but life is difficult whenever there are clashing priorities, the perception of crowded schedules, generally a lack of personal space.


Well adjusted people — by spiritual position, not status — will be at harmony despite the shrieking mess that life can become. Even to know the theory — that it is possible to attain inner peace even under the most trying of circumstances — is a boon to confidence.


***


We have gone past the loneliness in the crowded room scenario and we’ve pictured the possibilities of inner peace in the busiest of externalities.


We all need this hope that comes from God, so to nurture our relationship with God to establish this sort of paradoxical peace, we find now, is the key.


The ultimate panacea is, therefore, conditional upon the quality of our relationship with God who we worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).


© 2011 S. J. Wickham.

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