346. A New Peace

Reflecting honestly on yourself is often uncomfortable. You have memories that are unpleasant and you don’t want to relive them. Even the thought of putting yourself under the microscope makes you squirm. You know there are things hidden inside you that you won’t enjoy seeing.

Most importantly, you don’t want to see anything that would suggest you’re contributing to your own pain and suffering. You dread the possibility that you might need to make real changes because the way you’re living is not healthy or sustainable. It’s more comfortable to ignore what’s inside and carry on as though everything is fine.

But the consequence of doing so is that you channel all of your suffering out towards the world. When something goes wrong, you find someone to blame for it. When you’re feeling anxious, you angrily vent your frustrations onto others. When you’re in pain, you find someone to make into an enemy that you’re allowed to hate. All of these attempts to transfer your suffering only serve to strengthen and perpetuate it.

It is by doing the uncomfortable work of investigating yourself that you also gain a chance to discover a deeper kind of comfort. This is the comfort that comes from living joyfully, which can be found by learning to see need and responding to it.

But you can get there only if you’re willing to be honest with yourself. You need to discover where your suffering originates. You need to see how your desires, aversions, and beliefs produce suffering through attachment. You need to see this not just intellectually but through your own experience of suffering.

This is no simple task. It means questioning yourself relentlessly and looking even at those parts of yourself that you fear most. There will be discomfort, there will be struggle, and there will be pain. But it is by traversing these difficulties that you open a pathway to a new peace that far surpasses whatever comfort you are trying to preserve. This is the peace of awareness, the peace of compassion, the peace of joyful life.