The Truth About Inner Peace: 5 Myths Debunked

Q: How long have you meditated, and can you clear your mind?

Twelve or thirteen years, and no. Not for more than about half a second, and that has not changed. The mind evolved to think. That is normal.

Q: Which Buddha is the fat laughing one?

A different one from Siddhartha. He is laughing because he has everything and it never made him happy. The joke is that it was all temporary anyway.

Q: If peace is always there, why can I not feel it?

Because you are usually in doing mode, and it is quiet. It is less about creating it than remembering to look. Some days I still cannot see it either.

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acceptance · suffering · mindfulness · disability

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of Stillness in the Storms.

On this episode, I want to talk about inner peace.

And what does inner peace mean and what does it mean for me?

I'm paralyzed from a neck down.

And I'll answer the question is, how did I find inner peace when

I ended up paralyzed after breaking my neck at the age of 18?

And then I'm going to go through five myths of inner peace.

I think this is really important because it was all these

five things that I tried to find, realizing that none of them

are true.

But before I do that, I want to do probably the most important

thing, and that is I want to thank my donators.

You know, Brian and Joy, thank you deeply from the bottom of my

heart.

You made a huge donation and I hope you're both doing well.

And I'm going to put that towards my new chair because this

chair is literally falling apart and the left motor just needs

replacing and not quite sure how to do all those things.

So I'm going to put that aside for that.

And I'm going to thank Rosie, Kim, Nick, Alice, Caroline, David

and Jocelyn.

You guys are awesome and you keep this podcast free along with

my monthly donators.

You know, just.

I'm always humble when people donate, because you don't need to.

But I also love podcasts that don't have adverts.

Anyway.

Right, let's get on with today's show.

So I'm going to start with the main question is how did I find inner

peace?

And I'm gonna.

I'm not gonna talk primarily about how did I find it after my

accident.

I'm gonna talk about in general, in life, because I didn't

find inner peace in any given one moment.

I didn't find inner peace as a child.

I don't have inner peace now.

A lot of time, as after years of meditating and years of having

teachers.

But I have inner peace more often than I used to, probably more

often now than I did on a daily basis last year.

And if you go back each year.

But what I will say is one thing that really did trigger my

journey towards me, reducing my suffering.

Because that's the flip side of it.

We are at peace when we're not suffering or when we're doing something

we enjoy.

They're the two things.

So if there's an absence of suffering, we seem to be at peace.

If there's a.

If we're doing something we enjoy.

It's like when people say, I want to stop thinking, no, you don't.

You just want to stop having thoughts that you don't want.

You don't mind having nice thoughts, unless of course, they're

relentless and you're trying to go sleep, that's a different story.

But in general we want pleasant stuff.

We want more joy, we want more comfort.

And that's why we're seeking inner peace.

What we're actually doing is we're trying to seek less suffering.

And I think that's an important way of looking at it because.

And of course, what's the age old Zen saying, you know, suffering

is optional, pain is inevitable, or the other way around.

And really suffering is optional.

You know, you're going to have the odd suffering, but it's whether

or not you're going to prolong it and it's going to stay and whether

or not you're going to become a victim in it.

So how did I find inner peace?

Well, I hit rock bottom when just after my 40th birthday when

my wheelchair broke down.

It was in the doorway of a local supermarket.

I just cried.

My credit cards were absolutely to the maximum.

My electric wheelchair broke.

And without my electric wheelchair I have nothing.

I, I say I have nothing, of course I have.

But looking at through the lens of today.

But then I thought I had nothing.

There was no way.

I had to go home.

I didn't even know how I was going to get home.

The tire had burst and the wire from the tire just went all

in amongst the motors and everything.

And this security guard walked over to me, he's on a little higher

plymph.

As he looked over, he walked over to me and he just squeezed my

shoulder and he just said ah.

And I said, he didn't really say nothing but his just squeeze

on my shoulder was like, I don't know, some kind of man to man

kind of moment.

I have no idea.

But it was exactly what I needed.

I didn't need someone to fix.

I didn't need someone to, you know, come over and say what do I

need?

I just needed someone to just come over and just know that I wasn't

alone.

And that's what he did.

And a few minutes later I, you know, picked up my phone.

I found my friend Alan and.

Oh, Alan, he passed away a few years ago.

Miss him.

I often think, what would he think of 3D prints?

Like he was an engineer and used to repair my chair a lot and

yeah, what would he think of the world today?

Incredible.

So I phoned Alan and he went and got my van with the carer.

They come down and they nursed the chair into the back of the van

and I think I borrowed some money and I got the chair repaired

after a few days, but.

But it was just awful.

I just, I hit completely rock bottom.

I was single at the time.

I felt like I had nobody.

So there I was paralyzed.

It was 19 years after my accident and it was, I don't know,

about 10 years after my shop had gone bankrupt.

I'd lost my friend.

There was loads of many things that built up to this one day that

I hit my rock bottom.

And over the coming weeks that I, I started drinking just to go

sleep.

I started doing all these things that were just so harmful

to me.

And in the end I had to say, you know, I'm suffering so badly

here.

So I started reading books.

And every book told me I had to meditate.

And every book I said, I can't meditate, my mind doesn't shut off,

so that's impossible.

So I kept turning the pages, looking for other solutions.

And here's the thing, if one person comes and tells you, you know,

it's raining, you can go, yeah, maybe.

If two people come and tell you it's raining, you can go, it's

pretty, maybe it's pretty likely.

But if everybody, if every book, if everything tells you the

answer is meditating, you've kind of got to take notice and go,

okay, they all cannot be wrong and I'm the one that's right.

So I sat down, I tried to meditate and my mind wouldn't shut

off.

I. I couldn't not think for more than about half a second.

And that's still exactly the same now.

I've been meditating now, what, 12, 13 years and I still can't

shut my mind off.

And all that which is good, that's part of it.

The mind is designed to think or evolve to think.

That's it.

That's perfectly normal.

So what is my inner peace now?

My inner peace is just returning to the fact that this moment

is okay.

I'm remembering that and I remember it more often now.

And I think that's the main thing about it.

It's not.

The inner peace is always there.

It's always present.

A peaceful, quiet world is always present.

Even in the most dire circumstances.

It might be hard to see, it might be hard to come aware of it.

Now, I'm not talking if your life is at threat or anything like

that.

I'm saying in everyday going, there's the ability to just step

back and go, okay, in this moment, things are okay.

And when you Realize that.

You realize that inner peace is always there, underlying all the

thinking and the noise and all the hassles of life.

Inner peace is right there underneath it all, underneath the

noise of life.

So how do I find inner peace now?

I remember it's there.

I don't always remember.

I don't always become aware, but I'm more and more becoming aware.

So when I get frustrated in a council meeting, or frustrated because

the carers wound me up, or somebody else, or I read something

I don't want to read, or I look at something with Trump and

I get a little agitated or frustrated, sometimes I go off on

one, but very often now I step back and go, okay, can I do anything

about it?

No.

Is it really affecting me?

Not in this moment.

Okay.

I take a deep breath and realize there's peace again.

And the more you do that, the more it creeps up, the more peace

is there, the more you recognize it's there.

It's like growing up with a drink of water right next to you,

but you can't see it.

And you're always thirsty and you always want that drink, but you

cannot see it next to you.

And sometimes you still cannot see it.

This is a terrible analogy, but I'm going to stick with it.

Trying to think of a better analogy.

But as you get older, you realise the drink is there.

Just have a drink.

But you don't always see it.

Sometimes you've got to actually become aware and turn around

to see it.

Okay, I've.

I've milked that analogy too far by now.

So milk, water.

Right, okay.

So what are the five myths of inner peace?

Number one, inner peace means never feeling pain or discomfort.

I think this is really like one of the main ones.

Do I still have pain?

Do I still have discomfort?

Yeah, nearly all the time.

Do I wake up in the morning in a lot of pain?

Yep, most mornings.

Do people still pee me off?

Yes.

Is my life any different than what it was when I didn't have any

inner peace?

In actual fact, I've got a lot more in my life that doesn't give

me inner peace.

Now, being on the Cornwall Council and being a politician.

Yeah, politician.

Nowadays, that's a job that is thankless, but it's a job that's

really important, that we can make changes, but it's really difficult.

So I've got all the things that seem to stop the inner peace,

but I have more inner peace.

So it's like a paradox.

Inner peace doesn't mean the lack of everything, it doesn't mean

the absence of suffering.

It just means in that moment, you can choose to go to where the

inner peace is, or you can choose to go to where the suffering

is.

Very similar.

You can choose to get on a thought or not get on a thought.

You know, suffering is a choice.

You can sit there and complain that something's going on, or you

can realize it's not in your control.

Or if it is in your control, you can do something about it.

I know that's a simple analogy of it, but that's the reality.

Myth number two, you must control your thoughts to be at peace.

I got news for you.

You're not in control of your thoughts.

You have very little control of your thoughts now.

And I'm going to elaborate on that slightly.

So I often talk about, like, your train of thoughts.

So imagine you're sat in a train station and the thoughts come

in as trains.

You can choose which ones to get on.

If you become more aware, and you're hearing this a lot in this

podcast about the awareness, if you're aware, if you're present

and aware, you become aware of the thought coming in and you can

choose whether to get on it or not.

If you get on it, the mind will go, oh, I won.

That was a good thought.

If you don't get on it, the mind will go, oh, okay, maybe I'll

try better next time.

Your mind is like a subconscious 4 year old that is trying

to bring these thoughts to your attention and it wants your

attention all the time, you know, so it's like when you're really

suffering and you go through a breakup and you may be missing somebody,

or you're in a lot of pain or something's really annoying you,

or you've got a fancy for a red car that you just seen.

It's like, wow, I really want one of those cars.

The subconscious mind will bring that to your attention all

the time.

Have you ever noticed, like, when you buy a really nice new top

and you think that's really unusual, and then you suddenly, over

the next few weeks, you see it everywhere because you've given your

subconscious mind an important thing to look out for.

So your subconscious mind will bring it to your attention all the

time.

And that's the reality.

So choose which thoughts to get onto.

You won't stop your mind.

You're not in control of it, but you can influence what thoughts

come up next.

So that's myth number two.

You must control your thoughts to be at peace.

Nope.

But you can influence them.

So myth number three.

You Find peace once life calms down.

And the Zen master would laugh at that all the time and say, life

never calms down.

It's the student that learns to be still while the world keeps

spinning.

And that's true, because no matter what happens, you've still

got, you know, all those monkeys up there that are typing

out all the fate in the universe.

And of course I'm joking about this, but there's so many things

that we think about that the universe has good and bad luck.

For example, you might have three things that happen to you.

Bad luck.

And you go, I'm okay.

Things come in threes.

Well, the universe just really isn't changing the whole of the universe

just for you because you had three bad things.

The universe is not keeping score.

No one's taking any notice if you think you've had all the bad

bucket and it's all going to be good bucket from now on.

No, it doesn't work like that.

But what you can realize that you cannot wait until life calms

down.

You won't be able to have peace once life sorted or once you're

richer or once you've got that pay rise, or once things happen or

you get that job promotion, things like that, or whatever thing

you think is down the road, that once that happens, I will have

inner peace.

No, your inner peace is already there right now, as we've

already discussed.

It's something that you just become aware and you can sit in it,

because even in moments of real turmoil, when your life is just

not in a peace at all, you realize you can be sat peacefully.

And sometimes in those moments, you can have more inner

peace than you would normally happen.

And I bet you you can probably go back to a time in your life when

things really did suck.

And then you suddenly found that inner peace in that moment,

in amongst all of that.

So don't wait until life calms down.

It's just not going to happen.

And myth number four, inner peace is a permanent state.

Oh, no, no.

You don't suddenly wake up and suddenly realize you are not your

thoughts.

You have thoughts.

You are not your depression.

You are not all these things.

You're not the victim that's stuck in the cage with the cage door

closed.

You suddenly realize you do have control of the way you see the

world and the way you experience the world.

You do take a step back from your ego and you enjoy all the different

experiences.

You realize that happiness is an experience.

It's not something you can have.

And then suddenly you're happy.

The Rest of your life.

Happiness is like a low level part of a real exciting enjoyment.

It's like a lower level version of going to the concert.

But we all want to be happy.

Well, what does happy mean?

Happy is above the mundane, above the normal.

When you're just sat in peace, you're not necessarily happy, you're

not joyous, you're just at peace, you're just at rest.

Happiness is an experience beyond that.

When something pleasant happens, I feel happy.

But you're not going to get to that happy and stay there forever.

You wouldn't recognize it if you did.

So it's not a permanent state.

It just doesn't happen like that.

And your life is still going to be exactly as it is.

Just like I said about the buckets, you don't exhaust the bad

bucket and then you've got good bucket from then on.

And then the final myth.

And there's loads of myths, but these are the five I came up

with.

Peace means detachment from life, and I think it's quite the

opposite.

It doesn't mean disconnection, it actually means being fully present.

It means without clinging and without that grasping.

Very often we're clinging to a certain time in our past or something

we want in the future.

It's like, once I've got that, I'll be happy, or once I've got that,

I'll be peaceful, or as soon as I've got rid of that in my life,

I will have more peace.

What inner peace really is, it's just a step back and seeing

the world, seeing your life, seeing your thoughts and your feelings

for what they are, just experiences.

When you have a thought, experience it.

You don't have to do anything with it.

When you have a feeling, you don't have to do anything with it.

When you have a pain, you don't necessarily have to do anything

with it.

And that's what it is.

It's like when you're outside and you feel some cold on your face.

You can either go, ah, that's cold on my face, or you can go, I

don't want that cold on my face.

I need to fix it, I need to do something with it.

Well, if you're too cold, maybe otherwise just experience it.

So inner peace is not about detaching and getting rid of everything,

setting up everything and becoming living off a land in the

middle of nowhere and never ever coming across people and living

a peaceful hermit's life.

It's not.

It's about finding that peace in amongst everything else that's

going on and just going, ah, that's why the laughing Buddha.

So there's two types of Buddha.

There's Siddhartha, which is the slimmer one that left the riches,

and he just found inner peace by less suffering.

Suffering was optional.

When he chose not to suffer, he chose not to stay there for many

reasons and it was through non attachment.

But it isn't through getting rid of everything.

It's just realizing that everything is temporary and it might

not happen like you're happy when the cattle works in the morning,

but don't become too attached because one day it might not.

So therefore you're not.

So, oh, the kettle's got to work.

It's okay if the kettle breaks or doesn't work because it's not

the end of the world and we can fix it and we can do something

with it, or we just learn to drink a colder drink, maybe not coffee.

I didn't think that through, you know what I mean?

And then there's the other Buddha, the one that's fat with all

the riches and all the things, and he's laughing because he's got

everything and it never made him happy.

It's a joke, it's not real, it's irrelevant.

Everything is temporary and he sees through it all.

That's what that symbolizes.

Well, that's the way I interpret it.

Anyway, interesting fact for you.

Just before we go, those little things on Siddhartha, the

sixth Buddha, that we always look at as the main Buddha, his little

things in his hair that look like little beads or something like

that, they're actually supposed to be snails because he

sat there for the 40 days and 3040 days and 40 nights.

Then nature climbed all over him and they were supposed to be

snails, but I think over the years gone by that they've tidied

them up a bit and the snails have got a little bit more organized

on his head.

I just thought I would share that look.

That's it for today.

Thank you for joining me today.

I'm Stephen Webb, your host.

And if I can leave you with one thought.

Inner peace is always there and present.

It's just whether you're aware of it.

That awareness comes and goes.

So if you really do want inner peace, just every hour, just spend

one minute going, ah.

And take a deep breath and let's just breathe and let's just

be at ease with whatever's arising and recognize you don't have

to do anything with it.

And then you'll have more inner peace than you did yesterday.

And if you keep doing that each day you'll have more and more

inner peace.

Take care and thank you for your donations.

Thank you for your support.

If you want to listen to the inner peace meditations, just go

to stephenweb.uk you can donate Treat me to a Coffee.

You can join my weekly Calm newsletter, which is more like fortnightly

or every three weeks calm.

So I'm working on it.

I'm working on life and what else I going to say.

Yeah, and just most important of all, thank you and I love you

Sa.

The Truth About Inner Peace: 5 Myths Debunked

In this episode

The question this answers

The heart of it

One small thing to try

Questions people ask

The transcript

One calm email.
Every Sunday.

The Truth About Inner Peace: 5 Myths Debunked

In this episode

The question this answers

The heart of it

One small thing to try

Questions people ask

The transcript

More honest conversations

One calm email. Every Sunday.

One calm email.
Every Sunday.