Practicing Peace: And Why It's Not Always Peaceful

Practicing Peace 

And Why It’s Not Always Peaceful

 Just about two weeks ago I went to Fullerton, California to visit family. After living in Costa Rica for the past eleven years, trips “home” don’t hit the same as they used to. It’s not necessarily better or worse, but the longer I live in Costa Rica, the further away I feel from that version of me who grew up in California. Of course, I’m no longer the same person who lived in California, nor am I the same person who moved to Puerto Viejo a decade and some change ago. And one of the things I noticed this time around, in addition to all of the other differences—some almost imperceptible or hard to put into words, others screaming in my face the entire trip—is how much more peaceful my life is here.

And I’m not saying that people in the United States don’t live peaceful lives, I’m sure a great many do—I hope a great many do. My life there was not peaceful, and had I stayed, perhaps I would have committed to practicing peace there, as I do here, but there’s really no way to know.

But it got me thinking about practicing peace, and just how hard and brave it is to decide, over and over again to practice peace. And what peace means to each individual person.

One thing I noticed in the States—and again I know, it’s not everywhere, or everyone’s experience—is that it’s just loud there. There’s almost constant noise from some source. And I was a city, a suburb, a metropolitan area, suburban sprawl, whatever you want to call it, there were a lot of people, a lot of cars, a lot of noise.

Now here I am sitting on my quiet porch, with essentially no neighbors, with only the sounds of crickets and nighttime insects, and the occasional passing car or motorcycle (which can be very loud) and I think about how much I love the quiet, how peaceful it feels to me now. But quiet can be very unnerving and one of the things I have experienced, in my own practice and while guiding others in mediation is just how uncomfortable quiet and silence can be. And how uncomfortable peace may be when we are not used to it, when we have not practiced it.

I first started meditating after I had my miscarriage. I was just thirty and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be pregnant but losing my pregnancy (and in a very ungraceful way as things go in a remote part of Central America where the nearest hospital, which is still an hour and a half away, is most known for its high rates of amputations) set me on a path that at the time I could not see clearly. Let’s face it, we almost never see the path that we’re on and if we get a glimpse of it, the view is seldom clear.

I was angry. Well, first I was sad, depressed, despondent, and dejected. And then when that passed, I was angry. I was shut down and not processing and doing anything I could to not feel what I was feeling. I knew I was broken, but I had no tools to start to mend. Drinking, socializing, avoiding being alone, running and exercising, avoiding being still and quiet. It wasn’t cutting it. So a very dear friend of mine gave me a very short book on meditation, and she sewed me a beautiful meditation pillow. And I sat down to face myself.

I read the book, cover to cover, highlighting, underlining passages, making notes (I always was a very good student) and then I sat on my pillow and set a timer for 15 minutes. And it was awful.

My mind wouldn’t be still, I wasn’t calming down, there was no peace to be had, no inner stillness to be found. It was torture. I sat, on my little wooden porch, not much different from where I’m sitting now. At the time, my house was a one-bedroom cabin, tucked into the jungle, with one neighbor. It was quiet, it was calm, it was peaceful, and yet my inner world was anything but.

Now I had been to yoga, though my practice was not consistent nor was it at that point very deep in the other seven limbs aside from Asana, the physical practice. But I can’t recall a class that incorporated seated meditation as I was trying to practice it on my tiny porch. And I didn’t have enough knowledge to even understand how the two are related. Like I said, we rarely see the path we’re walking on, even one step at a time.

As hard and awful as my meditation practice was, I kept doing it. I kept practicing peace, though it was not peaceful at that point. It did become more familiar though, and through reading and re-reading that tiny book, and talking to my friend who’d started me on that path, she herself a dedicated practitioner at that time and still today, I did begin to appreciate my 15 minutes of stillness. I made a small altar in my tiny home and became more committed to practicing peace.

Life kept on life-ing and I went through a very difficult breakup, ending an eight-year-long partnership, then quitting the job I’d had for four years, then moving out of my tiny house as it held too many bad (and good which can sometimes be the more painful) memories of the past. I moved, got new jobs, dated new guys, and through it all, I kept practicing peace, sometimes committed and easeful, usually inconsistent and with great resistance. But the alter moved with me, growing and shrinking based on the house I was renting and how much I’d needed to purge. And my meditation pillow came along as well, until she had finally seen her last silent sit.

I used to see hippie women in flowing dresses and think how easy they had it, teaching yoga and walking barefoot at farmer’s markets and dancing in drum circles like they had no knowledge that self-consciousness was a thing that people felt. Living in Berkeley and Oakland before moving to Puerto Viejo, I’ve been around my fair share of hippies, and my judgment of them was deep. I thought, why is it so hard for me to find even a sliver of peace and they get to be so free?

I know I’m generalizing and I’m sure there are—in fact, I know there are—some hippies out there in their flowing pants and skirts and they are not at peace. The outside does not depict the inside, I know at least that much by now. But I’ve also learned enough to know that that freedom and that self-love and that courage to wear what you want and dance how you want, that is hard-earned. That peace did not come easy, that peace was won, battle by battle sitting in stillness on a tiny pillow, or foam block, or the hard floor, facing the quiet chaos of each individual mind.

In 2020 when the world shut down and everyone was suddenly thrust into stillness and silence without the proper tools, I believe we all saw a glimpse of the unpeaceful inner world that we strive so hard to ignore. I finally gave in to the thing I had secretly wanted for years and signed up for my 200-hour yoga teacher training, virtual of course, which made me all the more suspect and loathsome. Hippies and technology? You had to be kidding me.

But there it was again, the foggy, unseen path. The rocky step, leading me somewhere that I didn’t even know I was going. So I sat there, every Monday and Wednesday night, every Saturday morning and sometimes ALL day Sunday, for five months, and I practiced peace. And I learned that everyone in that training was on the same path, the same quest to learn to be with themselves. To just find a little bit of peace in this mad, mad world, and to find some way to love the chaos of their own mind and existence.

I’ve now been to a handful of in-person yoga trainings and wellness conferences and now I get it. Those flowy skirts are hard-earned. Those long feather earrings, those tattoos, those piercings, walking around with your hula hoop tied to your backpack, that’s brave. That’s practicing your peace. That’s saying to the world I have sat with myself long enough to know what makes me happy and I will pursue my happiness knowing that I will be judged for not fitting in. And some days that will be hard, and I will still practice my peace.

Practicing peace looks different for all of us. For some, it’s painting, or long walks, or reading a good book. It could be lighting a candle, or quitting a job, it may be loving who you love despite judgment or criticism. Practicing peace could be how you drink your coffee in the morning or your tea in the evenings. It could be surfing or dancing or mountain biking. It will never look the same to anyone but you, because as my wise beyond his years husband always says, each mind is its own universe.

And the task at hand is to know your own mind, to know your own universe. Which is terrifying to think about traveling alone, into the darkness of a universe where no one else can go. And to be brave enough to do, and to keep doing it, over and over again, well that’s damn impressive.

Recently I’ve not been able to see my path in front of me at all. The fog is very thick, the visibility is zero. I come back to sitting on my purple yoga blocks and using breathing techniques I’ve learned over the years to try and quiet my mind. Some days it works, some days it doesn’t. I know I can’t really get off my path, that’s not how this works, nor do I want to get off this path. I also know that something very big and challenging and rewarding is coming, and I will need to practice my peace fiercely to climb this next mountain.

The path may be cloudy but I’ve sat with my eyes closed long enough to know that site is not limited to vision.

And now I know that the quiet, the silence, that’s a gift, not something to be afraid of or shy away from. For only when it is quiet can we hear our deepest desires. Only when we sit alone, can we truly know ourselves.

And what a gift.