Where do you  go to  find some happiness and relaxation and peace?

For my Dad, I’m sure it was his local pub. My wife, JoAnn, would probably say her quilting room.

For me, I love being with Nature. It doesn’t have to be an exotic place faraway — just a little bit of Nature will do, a tree, a creek, or a plot of flowers in a park or city street that’s handy and easily accessible…

It helps, of course, if my special place is beautiful. But how can it not be beautiful? We are talking about Nature, and the natural world is beautiful even when surrounded by garbage or zillion tons of concrete.

The important thing, I have found, is to build an increasing sense of love and appreciation for my special place over time. This isn’t hard to do, because when you reconnect with Nature, you reconnect with yourself — and it’s wonderful.

You discover a new sense of connection with the fountain of peace and happiness bubbling up every moment from the depth of your being.

How a creek gave me peace

I lived for many years in a small village in British Columbia, where amongst other things I was editor of the local newspaper for a while.

It was a lot of work at times, and I still remember the relief I felt one day when I finally finished putting together a special tourist edition that I thought would never get done.

To say I was drained would have been putting it mildlly. As soon as the job was finished I walked to a nearby park and found a special place beside a creek where I had been going for years.

I threw myself down on my back on the grass, stretched out my arms — and breathed in the beauty of the surroundings and the sweet summer air.

Do people say Heaven is after we die? I think it’s here already, if I have eyes open to see it.

The sanctuary of our own authentic presence

I have found nourishment and communion with Nature all my life.

There is a paradox here, mind you. In my latter years, I have learned that in one sense we don’t have to go anywhere.

All we need to do is to be still for a few moments, and hear the serene voice of our own authentic presence calling to us, undismayed by the noise and anguish of the world.

The healing power of Nature has blessed me in so many ways. But what works for you? Where do you go for healing and happiness and restoration?

Please share.

The lines are open…

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Where’s your special place? is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Happiness inner peace

A move, for example, can have this effect. Especially if you become aware that your dream home is not without imperfections that need improving or upgrading — even as you are still struggling to unpack innumerable boxes…

What do we do if we realize we are becoming exhausted for some reason, and life is losing its savor? Here are some thoughts on this matter.

Just let everything come to rest

1. The most important response, I find, is to simply let everything come to rest for a moment.

Face the fact that there is nothing you can do in this particular moment to change or improve your outer situation in any way.

What you CAN do and what you need to do is to empty your mind of its busy thoughts and concerns — and receive whatever is present without judgment.

There is enormous power in this step. It opens a channel so that life can begin to flow through you more freely, and the victorious nature of your own spirit can renew itself through you.

Take time to “stand and stare”

2. Take to heart the words of the Welsh poet WH Davies: “What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?” Right now, I’m looking out the window of my little study at the beautiful, 30-foot high blue spruce that grows outside the window.

We have only been in our new home a week or two, but during this time this wonderful tree has been quite unmoved and unchanged. It has been itself — a source of strength and peace that reminds me of my own true strength, my own timeless presence.

Dare to bless your world

3. Dare to bless your world. Is there someone you have been judging or condemning in the last week or two? Perhaps a neighbor — perhaps someone on the world scene who has obviously behaved badly and irresponsibly, like one of the leaders of BP?

Take another look at whoever it is.

Remind yourself that even though they may have behaved badly, we are all part of the mixed up state we call human nature — even as at the core of our being we are all unchanged, untroubled, timeless being — already happy, and already free.

Here are three approaches that have helped me deal with exhaustion and re-connect with the stillness and peace of my own being. Do you have any tips of your own you’d like to add?

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How to deal with exhaustion is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Happiness inner peace

We were visiting an old friend who happens to be a clinical psychologist. Our psychologist friend had each of us write down our priorities in life — and it turned out that while JoAnn, for example, is very practical, and good at figures – which I’m not — both of us put inner peace at the top of our list.

We think back to that little event in our lives once in awhile and say to ourselves something like this: “I wonder if it’s because both of us put so much value in inner peace that we have been able to deal with our challenges and difficulties and keep our relationship growing.”

Happiness is inner peace

There’ll be a change in the masthead banner of my blog soon. The tagline used to say, “Finding happiness and peace in troubled times.” But the new tagline will say — with a bit more simplicity and directness — “Happiness is inner peace.”

I can only speak for myself, of course. But the older I get, the more I realize the truth of these four little words.

If I am at peace with myself and my life, I’m happy. It’s as simple as that. If for some reason I stop being at peace — even for a few moments – happiness begins leaking away in a hurry.

How to find inner peace?

How do we find inner peace?

Do you have to go somewhere geographically in order to find it? No. I used to think you did. I was sure of it. I traveled the world in search of it.

Do you have to read a particular book, or go to a particular workshop, or meet just the right mentor? No. You don’t. All these things can be helpful, of course.

But the truth is that all you have to do is to be still, truly still, just for a moment. Immediately you do this, your mind stops — it has no choice — and you begin to participate in a miracle.

Finding peace at last

All of a sudden, the difficulty and stress and strain that you may have known, for a day, for a week, perhaps for a lifetime, simply dissolves. It’s as if it doesn’t exist anymore.

You find yourself surrounded immediately by the magic of your true home, the home of being, the home of love, the home of God.

Is it is impossible to understand mentally what stillness is, or what being is. But more and more, I find, that doesn’t matter. What’s important is that it can be experienced. We can find a connection with our own inner being that nothing can shake or destroy.

Perhaps that’s not entirely true. We can be shaken. In this very rigorous process of selling our house in Loveland and then finding a suitable townhome in Denver – for example — I have been shaken many times.

Yet paradoxically… as we persist… we realize that our being is not shaken at all. Quite calm and untroubled by anything that is transpiring …

You can never lose yourself

Because here’s the thing. The stillness of which I am speaking will never leave you. And the reason for this is simple. It is what you are. The stillness that you feel when you open your heart and mind to it is your own stillness. It isn’t coming to you from some far-off deity or another…

It’s the stillness of your own being and it will never leave you. In the midst of a chaotic, complex and dangerous world, this is one thing of which you may be very sure:

You can never lose who you truly are.

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How to find inner peace is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Happiness inner peace

When you realize it is time to downsize and physically move from one location to another — as JoAnn and I recently realized — a number of challenges appear. One of these challenges is dealing with all the clutter that you have accumulated over the years.

Perhaps this is a fringe benefit of moving — you have no choice but to face the accumulation of stuff that has been going on in your life in recent years and in years long, long gone.

As difficult as it can be to do this, I am becoming aware that doing so brings many, many rewards.

JoAnn and I have a saying, “one step at a time.” When it comes to dealing with clutter, I find there is no other option. I not only have to take one step at a time, but one room at a time – and indeed one object at a time. Fortunately, there are only three possibilities. Keep it. Give it away. Or throw it away.

For example, as I sit at my computer in my little office, I see a small blue canvas bag lying on the desk in front of me. The bag is empty. A dozen or so seashells are sitting on top of this empty bag, which incidentally is covered with a thick coat of dust.

As I look at this particular object I realize I’ve never given it any thought at all. It has been sitting in front of my nose for a number of years — and yet though I love the sea with a passion I’ve never even glanced at these pretty little seashells.

So one reward of “de-cluttering” is that I pick up one of these shells and hold it in my hand and admire it. It is beautiful. At last, this shell from some faraway beach is receiving some attention and love. It means something to me. It is not hard to decide that I would like to keep these seashells and the connection that they provide for me with the sea.

Then there is my bookcase. Actually there are four of them. Books of various sizes and shapes abound in riotous profusion like wildflowers in the spring. They overflow from the shelves, some of them lined up vertically — some of them lying in horizontal piles here and there.

Books have been coming in, year by year, month by month — but no books have been going out. So I have been looking over my books with the same eagle eye that I bestowed upon my seashells. If a book has meaning to me, I keep it. If it doesn’t have meaning to me, out it goes.

Of course, there is much more to “clutter” than mere material possessions. There is the clutter that we accumulate over the years in our minds and our hearts, for example.

There is the clutter of thoughts that may have served us back along the way but do not serve us any longer. There is the clutter of thoughts that are not our own thoughts at all. Someone else — perhaps society itself – perhaps an enterprising columnist or TV host — has stuffed them into our mind for us.

“Out of clutter, comes simplicity,” said Albert Einstein, and how true that is. But I would say that there is another reward that comes when we face up to our clutter at every level of our being, and that is truth.

We are free to become increasingly conscious of what is not clutter — the stillness and peace of our own being that is always present with us no matter what may transpire in our lives.

What stays when clutter goes? is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Happiness inner peace

“But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” – Matt. 6.6.

I surrendered to my own being this morning for half-an-hour. 40 minutes actually. It wasn’t premeditated at all. I was finishing up my breakfast; JoAnn was quietly working at her sewing machine. The urge came up out of nowhere, or so I thought at the time, the same way an urge from within summoned me from the busy streets of London when I was a young man of 22 and said, “Go to British Columbia.”

I sat down in my comfortable chair in the living room with the most pleasurable feeling of anticipation filling me from head to toe. I noticed soon after I sat down a rabbit had appeared on our little patio and was happily eating crumbs of bread that I had put out for the birds earlier this morning.

There was no effort involved. There was simply the profound relief of leaving my thoughts outside the door, so to speak, rather like in the old time Western movies when a cowboy was asked to leave his guns at the door of the saloon.

Most of the time I kept my eyes closed. Sometimes they were open, as I enjoyed watching the rabbit and the little family of sparrows that our regular visitors to our patio. I felt the peace of my own being enveloping every single cell and nerve and tissue in my body. It was like sinking gratefully into a warm, magical pool in which the outside world and its cares simply evaporated.

Once in awhile a thought rose up to the surface of my mind, but it didn’t stay, because the experience of opening myself consciously to this invisible presence was a bit like having a massage. I relaxed totally. I felt all resistance to life draining away. Concern for circumstances vanished. I realized that this presence in which I was luxuriating with such bliss was the very source of healing and health and well-being – not only for my body but also for heart and mind.

It was an experience of the most profound and intimate love. Nothing going on except a man sitting in his chair. But I do not know what could be more exciting, or more fulfilling.

I bask in the glow still, and in the awareness that this “love affair” with the timeless can deepen and grow each coming day. I’m sure that I will want to spend a little time each morning and each evening engaging in this time of communion. From eternal Being I came into this world — this is where I shall return.

I said at the beginning of this post that the impulse to spend a few moments in this way before going to my office seemed to come out of nowhere as I was finishing breakfast. But as I thought about it later, I realized this was not the case. Last evening, as I was writing in my journal, I wrote: “Let Being increase, let form decrease.”

How quickly my intention manifested itself. But perhaps I should not be surprised that life likes to move quickly as it goes about its remarkable, mysterious work.

I’d love to share any of your experiences along this line. My love and best wishes to all who may read these words.

How quickly an intention can manifest is a post from: The Happy Seeker - Happiness inner peace