The Mountain Is You

WHY CAN’T PEOPLE FIND THEIR INNER PEACE EASILY?
The answer is that they can; most people just aren’t instructed on how to.
But beyond that, most people are actually too scared to go into their own
feeling states, because their inner child is too traumatized.
Everyone has an “inner child”; it is the part of you that is most innocent and
pure, and it never goes away.21 Over time, it is your responsibility for you
to learn how to parent this inner child, who will honestly be the one to push
you away from your inner peace. They will be the one to throw a tantrum
and tell you that everything is falling apart and that you’re going to die and
that you should just give up.
In the same way that you wouldn’t let a child run your waking life now, you
can’t always believe what your inner child is afraid of. You can, however,
learn to work with them, heal them, and make them feel safe...in the way
any good parent would.
Stephen Diamond explains it like this: “To begin with, the inner child is
real. Not literally. Nor physically. But figuratively, metaphorically real. It is,
like complexes in general, a psychological or phenomenological reality, and
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an extraordinarily powerful one at that.” He argues that mental disorders
and destructive behavior patterns are usually more or less related to
unconscious parts of ourselves and were most often adopted in early life.
F I N D I N G Y O U R O W N P E A C E
Finding inner peace isn’t always so much about just sitting in the lotus
position until wisdom becomes you; it’s about making the uncomfortable
decision to stay with your discomfort and to choose differently.
As Gail Brenner explains: “The inner war is perpetuated by resistance—that
is, not wanting to feel the way we feel, not wanting people to do what they
are doing, not wanting events to occur as they are occurring. Resistance
wants to rewrite our personal histories and ensure that our plans
materialize.” She argues that inner peace is the only kind that exists because
nothing else is in our control.22
Another really amazing way to find your inner peace is to constantly
remind yourself that your worries are a fabrication of your mind’s need to
identify potential threats for survival, and true happiness is being here in the
moment.
If that’s hard to believe, make a list of the following:
• Everything you have intensely worried about in your life. Go back as
many years as you can, and be as detailed as you can.
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• Every difficult situation you swore you would never get through or never
get over.
• Every time you have genuinely felt happy and at peace.

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Guaranteed, your responses to the first will bring a smile to your face in that
they will remind you that you have worried constantly in your life, and yet
they were mostly unfounded.
Your response to the second will also be relieving, because it will show you
just how much pain you thought was insurmountable in your life and how,
in retrospect, you don’t really ever think about those things anymore.
Finally, your answers to the last question will remind you that your
happiness has never come from things being perfect on the outside, but
from you being present and open and connected to yourself and to the
moment.
D E TA C H I N G F R O M W O R R Y I N G
In the same way that it’s easy to become addicted to substances or
behaviors that allow us to avoid the present moment, worrying is chief
among the coping mechanisms people use to distract themselves from what
really matters.
Over time, you convince yourself that worrying equals being safe. You
think that by running worst-case scenarios
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through your head again and again, you will be better prepared for them.
This is completely false. Not only are you draining your energy imagining
situations that are very often completely manufactured, but when you are
already hypersensitive to any one of these fears or ideas, you will actually
create those circumstances simply out of your avoidance or over-
responsiveness to them.

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You have to remember that among all the things to know about the
“monkey mind,” your head wants to constantly seek out situations and
experiences that will affirm itself.
If you believe something will be good, it will be. It might not look exactly
how you imagined, but the outcome will be exactly what you expect.
Finding your inner peace is just connecting to your deepest wisdom. It’s not
something you have to create, justify, imagine, or reach for. It’s always
within you, it’s always an option, and it’s constantly a choice. You just have
to make it.
R E M E M B E R I N G T H AT Y O U R F E E L I N G S
A R E N O T A LWAY S FA C T S
The most challenging part of all of this is arriving at a place where you can
discern between which feelings are instinctive and informative and which
are rooted in fear and ego.
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In a world that constantly tells you that your gut knows everything and that
your feelings are real, and that if you reach in deep enough, you’ll uncover
a well of wisdom that can guide you... it can be really easy to assume that
every feeling and idea we have is not only real but is somehow forecasting
what’s going to happen in the future.
Your feelings aren’t predictions. They are not fortune-telling mechanisms.
They are only reflecting back to you what your current state of mind is. It’s
like having a nightmare: The monsters aren’t real, but they could be
metaphors for something you’re worried about in your waking life.

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What holds so many people back from finding their inner peace is the fact
that they can’t tell the difference between which is correct: their fear or their
peaceful feeling.
Remember this: The feeling of peace is the one telling you the truth.
Your feelings aren’t here to tell you what’s going to happen. They’re only
here to inform you of where you are energetically and mentally and how
you should respond to what happens around you. Fear is trying to scare you
into staying small and keeping safe. It is a mortal, limited thing. The feeling
of peace is trying to remind you that everything will be okay because it
always is...and always will be, no matter what.
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B E C O M I N G M E N TA L LY S T R O N G
No matter who you are or what your purpose is in life, mental strength is
going to be a key component in ensuring that you actualize all of the
potential latent within you.
Mental strength is not a fixed trait. It’s not something we inherently have or
don’t. Ironically, it’s not necessarily easier to have if you aren’t faced with
many challenges in life.
In fact, it is often people who are in the most difficult circumstances that are
forced to develop the highest degrees of mental strength.
Being mentally strong is a process, and it is a practice.
This is where you can begin.