The Mountain Is You

WHAT DRIVES US AWAY FROM INNER PEACE IN THE FIRST 
PLACE?

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215
THE MOUNTAIN IS YOU
214
BRIANNA WIEST
With all this talk of how we have to “come back” to our 
place of inner peace, it brings up the question of why we 
ever got disconnected from it in the first place. This is im-
portant because understanding why we lose it is funda-
mental to finding it again.
When we grow up, we adapt to our environments. We 
adopt the beliefs and ideas of those around us. We alter 
our personalities so that we become safer; we believe the 
world can’t hurt us. When we are children, we are more 
vulnerable than ever, and it’s during this time that we pick 
up what can easily become lifelong coping mechanisms.
If we are not instructed from a young age to connect with 
our inner sense of peace, we will instinctively begin to 
trust the voice in our head. This is where we really get lost, 
because the thoughts that we have on any given day are 
largely the product of what the Buddhists would call the 
“monkey mind,” or as a neurologist could explain it, the 
process of different receptors firing off and making asso-
ciations with things that may or may not have anything to 
do with reality.
When we begin to trust our thoughts, we let them inform 
our feelings. This becomes a cycle and ultimately traps 
most people who aren’t aware that it’s happening. They 
have a weird or scary thought, have a subsequent strong 
feeling, and the combination of the two makes the situa-
tion feel real when it’s actually a misunderstanding of your 
neurological process.

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215
THE MOUNTAIN IS YOU
214
BRIANNA WIEST
Of course, that doesn’t mean that our thoughts are use-
less. It just means that they are not always reflective of 
reality and should be used as more of suggestions than 
anything else.