where is peace?

'What is peace and where can I find it?' I was asking myself at 2 am last night. As I was slicing and dicing through the maze in my head for an answer, I realized that my thoughts by themselves are nothing more then fluttering leaves. The fun begins when my emotions become the breeze that carry them around, swirl them and raise mini twisters in my mind. Thoughts by themselves are harmless except they create a constant cacophony in my mind. Which brings me to the next question 'Would absence of thoughts bring peace? Where do they originate from? Can I get to the moment of their birth and pick and choose which ones I really want to nurture?'

I usually become conscious of them when they are almost teenagers causing me a headache and heartache, at which point I have nowhere else to go but to look heavenwards and offer a prayer. Sometimes I get lucky and become aware of them when they are toddlers throwing tantrums, but I can still calm them down and bring the situation under control.

There are phases when my mind is perfectly tranquil and there then there are times when there is so much drama in my mind that I could entertain this continent and next. And it is as times like this I wake up at 2 am in the night and ask 'What is peace and where can I find it?'

My Alignment

I have realized that whenever I am out of alignment I am disturbed. So what is my alignment or core? My core is basically complete truth. Complete truth in mind and body. This translates to no hidden agenda from myself in all my thoughts and actions. The minute I waver from this I get disturbed. I reached this conclusion after my week long experiment. Knowing what I know, I was still disturbed.

Let me go even a step beyond and ask where does my alignment come from? Does it come from my belief in my concepts, that absolute purity is the required state for peace or is this alignment universally true? I mulled over this question last couple of days and am reaching a conclusion that if the alignment is true it will forward me on the path to my goal of ultimate peace, else it will take me away from it.

I spend many years analyzing and questioning the goal itself. Ultimate deep peace is what I find worth striving for in this life time. How do I know for sure, well that is where I am at complete peace with myself and the universe.

Lost

I have not been sleeping very well since many nights. I usually wake up with fear or pain, my throat dried and my heart racing. I have been trying to meditate but even those few moments of peace have been eluding me. The paradise is lost. I feel I have been slapped back to reality from the happiness zone I have living in since last few months. There is again that restlessness and an irrational irritation constantly tugging at my heeart. I have started praying again. And praying hard.

I am forgetting the way to my peace mountain. I am getting lost again.

"So here I am with all that I am, with some luggage in tow,
With a map that I don’t understand, a little lost, and a knowing that I don’t know" - 1/13/09

What am I doing wrong? What am I doing different since last 2 weeks to cause this imbalance? When I sit to meditate my mind races in all directions. I can no longer see myself in the clear, still pool of my mind.