The Missing Peace: Why Your Search for Comfort is Pointing You Inward.
We’ve all been there. It’s been a long day. The stressors of work, relationships, and the endless news cycle have left you feeling drained. So, what do you do? You might scroll through social media 🫣, binge a favorite show 📺, lose yourself in a video game 🎮, or maybe read an inspirational quote or say a prayer. 🙏
We’re all searching for something—a moment of peace, a spark of joy, a sense that everything is okay.
This search is as old as humanity itself. Our first ancestors were focused on one thing: survival. Their entire existence was dedicated to the needs of the Body-Self: food 🍖, water, clothing, and shelter. Once those basic needs were met, a new dimension of humanity emerged. We began to yearn for more than just survival; we yearned for comfort for our Personality-Self and our Social-Self.
But what if, in this endless search for external comfort, we’ve been ignoring the very source of lasting peace that’s already within us? Let’s talk about that.
The Upgrade from Survival to Seeking.
Think of humanity like a smartphone. The earliest models just made calls—pure survival. Then we added texting (basic sociality). Then came the app store! 📲
Once our basic survival needs were largely fulfilled (for many, though not all), we downloaded a whole suite of apps designed to manage our internal world:
· The Religion & Spirituality App:
This is perhaps our oldest and most profound “app.” It seeks to answer the big questions: “Why am I here?” “What happens when I die?” “Why is there suffering?” It provides community, moral structure, and a framework for understanding a chaotic world. For many, it’s essentials source of solace.
· The Entertainment App:
This is our modern-day distraction engine. It’s the Netflix binge, the TikTok scroll, the novel, the stadium concert. 🎶 Its primary job is to distract the mind from its own problems and sufferings, to offer a temporary escape from the pressures of personality and social expectations.
· The Wellness & Self-Help App: A multi-billion dollar industry dedicated to optimizing your Personality-Self. It offers diets, exercise routines, meditation techniques, and life hacks all promising to make you a happier, less anxious, more successful version of you.
On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with any of these! They are natural human responses to the complexities of modern life. They are the blankets we knit to comfort ourselves against the cold of existence. ❄️
The Glitch in the System: When the Comfort Becomes the Cage.
Here’s the problem, the glitch in our human software. We get so obsessed with using the apps that we forget to check the operating system they’re running on.
We try to use spirituality to become a better “me.” We use entertainment to escape the “me.” We use religion to please an external deity for the benefit of the “me.” The entire search is focused on fixing, soothing, or entertaining the individual self—the Personality-Self and the Social-Self.
This is like constantly redecorating a single room in your house while the entire foundation is crumbling. 🏚️ You might get a beautiful new couch (a new spiritual belief), a bigger TV (more entertaining distractions), or nicer paint (a calmer personality), but the underlying structure—the sense of lack and separation—remains untouched.
The suffering continues, just in a more comfortable, well-decorated room.
The Forgotten Home: Your “Being-Life”
So, what is this foundational “operating system” we’re ignoring?
You called it “Being-Life” and “Cosmic Consciousness.” These might sound like lofty, hippie-dippy terms, but they point to the most simple, obvious, and profound truth of your existence.
Let me explain with an analogy.
Imagine your mind is the sky. ☀️🌌
The Personality-Self is the weather passing through that sky: clouds of thought (some dark and stormy, some light and fluffy), rain of emotion, sunshine of joy. We spend our entire lives obsessed with the weather. We curse the storms, cling to the sunshine, and constantly try to predict what the weather will do next. This is our suffering. This is what we try to manage with religion, entertainment, and spirituality.
But Being-Life is the sky itself. The vast, open, silent, and ever-present sky that holds all the weather. The sky is never damaged by the storm. It doesn’t cling to the sunshine. It is fundamentally untouched, clear, and peaceful regardless of what passes through it.
This sky is your true nature. It is the awareness that is reading these words right now. It is the conscious space in which all your experiences—your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and beliefs—are happening.
· It’s not a thought (those are clouds).
· It’s not an emotion (that’s rain).
· It’s the aware presence knowing the thought and feeling the emotion.
This is what is meant by Cosmic Consciousness—it’s not that you are the entire universe in a physical sense, but that the essence of your awareness, the simple feeling of being, is of the same fundamental nature as the intelligence that runs the cosmos. It is universal. It is peaceful. It is home. 🏡
How to Remember the Sky
The goal isn’t to destroy the clouds (your personality) or stop the rain (your emotions). That’s impossible. The goal is to shift your identity from the passing weather to the ever-present sky.
This isn’t another task for the Personality-Self to achieve. It’s a gentle noticing, a remembering. Here’s how you can start:
1. Pause the Apps:
Several times a day, just stop. Put down the phone, turn off the podcast, and pause the relentless seeking. For just 60 seconds, be utterly simple. ⏸️
2. Feel the Aliveness:
Don’t think about your body; feel it. Feel the aliveness in your hands. The sensation of your breath moving in and out. The weight of your body in the chair. This is your Being-Life—the raw experience of existence before any labels. 🌬️
3. Notice the Awareness:
Ask yourself: “Who is aware of these sensations?” Don’t try to find a philosophical answer. Just look. What is the presence that is knowing all of this? This simple, humble attention is you touching the sky. 👁️
4. Integrate, Don’t Escape:
Now, go back to your apps! Engage with your religion or spirituality not as a set of rules to earn peace, but as a love song to the peace you already are. Enjoy entertainment not as a desperate escape, but as a joyful expression of the creativity that flows from that peace.
You are not a problem that needs to be solved. You are not a lonely self that needs to be comforted. You are the very peace you are searching for. You are the sky, not the weather.
The greatest comfort for the human soul isn’t found in another download. It’s found by finally looking up from the screen and realizing what you truly are. ✨