Awareness, Acceptance & Inner Peace

Yesterday, I was driving to a nearby city to take some friends to the airport. The road is being upgraded and, for many miles, there were detours and orange cones and warning signs.  There were switches from one side of the road to the other.  There were no stripes or lane markers. There were unmarked holes. It was necessary to stay alert.  As I was leaving the airport, after saying goodbye to my friends, I became aware that I was feeling stress. I noticed I was holding myself and events tightly, wanting to get things accomplished quickly and efficiently; putting a high value on perfect closure and time management. I was leaning into the future. As a result I had developed a headache. My blood pressure, no doubt, was up.  Lost in my stories, I had lost my connection to my inner condition. Quite suddenly, I became aware of  my state. I had obviously been unaware of this rising tension for at least an hour.

As soon as I became aware, I took action. I started breathing slowly and evenly, and I softened my body, letting go of the stored tension.  I determined to do my city chore list  in an easy, manner. As they say nowadays, I “chilled out.”  Using my awareness, I kept monitoring my state, watching for things that tried to pull me back into a stressful story. I focused on staying relaxed. It worked. Soon I felt the stress easing out of my system even as I went about my supposedly, hectic list. I did all this while driving, by the way.

Finished with all my chores, I began the trip home in a much more relaxed state than I had been in during my trip to the city. In my new Mr. Easy state and with my awareness  fully turned on, I consciously stayed calm about things that would normally annoy me, and I saw that, in order to remain calm, the best strategy was to simply accept things as they were.  Often we become upset and stressed about things about which can literally do nothing. I did not get excited about being cut off, tailgated, or by the difficult driving conditions. I passed calmly through a big thunderstorm. I accepted things just as they were.  I saw how just accepting things, and not getting riled up, made life so much more pleasant. I’ll be honest, I even felt a bit of bliss. I got into it! Sure, there were dangerous drivers and awful conditions. I let the dangerous drivers go about their day, letting them do what they felt was important,  and I slowed down in the storm.

This release system seems obvious doesn’t it?  But, please consider that, if I had not become aware of my condition, I could have easily continued on in an uptight, stressed out state, worried about other driver’s behavior and the perfect and timely resolution of my chores.  Stress. Many of us takes pills for this uptight state or have a drink. But awareness seems to work just fine, especially when it is hooked up to personal responsibility for our current state and acceptance, to being at ease with what simply is.

We might want to develop the practice of checking our awareness level every hour; asking ourselves what is our true condition. What is happening in our  body, mind, and emotional state in this moment.  Not being aware, forgetfulness, can last for quite a while.  Maybe we need this conscious agreement with ourselves?  There are so many times where this practice can help us to avoid physical injury, stress and needless upset.

When we choose awareness, we give ourselves the opportunity to choose “response” rather than quickly going into our often blind “reaction” to events.  The more we make this choice,  the more we see clearly that we are always at choice.  We see we have the  choice to create the peace we deeply want rather than (in this case) getting lost in the story of the terrible drivers, the list, the insensitive store clerk, or the frightening storm. Using awareness and choosing acceptance, we can create inner peace right in the midst of a sometimes mindless and frantic world.