If someone asked you what the first word that comes to mind when you hear the word “peace” is, would your response be “quiet”? If it is, and you were asked to come up with a mental “image” of that, what would you come up with? For me, the picture above almost perfectly captures the mental feeling that the phrase “peace and quiet” conjures up.
When you think of peace and quiet, the quiet you are thinking of is probably a low volume of sound around you. There’s a far more important kind of quiet if you are seeking peace, however: an internal quiet.
The clarity of your thoughts is determined by the signal to noise ratio. Signal, in this case, is thoughts related to whatever it is you are trying to focus upon. Noise is unrelated thoughts and distractions. When you have 100% signal, your thoughts are crystal clear and you can be extremely effective. When the noise goes up, and the ratio drops, your effectiveness declines. If you want to operate at peak efficiency, then, you must get rid of the noise.
“Internal quiet” is when when the signal to noise ratio is high, when you let go of all the noise, all of the mental distractions and conflicts. It is when the crazy whirl of thoughts that we live in slows down, making any one thought clearer and more focused.
Internal quiet is directly influenced by external quiet. We have instincts, passed down from our cave man ancestors, that cause our subconscious to interrupt whatever our conscious mind is doing to alert us to any new, different, or unusual sound. This comes from the fact that sound was one of the cave man’s primary means of detecting predators, and thereby avoid getting eaten.
We have similar instincts in regards to vision, the cave man’s other primary means of detecting predators, but those instincts are easy to shut off: close your eyes. If you close your eyes, you can’t actually SEE any new, different, or unusual things (other than mental images, which are part of the “distractions” mentioned above).
It’s much harder to close your ears, however. There are noise-cancelling headphones, but these are usually quite expensive, and the feeling of having them on can be quite distracting itself. That means that if you want external quiet, in order to facilitate internal quiet, you are probably going to have to find some place where you can be alone.
Once you are alone, and all is quiet, you can start working on internal quiet. Actually, to be more accurate, you can STOP working in order to achieve internal quiet. Internal quiet can only be attained through letting go of working, seeking, or any other active pursuit. It is ironic, but internal peace cannot be achieved by seeking it… it can only be achieved by ceasing to seek.
Once you reach internal quiet, you begin to release physical and mental tension. You let go of emotions that you had been clinging to, and let your muscles relax. Both of these actions promote healing… you can’t heal a wound that you won’t stop digging at. Letting go also releases the energy that you had been pouring into your grip, so that it can be devoted to healing instead.
Sometimes, when you achieve internal quiet, you may find yourself overwhelmed by emotion. This is normal… you can’t let go of emotions until you stop suppressing them and feel them. Once you go through the emotion and come out on the other side, however, you’ll feel like a weight has been lifted.
Letting go brings peace. That peace leads to healing. Healing one injury leads to less resources (or energy) being used on that wound, enabling you to let go of more. That, in turn leads to more peace. It’s the opposite of a vicious cycle… it’s a virtuous cycle.
When you have too much noise, it is hard to let go, let alone start to heal. That is why peace needs quiet… it doesn’t necessarily have to be external quiet, though that helps too, but without internal quiet, peace is simply out of reach.
