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Everyday Serenity: It's Not What You Think
By Kelly Griffin, November 2005
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If the word "serenity" brings to mind the image of a placid lake
or a cloudless sky, think again.
"Serenity is not about always feeling peaceful," says mind-body
expert Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., author of Inner Peace for Busy People. "It's about the willingness to be
present, moment by moment, to the changing landscape of your thoughts and
feelings."
Of course, practicing inner serenity is easier to do when the outer
landscape is…well, serene. That's why retreats are usually held in
peaceful natural settings rather than busy urban hotels. But even in a city,
there are havens of serenity if you know where to look. "Everyone has a
secret room," observes documentary filmmaker, tour leader, and teacher
Phil Cousineau, author of
The Art of Pilgrimage. "It may be a small chapel, a tiny café,
a quiet park, or the home of a new friend."
To find the place that brings you peace, Cousineau recommends walking
through your everyday world with the eyes of a pilgrim. Ask yourself,
"Where is my place of renewal?" You'll know you've found it,
he says, because you'll feel energized rather than exhausted.
If you haven't identified your own "secret room" yet, try one
of these not-so-secret destinations:
The natural world. For many people, being in nature is a calming
respite from the chaos of the city. "The woods are a natural state of
meditation," says Borysenko, who finds her own inner peacemaker while
walking the trails near her home in the Colorado Rockies. The allure of nature
is understandable, notes medical scientist and meditation teacher Jon
Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., when you realize that you are nature: "The ocean
pulses in your bloodstream. The wind moves through your lungs. When you sit by
a stream and just watch and listen, it reminds you of something that you know,
on what you could call a cellular level, and that is that you're at home
here."
Public gardens. Public gardens and arboreta come in astonishing
varieties, from colorful herb gardens to desert landscapes, from formal English
gardens to lush tropical forests. While there's nothing spontaneous about a
public garden, that very sense of ordered beauty can bring peace. This is
especially true of a traditional Japanese garden, where the subtle arrangement
of simple features—plants, stones, and water—is designed to inspire reflection
rather than awe. To find a public garden near you, visit www.botanique.com.
Labyrinths. Episcopal priest and Jungian psychologist Lauren Artress,
Ph.D., calls the labyrinth "an archetype of wholeness." Unlike the
maze, a mental puzzle designed to trick the solver, the labyrinth has only one
path that leads into its center and back out again. Walking a labyrinth—or even
tracing the curves of a small labyrinth with your finger—can quiet the mind and
open the heart. "The process of going those eleven loops into the center
is a way of centering yourself," says Cousineau, who lives near San
Francisco's Grace Cathedral and its two labyrinths. To find a labyrinth in
your area, visit http://wwll.veriditas.labyrinthsociety.org.
You can also print out a labyrinth to use as a finger meditation tool at http://labyrinthsociety.org/html/365club.html.
Museums and galleries. In a crowded museum or gallery, choosing just
one room or one artist to focus on allows the mind to relax, says Cousineau,
who learned this strategy from former Time art critic Alexander Eliot. Even a
brief excursion into a museum to see a handful of paintings or sculptures can
serve as a spirit-renewing micropilgrimage. To find a museum or gallery near
you, check the listings at http://art-collecting.com.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
If there is a mathematics of serenity, the
outer environment is only half of the equation. The other half is your inner
state. "You can bring your turbulence of mind into a museum, and you
won't see the paintings," notes Kabat-Zinn, whose book
Wherever You Go, There You Are offers a simple path to cultivating mindful
awareness. "When you start to pay attention to what you see, hear, and
taste," he says, "you realize that awareness itself has qualities of
serenity and tranquility."
Cultivating this open, spacious, affectionate attention is the task of a
lifetime. The easiest way to start is with a simple meditation practice, such
as watching your breath—noticing the gentle rise and fall of your belly or the
subtle sensation of air passing through your nostrils. To learn more about
mindfulness meditation and other practices to promote tranquility, visit www.contemplativemind.org.
In the end, the most surprising thing about serenity is that it isn't
what you think. It's what you are. Or, as Kabat-Zinn puts it, "When
you rest in awareness, you realize the serenity and tranquility that is always
right here beneath the surface."
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