Do you know the feeling and sometimes just want peace and quiet?

The longing for tranquility, for a place, a time, where nothing ever changes and everything just stays the way it is.

We like to head for something, accomplish our goals, would like to arrive, to finally be there, where circumstances don’t change all the time. No parting, no loss, no separations, no endings. Just to be, only be, not having to constantly readjust to something new. Why would we want that?

What is it we are looking for when we want to suspend a situation, a moment, a relationship, create something that lasts? Reliability, trust, safety, security, comfort, relaxation. Create something now, manifest something, bring about a moment, live it later, enjoy it then? No time for the here and now? Is an extension, expansion of the momentum, something that helps us to perhaps see something later that we are missing right now?

No change, does that exist anywhere out there, or within us?

According to my experience, it doesn’t. I take a look at the world outside and see how everything, absolutely everything, is changing. The path I walked yesterday is no longer lined with blossoms, the hope of spring, it is accompanied by the richness of summer, the ripening and approaching completion, to later celebrate the harvest, the dying of autumn and the resting of winter. Everything changes, even the seemingly unchanging. And if you think you see and experience the same things day in and day out, I ask you to look again very closely to see if this is really the case.

Some partings, and this is what changes are as well, are difficult, many we no longer even perceive, a protection from the grief and pain. What is particularly sad? To see something leave whose coming we have not even noticed. 

And what about ourselves? Do we like to change?

Do we hold on tight to ourselves, are we our own reliable source? Our view, our opinion, who we are. We can rely on ourselves, in an emergency it’s us, as we know ourselves. Familiar intimacy with ourselves.

Are you who you could be or would like to be right now, deep down, secretly, or are you a reflection of what you have experienced in life so far? What have you allowed yourself to experience up to now and what not? What has made you who you are and what has not had and still does not have any chance to make you who you could be now?

How do we choose who we are? The flow of life gives us so many chances to carry us, to reinvent us, by what do we choose? Who told us, showed us, mirrored who we were, in the past, and who is doing it now? Above all, what part within you gives you the longing to be from within what you may never have been?

This place where peace and quiet are like a permanent halt doesn’t exist. It does not exist and never has. Heaven in this life can wait because it does not offer what we hope for. The spiritual world is also constantly changing, at least in my experience.

We can stop holding on to ourselves, to what we have become, so that one day we will be received at the gate to heaven by angels and finally be accepted for who we are. We can stop dreaming about it.

Heaven is here on earth, we are the angels, every day we stand at our own gate and deny ourselves admission to ourselves, to our love, to our being as it could be now. To the peace and serenity of being able to be everything we need to be, to be who we would like and are able to be according to our circumstances. To live with change, and to learn to enjoy it. 

To get to know the infinite variety of life – a fraction of it – the new, the unknown, the beautiful, what is different, and yet to always be able to decide what you like, what you prefer to know more of and what you would like to know less of. And sometimes you don’t get that. Then you only have the choice to go inward, who else you could be – what response to life as it is right now.

Isn’t there any chance for stillness after all?

We can still fulfill our longing for some peace and quiet, because the divine order has also provided for this, if only we would live according to it. It is the already mentioned winter, the time of year when the days are shorter and nature has almost completely stopped growing, is withdrawing. When do we allow ourselves to simply live our personal winter, even on a regular basis? Why are spring and summer, new beginnings, growth and expansion what we live as a constant pattern, as cultural and societal value? 

It may not be easy to overcome your fear of missing out on something and not being able to keep up and simply get off of the treadmill of constant movement and expansion for a while. In any case, it’s healthier and gives us the opportunity to process what we’ve experienced so far, so that afterwards we can enjoy the departure and our aspiration to rise again, and not experience it as permanent stress.

Have you ever made a conscious decision to simply take a personal winter break and deviate from the socially prescribed rhythm? How did that feel?

© Peggy Vogt 2023