TRANSFORMATION
How Do I Achieve Peace of Mind? By Dr. Robert Puff, Ph.D.
Dr. Robert Puff, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist, author, international speaker, and meditation expert who has been counseling individuals, families, nonprofits, and businesses for over twenty years. A contributing writer to Psychology Today, he has authored numerous books, including Spiritual Enlightenment: Awakening to the Supreme Reality and creates a weekly podcasts and articles on enlightenment, spiritual enlightenment, nonduality, Advaita Vedanta at: http://www.EnlightenmentPodcast.com
(This article was originally published at enlightenmentpodcast.com.)
People around the world are seeking peace of mind. The field of psychology in which I trained is all about helping people arrive at and achieve peace of mind.
What I realized very early on in my experience of working with other psychologists is that they don’t arrive at peace of mind. They sometimes experience peaceful moments and psychology is good at getting rid of disturbing thoughts; but experiencing peace that passes all understanding is something that psychology isn’t very good at.
Psychology taught me things, but it didn’t teach me how to have peace beyond the mind. That’s where it – and so many things around the world – end up failing. They seek peace in that which is naturally disturbed – the mind. What happens is that shortly after we’re born, around the age of two or three, we start having pleasurable and unpleasurable experiences. The mind remembers these and then tries to hold onto the pleasurable ones while preventing the bad ones. The problem exists in duality. If there is always to be good, there also has to be bad. To be able to smell a rose you have to know what manure smells like. You have to have two if you want to emphasize one. You can’t just have emphasis on one unless you describe it or put it in comparison to its opposite. The mind comes along and says “Hey, I’m going to find you peace, bliss and happiness. Just let me be in charge and I’ll find it for you in this dualistic world.” This is impossible because where there is pleasure, pain is going to follow shortly. The most extreme form of this is drug addiction. Drug addicts will sell their souls in order to get their drug. In the process of trying to get that incredible high, their lives are putrid beyond belief. They might end up in prison, they might steal
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or get involved in prostitution, or hurt people. In the process of seeking that super high they receive super lows. It’s the same with manic depression or bipolar. Once the bipolar person likes that manic experience, they chase after it, but what follows is the low. Psychology, philosophy and religions have come along and said, “Hey, we’ll give you a formula that will work. It will get you to have lots of highs and very little lows.” Or they say, “At least, someday you’ll have just highs when you die,” such as in the case of some religions. But what they don’t do is give you peace. They might be able to give you temporary cessation of disturbance but mind, in and of itself, is disturbance. It’s impossible to have peace of mind because the mind is dualistic; it is based on good and bad, happiness and pain. Since it’s seeking pleasure and shunning pain, it suffers. Its natural state is one of disturbance, because once there is a cessation of disturbance, disturbance is going to come because that’s a state of mind. It’s in a constant state of flux. Even if peace of mind is reached, sooner or later pain is going to come along and disturb that peace of mind. We all know this. It doesn’t work to find peace of mind in the mind because the mind can’t find peace. So, is it hopeless? Is there nothing we can do but suffer while we’re here? No, of course not. But to find peace, we have to seek it so deeply and earnestly that we’re willing to give up all our thoughts that are misconceived. All of them. We don’t hang onto them just because we’re told they’re true or because we feel they’re true. We only hang onto that which is permanently everlasting true, right here & right now. But what is that? That which changes can’t be the ultimate truth. What is it that doesn’t change? What is
