What the Hell is, 'Inner Peace': Could you be Wearing the Porcelain Mask?

A detailed Venetian-style porcelain mask adorned with intricate gold patterns and dark feathers exudes an air of mystery and elegance.

Inner peace. Over the course of my 28 years on this earth (at the time), when someone finally asked me what I wanted from my life, all my intuition could tell me was, inner peace. The response came out of me without even being able to give it a thought. It surprised me as much to hear it as it confused the person I was speaking to. I think we both believed the response to be something much different, much more materialistic. Who doesn’t want nice things—cars, houses, clothes, jewelry, etc. In that moment in my life, I thought I wanted nothing more than that; something or someone inside me knew differently.

The porcelain mask I had been wearing for what felt like my whole life was beginning to crack with this single question. It’s no surprise that with my response came many more questions. Who was I? Was I, who I was told to be? Was I, who I had been treated as? Was I, a figment of my own imagination? Would I ever really know? What the hell does inner peace even mean? The person across from me asked me that, “What does inner peace mean?”, I told him, “To be completely honest, I don’t have a clue, I just know in this moment, sitting here with you, I don’t have it, and I never have…” He gave me a strange look, but the silence afterwards told me, somehow, he knew exactly what I was trying to express.

It was then I realized two things, I wasn’t the person I was living my life as and there was something more inside of me needing to be fulfilled, healed, satisfied, at peace that could no longer be suppressed.

I had seen glimpses of my unhappiness in the past, whenever I would try to work on my personal growth and development; I would pick up a habit that would make me take a closer look at myself. In retrospect, I wasn’t ready or willing to really see where I was in my life, what my true potential was, the infinite possibilities that were available to me. I would shut down, revert to who I felt I really was, not what this ‘stupid’ journaling or meditation practice was showing me. Blinded by the distractions around me I would secure the mask on even tighter, sometimes even more convinced that was really me. In time I realized nothing in life works against its will, especially not something as fragile as a porcelain mask.

If you resonate with this, as you can imagine, after going through this cycle repeatedly, the mask eventually began to crack. The cracks became long and deep; before I knew it, I was sitting there with a face full of tears, unprocessed emotions, lost time, wondering again, ‘what the hell is inner peace’. The mask? All that was left was dust, never me, never real.

One of my biggest mentors is Ed Mylett, he has one of the top podcasts for personal growth and development and I recommend you listen to him because I love him and would not be here without him. When I went through my journey, he described what was happening to me at this moment. The way he explained it is that we tend to cool our lives down to the temperature we feel we deserve. Let me explain-- my whole life I felt my life belonged at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. All the ‘stupid’ practices that were helping me weren’t stupid; they just went above the temperature that I felt I deserved. Maybe those practices put me up to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, but my brain, as a protection and survival mechanism, decided it was unsafe even if it did bring me the inner peace and clarity I was looking for. Ultimately, what happens is we begin to bring ourselves back down to the habits, people, and circumstances that cool us back down to the 32 degrees Fahrenheit, that temperature, that level of living, doesn’t make us feel inner peace, it makes us feel safe, because maybe… ‘safety’ is all we have ever known… not inner peace. Our brain needs that ‘safety’, our body needs that ‘safety’, we are primordial beings, and we need to have the compassion, love and faith enough in ourselves to know that the ‘safety’ we have known in our lives just isn’t enough in this day in age.

Somewhere out there in our universe is a place that is 60 degrees Fahrenheit, called ‘inner peace’, we must push past the safety, we have to break through the porcelain mask, I know you can do it, I believe in you, and I love you.

Together, let's nurture our roots, spread our wings, embrace the beauty of transformation, and live our true visions.

With Love and Gratitude

-Hummingbirds