“Peace is better than happiness”, says my inner child. Winter is her name and she tends to have a specific wisdom (children often do). In spirit of the solar eclipse in Aries, I am going to let Winter write this blog, as Aries energy is all about a child’s wisdom, will, and innocence.

“Why is peace better than happiness,” Winter?

Because happiness is fleeting, mom. It comes and goes depending. Life is half darkness and tragedy. Sometimes we get what we want and sometimes we lose what is most dear. Some people experience more tragedy than others too. You just never know. You never know when it will be your turn to go through a vicissitude (I love that word). At any moment you can lose your health or someone you love, or your job, home, your freedom, your safety…I mean, being human is no joke. It’s a scary ride, a sad ride, a tragic ride and it is also all the rides that make you smile and laugh and feel the wonder and awe of life.

Life is dark as much as it is light but happiness depends on the light. Whereas peace you can feel no matter if life is being tragic or awesome.

Peace is not easy to feel though, you have to work at it. You have to do all the things you know about, mom. You have to regulate your nervous system, heal trauma out of the body, honor and feel the feelings, dig up the roots of the negative narrative, reparent the inner child (thank you for that, look at me now!), learn to develop the witness and watch your thoughts and feelings but not identify with them, and you have to narrate your life so you aren’t telling a crappy story about yourself when even the worst most horrible things are happening to you or have happened to you.

Justice is wonderful ideal that we should work toward but it doesn’t totally exist in nature, or at least in the nature of this earthly life which is more about balance than justice. Earthly human life seems more like a game of chance with what destiny you are given, like a roulette wheel but with human destinies instead of numbers.

There is not any rhyme or reason to who gets what in terms of tragic experiences (except for the ones you create yourself). I know the soul has made an astrology map leaving clues about why it goes through all the things in life, what the soul is here to experience and all that stuff. I love Blue’s perspective (soul’s name). It’s just that…from another perspective what matters is only love. That’s my wisdom.

Think about it, if the intensity and quality of tragedy a person experiences in a lifetime is random, and there is no sense of fairness or justice around it, and we can’t control the vicissitudes, we can’t control the darkness, then we realize how scary that is and how random that is and this is humbling because we don’t have control. Not having control over the vicissitudes shows us the power of love. Why is one little girl dying from violence at age nine while another little girl manifests her dreams and lives a full life until she is an elder?

The randomness of tragedy teaches compassion and understanding and lets all humans know that we are in the same boat together, even if some people have it harder. It makes it so that when you have it easier, you might offer more love and support to those who have it harder. And when you have it harder, you can find peace through the darkness and hopefully find support to comfort you too.

But the randomness that creates the diversity of each life having a different fingerprint of hard and easy or light and dark is also a teacher in itself. You can’t judge when the vicissitudes are not in your control and you realize tragedy can happen to anyone at any time and it is not personal (except when it is, like when you do it to yourself or harm another on purpose).

Soul is true also. We are here to experience and learn different and specific things. The natal chart is the map showing this and there is meaning for tragedy on soul’s level too. It’s both.

On another spiritual level beyond being individual souls, we are all One energy, One consciousness, One spirit playing the part of every individual form that exists and when Oneness is playing the role of being human, it wants to incarnate into random roulette wheel fates simply for the experience of it. Deep stuff. This is what Oneness tells me when I listen.

You think I am tangenting but I am not actually. Because if you want to feel peace, you have to have a relationship with a bigger self beyond the little self. Your fancy name for that, mom, is the transpersonal. Call the transpersonal whatever works. Nature. Being. God. Goddess. Jesus. Athena. Doesn’t matter as long as your heart feels it. To have peace, you have to be able to let go and let God as they say. Let go and let nature. Let go and let being. Let life be llifing you and surrender to both the light and the dark of being human.

It’s funny because when we go through loss, we only lose on the human level. When somebody dies, their soul lives on in another dimension. When you lose your health, your soul is still healthy, it’s only the body getting sick. The other side, the spirit world, is this polarity to the physical world. The eternal sits right next to the temporary. I know some people don’t believe or experience this but oh well, we cannot speak to everybody! Peace can be felt without a spiritual orientation though. You can surrender to nature and not believe in the other side and still develop peace.

It might be hard to develop peace and take lots of effort but the reward is that you wind up valuing life and living a full life no matter what your blueprint of tragedy is for you in this lifetime.

Peace is accepting the dark and the light equally. Peace is watching feelings of grief and pain express while knowing you are not those feelings. Peace is not clinging to happiness, justice, or fairness but instead rooting the mind into acceptance, compassion, and understanding. Peace is a relaxed body and an open heart.

Peace can be felt when the worst tragedy happens. You don’t have to reframe tragedy into something positive, you only have to narrate tragedy as part of life that will transform you if you surrender to it. Peace can be felt when the scariest things are happening too, when you learn to move into and through fear. Peace is full bodied and does not evaporate. When you find yourself in the pitch darkness of life, peace is the candle you can light.

True, you have to heal to feel peace. You gotta heal your mind, heart, body and soul in whatever way works for you. Maybe you are becoming your true self, maybe you are learning that you are not your thoughts or feelings, maybe you’re connecting mind to body or awakening your soul, maybe you are developing self worth and a healthy self esteem, you get the idea…whatever it is, happiness will always come and go like a treat but peace can bring a deep everlasting fulfillment that does not require a constant smile.

That’s all for now.

Thanks for letting write this blog, mom!

Love,

Winter