The CoEJ youth desk have organised “The Path to Inner Peace”- a Youth Conference focusing on personal development through positive thinking and the elimination of unnecessary inner suffering or ‘negative suffering’.
The necessary reading before the conference is as follows:
What Is The Path To Inner Peace?
Have you ever caught your mind creating fictitious stories and worrying about things which now seem so petty? Have you ever thought “I am going to fail this exam!” Or “I am so stressed out at the moment, I can’t take this anymore!” Yet you managed to pass that exam and things sorted themselves out.
Even when we are not faced with a stressful situation, have you ever noticed that your mind seems to drift off into the past recreating a particular stressful time in your life? Sometimes it even wonders into the future and starts worrying about it. Then you find yourself having thoughts like “The job market is so competitive, what will I do if I can’t find a job?” Or “What if I never find a suitable spouse?” We find our minds creating worst case scenarios, which will probably never even come true! Moments like these are moments without inner peace. This loss of inner peace is what we would call negative suffering. Suffering in this way causes anxiety, depression, fear and stress.
So, how do I stop this Negative Suffering?
Stop the chatter of the mind! Negative suffering thrives on the regrets of the past and the anxiety of the future. You will see from the above examples that you were only suffering in this way when your mind started creating endless stories and twisting fictitious problems.
If we could focus our attention within, on the present here and now, our minds wouldn’t have an opportunity to create such stories. We would realise that there can never be a moment when we are without the eternal connection to the one Being, the Only, the Eternally Present, Allah (swt).
Give me an example from the lives of the Ahlul Bait
Look at Bibi Zainab (as) in Kerbala. She went through immense physical pain and indescribable mental torture and emotional suffering. However at no point does history record this marvellous woman saying “why me!” In fact when asked about the event of kerbala she says “I saw nothing but beauty”.
Despite all the tragic events that took place Bibi Zainab never became depressed, anxious or fearful. Instead, she remained steadfast and conscious of her connection to Allah (swt) and maintained a genuine sense of inner peace.
So what is the objective of this event?
The objective of this event is to explore some of these ideas coupled with creating a deeper understanding of the mind, body and soul and how they all connect to each other and Allah (swt). The event will consist of a series of interactive workshops which aim to create some awareness into how we can end the negative suffering in our lives and replace it with inner peace.
Please take a moment on the present to ponder upon the below quote:
“All of us are students of self-knowledge in varying degrees of commitment and intensity. Some of us are concerned with knowledge of physical and biological matters; others with subtler, inner realms of meaning…The truth of 'now' is what human beings share, and 'now' is beyond time. It is not subject to the moment just past or the one to come. It is simply now -- and the now that one experiences is the product of the past and the cause of the future. Now is both independent of and connected to past and future. This truth is the root of the dynamism of cause and effect and of the balance of duality in this existence….”
‘Beginning's End’ Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri
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