Physical Spaces
Certain places can have amazing power over us. Anyone would agree that the Grand Canyon is a perfect place to sit in rapt silence and soak up nature’s majesty. There are few places as grand as the canyon, but our environment, no matter how grand, affects us. In searching for your quiet corner, be sensitive to a space that in and of itself produces calmness.
If you’re lucky enough to have a spare room at home to designate as yours, reserve it and use it exclusively as your quiet corner. Or simply assign a corner of another room (the den, the dining room, the bedroom) and transform it into your own personal quiet corner. Include your family in this process. They might even be happy to free up some space for your corner when they see the effect it has on you. Perhaps a quiet corner could be established for each member of your family and a certain time of the day designated as quiet time for all.
If you can’t find a space at home to call your own, there are many other places you can use. The back of a church when there’s no service going on can be a perfect space to find your quiet corner. Before work, at lunchtime, or at the end of the day, walk into a neighborhood church, synagogue, temple, or mosque and decide if your quiet corner waits for you there.
You needn’t always seek out the same place. But it does help to have one special place for those times when you have no extra energy for the search and are simply in need of some calmness. After a while, you’ll be able to transform almost any space and retreat to the quiet corner in your mind.
Avoidance
As you begin to seek out your quiet corner and experiment with various options, you may hit a wall now and then. This is the wall of avoidance. It will seem to come from nowhere and will have great strength and persistence. It will tell you that this whole exercise is foolish, that you haven’t the time for such things, that you have more important things to do, that you can do it tomorrow, and so on.
It’s very normal to hit this wall. Although you may be convinced that a quiet corner is exactly what you need to find some balance in your life, it will take some persistence and determination on your part to succeed in finding your corner and holding on to it.
Try hard not to allow the negative, dissuasive voices to win. But don’t be surprised when they come. Just accept them.
Keeping your determination to find your quiet corner is all that matters. Believe it or not, the avoidance voices will soon disappear altogether and be replaced by positive, encouraging voices, assuring you that you’re on the right path as you seek your quiet corner.
from Find a Quiet Corner – A Simple Guide to Self-Peace
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