Peace is a Human Birthright

But what does that mean?

By Samantha Keen

Celebrating the new moon, the New Year, and coming back home, I want to keep sharing with you about embracing peace as your own birthright. A force of consciousness that is inside you all the time, even when shit hits the fan.

Step one to connecting with this force is being aware of reality just as it is right now, and being able to be with it.

As I wrote in the last article, the new moon that just happened on Wednesday January 29th, 2025 is a time when seeds are being sewn for the whole year. But that does not mean you need to leap into action. In fact, it is a good idea to keep those impulses internalized and remain quiet for a little bit, so that you can be clear on what is really best for you going forward.

For me, the impulse is peace, and good health.

In addition, this time of year late in the winter, turning towards early spring is a time when it is good for your life force to fortify itself and gain in strength. One way to cultivate vitality is through stepping out of the external pulls and agitations that make life force like choppy waters, dropping the urge to fight the natural rhythms when you do not need to, instead becoming calm like a still pond.

This is a pathway to cultivating peace inside of yourself.

What is Peace?

“More than just tranquility, Peace is an active calmness filled with the presence of the Divine.” says Samuel Sagan in the free online book, A Language to Map Consciousness.

After giving thousands of sessions to many different kinds of people from all over the world, I would say peace is a force that everyone longs for, like yearning to go home. Most of us yearn for it, and yet it is already there inside each of our hearts all the time. We cannot feel it because it is underneath the louder thoughts and the distractions that pull us outside of ourselves.

As Sagan says,

Peace is a fullness of presence – the presence of the Divine manifesting itself in the form of a superior calmness. Peace is a calmness with a force behind it, and therefore a transforming principle (transformation being used here in the strict meaning given to it in Clairvision work).”

Transformation in the Clairvision style of inner work means permeating your consciousness and energy or subtle bodies with the light of the higher self, or what Sagan calls the Ego.

Sagan (in the same book) describes,“tranquility as a prepersonal vacuity, calmness as a personal effort, and peace as a transpersonal culmination.”

Peace is what we become in our evolution as human beings, in this model of transformation.

How Can You Access Peace in Your Daily Life?

I had the experience of being surrounded by peace when I was recently at a meditation intensive and I got sick with bronchitis and a flu.

It was like a deep stillness inside that expanded into a sense of quiet presence and vastness. A feeling of just being, rather than any kind of doing. More than just the absence of thoughts.

Still, the illness went on for weeks, even after the the retreat was over, and through long travel home to the USA from Australia. As a result of being ill, I had to keep physically quiet in order to recover. I took this as a gift, using the need for rest to stay quietand connected to those states of peace through all of that time.

This does not mean that every single second was filled with peace, because things come up, things happen, I was on a plane and so on. But in this kind of practice there is something to keep coming back to, a quality or a feeling inside that is real and repeatable. In coming back over and over again, I built a pathway.

You can do that too! You can build your own pathway to inner peace. Because whatever we keep coming back to, again and again, strengthens in our consciousness.

Staying in the Silence and The Power of Truth

Adyashanti in his book Emptiness Dancing says:

Words’ are such a small part of what is going on. The Truth can’t be put into words. It’s really something that’s silent and can’t be explained. So, too, within ourselves, that which is very powerful and transformative affects the world in a way that our words can’t. And no matter what our words are, even if we’re saying, “Peace, peace, peace, world peace,” or “Feed the hungry, and feed the poor,” if that war is raging inside of us, with every word of peace, what’s being transmitted is conflict, conflict, conflict.

Even though the words don’t say conflict, it is unavoidable. Who we are is what we transmit. This is so important. (Adyanshanti. Emptiness Dancing. p131 – 133)

Finding that silence inside is key to being able to access inner peace. There is just no way around that. And silencing the mind is a real thing, it takes effort and time. You have to put in the work.

If Silence Evades You, What Else Can You Do?

If you are struggling with finding silence or stillness inside of yourself, the good news is, there are more steps that you can take.

One of the biggest things that gets in the way of inner Peace is called “samskara”. This is a Sanskrit word for emotional wound or scar. Samskaras are old imprints that move your mind, your emotions and your life unconsciously. Working on these old scars or imprints can have very profound effects on your ability to have a truly silent mind, and access that depth of peace inside of yourself.

The work that I do as a practitioner, is called Inner Space Techniques (IST). You can read about this in my book Reclaiming Vitality: A Healing Journey Through Chronic Fatigue and Burnout which is available on Amazon Kindle free until the end of Sunday Feb 2nd 2025.

Or if you want to know more about working with me, I have 4 gift discovery sessions for people who would like to see what this looks like. Email me at info@samanthakeen.com for more information.

Finally, I have a great suggestion for those of you who just want to learn how to meditate and how to cultivate your energy. There is a weekend meditation workshop “Awakening the Third Eye” at Berkeley Spire February 8th – 9th 2025. Go HERE to register if you would like to attend, I cannot recommend these workshops enough. If you cannot make that weekend, there will be more throughout the year.

Wishing you all Peace!