Inner Peace Begins When You Stop Abandoning Your Own Knowing

The 8 Pillars of Wealth: The Pillar of Inner Peace & Spirituality | Inner Peace Begins When You Stop Abandoning Your Owen Knowing

Inner peace is not just being calm. It is not pretending nothing hurts. It is not avoiding conflict, numbing your feelings, bypassing your pain, or forcing yourself to “stay positive” when your body is trying to tell you the truth. Inner peace is the sacred practice of getting quiet enough to hear yourself again. It is learning to listen for the intuitive nudge.

The spiritual whisper.

The inner knowing.

The part of you that can sense when something is no longer aligned, even before you have the words to explain why. That is the Pillar of Inner Peace & Spirituality. It is the pillar that asks:

Can I hear myself beneath the noise?

Can I trust the guidance that comes when I finally get still?

Can I stop abandoning my own knowing just because the outside world is loud?

The Spiritual, the Unexplained, and the Intuitive Nudge

There are moments in life when something inside you knows before your mind can explain. You know you need to leave something. There are better things out there for you. The path you are on is not the path you are meant to stay on. You may not have a perfect plan yet. You may not have proof. And you may not be able to explain it in a way that makes sense to everyone around you. But something inside you keeps whispering:

This is not it.

There is more.

You are allowed to choose differently. The inner whisper is part of your spiritual life. It may come through prayer, journaling, meditation, or breath work; Through reading spiritual texts; Through asking God, the universe, your higher self, your ancestors, your guides, or your own soul for direction; Through dreams, your body, a sentence you cannot stop thinking about, or a lyric from a song; Or through the peace you feel when you imagine one path, and the tightening in your body when you imagine another.

Spiritual practice is not about escaping your life. It is about returning to your own inner altar, creating enough quiet for your soul to speak louder than fear, and learning the difference between anxiety and intuition. Anxiety often spins.

It panics.

It rushes.

It loops.

It wants immediate certainty.

Intuition often feels quieter. Deeper. Steadier. It may not always be comfortable, but there is usually a grounded knowing underneath it.

In the Bible, the story of Elijah comes from the Old Testament. Elijah is a prophet who is searching for the presence of God, and the divine does not arrive through the loud wind, the earthquake, or the fire. It arrives through a gentle whisper. I love that because so often, we look for guidance in the loud thing.

The dramatic sign.

The big event.

The external confirmation.

The opinion of someone else.

The validation from the outside world.

But sometimes the guidance is quiet. Sometimes God does not yell. Sometimes your soul does not scream. Sometimes peace does not arrive as a lightning bolt. Sometimes it arrives as a soft knowing that keeps returning until you finally listen.

Inner peace begins when you stop outsourcing your knowing. It begins when you stop asking everyone else to confirm what your soul has already been trying to tell you.

Nature as a Path Back to Peace

Nature has a way of bringing us back to ourselves. Most of us instinctively understand this. There is a reason people travel to see the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, waterfalls, forests, deserts, oceans, mountains, the aurora borealis, and the stars. There is a reason sitting under a tree can soften something inside you, the crash of waves can calm your nervous system, or a walk outside can help regulate your emotions.

There is a reason we feel more human when we touch grass, breathe fresh air, listen to birds, watch clouds move, or stand beneath a big sky — big enough to remind us that our problems are real, but they are not the whole universe.

Nature brings us back to peace because we are nature. We are not separate from the ecosystem. We are not machines. We are not meant to live only under fluorescent lights, behind screens, inside boxes, disconnected from the ground, the seasons, the moon, the weather, the animals, and the living world around us.

When we return to nature, we return to rhythm.

✨ The trees do not rush their growth.

✨ The ocean does not apologize for its tides.

✨ The moon does not panic when it changes phases.

✨ The flowers do not bloom every day of the year and call themselves failures when they need rest.

Nature teaches us that life moves in cycles. Expansion and contraction. Growth and release. Stillness and movement. Blooming and shedding. Light and darkness.

The Tao Te Ching is a foundational text of Daoism, an ancient Chinese spiritual and philosophical tradition that teaches harmony with the natural flow of life, simplicity, stillness, and returning to the source. One of its teachings speaks about returning to the root, and that returning to the root is stillness.

That feels deeply true because nature helps us return to the root.

❌ Not the performance.

❌ Not the pressure.

❌ Not the identity we built to be accepted.

The root. The breath. The body. The present moment. The quiet truth underneath the noise.

Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is go outside. Not to perform a ritual, or to make It asthetic, or to post about It. But to remember that you belong to life.

✨ You are part of something bigger than your thoughts.

✨ You are part of something older than your fears.

✨ You are part of something that knows how to heal, shed, regenerate, and begin again.

When You Get Quiet, the Mind Gets Loud

But here is the thing about inner peace. The moment you get quiet, the mind often gets loud. This is where the monkey mind comes in. The monkey mind is that restless mental chatter that swings from thought to thought, fear to fear, memory to memory, irritation to irritation.

You sit down to breathe, and suddenly your mind reminds you of everything you forgot to do. Everything someone said to you, that hurt you, the things you wish you had said differently, the fear of what might happen, everything you still resent, and everything you cannot control.

The monkey mind does not always want peace. Sometimes it wants drama because drama feels familiar; it wants resentment. because resentment gives the Illution of control.

Sometimes it wants resentment because resentment gives the illusion of control.

Sometimes it wants to replay the wound because it thinks if it understands the pain perfectly, it can prevent it from happening again. Sometimes it wants to drag you back into the past because the present moment feels too quiet. This is why inner peace is not passive.

Inner peace is a practice.

The Bhagavad Gita is a sacred Hindu text from the Vedic tradition, written as a conversation between Prince Arjuna and the divine guide Krishna. One of its teachings speaks to the wandering mind and the practice of bringing it back again and again.

That is the practice. Not shaming the mind for wandering. Not pretending you are above human thoughts. Not judging yourself because your brain is busy. Just returning.

Returning to the breath.

Returning to the body.

Returning to prayer.

Returning to truth.

Returning to God.

Returning to the present moment.

Returning to the knowing underneath the noise.

The goal is not to never have fear. The goal is to stop letting fear drive the car. To not forget the pain, or letting pain become the loudest voice in your life. It is not to erase the past. The goal is to stop letting the past interrupt your peace every time your spirit finally gets quiet.

The Quiet Hurt of Not Feeling Chosen

Some wounds are loud and obvious. Some wounds have a clear before and after, but most wounds are quiet. They are the little moments where you felt overlooked, the times you felt placed behind someone else, the times you wanted to be chosen and were not, and the moments when you needed validation but did not receive it. They are the times someone may have had good intentions, but the impact still touched an old wound. Quiet hurts can be tricky because they are not always dramatic enough to explain easily, and they are not always obvious from the outside. They are not always the kind of pain people immediately understand, but they can shape things.They can become the little voice that says:

❌️ I am not chosen.

❌️ I am not important.

❌️ Other people get the good things.

❌️ I have to earn love.

❌️ I do not deserve what other people deserve.

❌️ I have to be easier, quieter, smaller, or more pleasing to be included.

And when you finally get quiet with yourself, when you finally look in the mirror and ask where those beliefs came from, you may realize they were not born from truth. They were born from a wound. This is where inner peace and spirituality become deeply connected.

Because sometimes peace is not just breathing deeply. Sometimes peace is realizing that the story you have carried about your worth was built around someone else’s limitation. Just because your parents did not validate you the way you needed does not mean you are not worthy. Just because someone did not choose you does not mean you are not chosen. Just because someone could not love you in the way your heart needed does not mean your heart was asking for too much.

You are worthy because you exist.

You are chosen because you are here.

You do not need another person’s recognition to become real.

Forgiveness Is the Gate Back to Yourself

This is where forgiveness enters the conversation. Not the performative kind, the bypassing kind, or the kind where you pretend what happened did not hurt. Real forgiveness. The kind that frees your body from carrying someone else’s wound forever. Because resentment is heavy. Hate is draining. Bitterness takes up space.

Waiting for validation from someone who may never give it can keep you tied to the very wound you are trying to heal. And I know forgiveness can be complicated. Especially when the hurt was real. When someone did know better, or when someone should have protected you, chosen you, listened to you, or loved you differently.

Forgiveness is not always access. It is not saying that what happened was okay, it is not saying they were right, and it is not pretending it did not matter. But forgiveness does not have to be in-person reconciliation, and it does not have to be a conversation with the person who hurt you. Forgiveness is not always telling the person, “I forgive you.” Sometimes forgiveness is something you do silently between you and God.

Forgiveness can be a decision you make in your journal. It can be something you release in therapy. Forgiveness is what happens when you finally stop rehearsing the same wound every time you get quiet. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

And I think about that often, because maybe some people do know they are trying to hurt you. Maybe some people are trying to keep you small, and some people are trying to pull you back into needing their validation. But here is where we ask: do they really know what they are doing? Do they even know why? Why does your expansion threaten them and your healing make them uncomfortable? Why do they need you in their orbit? Do they know why your freedom feels like rejection to them? Often, the answer is no. People are acting from their own unprocessed pain, conditioning, fear, trauma, limiting beliefs, and their own little inner child who never got free. That does not excuse harmful behavior, but it can help you stop personalizing everything.

The Dhammapada is a collection of sayings attributed to the Buddha and is one of the best-known texts in Buddhist tradition. One of its teachings says that hatred does not end through hatred. That is the truth. Hatred keeps the wound alive. Love does not mean lack of boundaries. Compassion does not mean tolerating harm. Forgiveness does not mean giving people permission to keep hurting you. It means choosing not to let resentment become the place where your spirit lives.

Peace Is Not the Absence of Pain

The Bhagavad Gita also compares the peaceful person to an ocean that remains steady even as rivers flow into it. That image is powerful because inner peace is not the absence of movement. It is not the absence of emotion, memory, or desire. It is not the absence of people doing disappointing, confusing, or painful things.

It is becoming steady enough that every wave does not pull you out of yourself. It is becoming rooted enough that every person’s opinion does not become your identity. It is becoming spiritually grounded enough that the noise no longer gets to be louder than your inner knowing.

In the New Testament, Jesus says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.” And that kind of peace is different from the peace the world gives.

The world often tells us peace comes when everything is perfect, when everyone approves, when the money is right, when the relationship is healed, when the family understands you, when the people who hurt you apologize, when the path is clear, and when you finally feel chosen. But spiritual peace is deeper than that.

Spiritual peace says:

I can be steady before everyone understands and whole before everyone validates me.

I can be chosen before anyone chooses me, and I can forgive without pretending.

I can let go without denying the hurt.

I can be soft without being powerless, and I can be peaceful without being passive.

That is inner peace. That is spirituality embodied.

Forgiveness Is for You

One of the biggest misunderstandings about forgiveness is that people think it is a gift to the person who hurt them. Sometimes it is, but oftentimes forgiveness is first a gift to yourself. It is choosing not to let someone else’s behavior keep living rent-free in your body, and it is choosing not to build your identity around what they did, what they failed to do, or what they never gave you. Forgiveness does not erase discernment, but it does restore your power, returns your energy back to you, and makes room for peace where resentment used to live.

✨️ Godmother Reflection ✨️

Where are you still waiting to be chosen by someone who may not have the capacity to choose you the way you needed?

Where are you still waiting for validation from someone who may never have the emotional tools to give it?

Where are you allowing resentment to take up space that could belong to peace?

Suggested practices that help you hear yourself again:

• Prayer

• Journaling

• Meditation

• Breathwork

• Scripture

• Spiritual study

• Sitting under a tree

• Walking by the ocean

Maybe it is telling the truth in a room where you no longer have to perform. Maybe it is forgiving someone silently. Inner peace does not ask you to deny your pain. It asks you to stop letting pain be the loudest voice in your life.

Spirituality does not ask you to abandon yourself. It asks you to come home to the knowing that has been inside you all along.

✨ You are worthy because you exist.

✨ You are chosen because you are here.

And the peace you are looking for may begin the moment you stop begging the outside world to confirm what your soul already knows. Because inner peace begins when you stop abandoning your own knowing

Love you very much.

You got this.

Danielle Rae | Godmother of Women