I Thought I Had to Die to Experience Everlasting Peace

For so long,
I believed peace waited for me,
after the struggle,
after my end.

I imagined peace as a distant shore,
earned after leaving everything behind.

But I was mistaken.

I do not have to vanish
to be free.
Peace is not hidden
on the other side of my ending.

It is not waiting
beyond my last breath,
or stitched into my passing.

Peace is not the reward for suffering.
It is not the mercy of the grave.

Peace did not ask me to vanish.
It did not demand my absence.
It waited quietly
in the space I had never thought to enter…
within.

Not in escape,
but in arrival.
Not in the falling away,
but in being fully here.

When I stopped trying to disappear,
when I sat still enough to feel
the breath that keeps me tethered,
there it was.

Everlasting peace was never elsewhere.
It had been breathing with me all along.

It lives now,
in the pause between thoughts,
in the warmth of my body,
in the way nature plays.

I do not need to escape this life
to find stillness.
I only need to stop running
from myself.

To sit.
To notice.
To let the noise pass through
without answering it.

Peace is not in death.
It is in presence.
And it is mine,
always here,
always now.

By David Brand

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Listen to

“I Thought I Had to Die to Experience Everlasting Peace”
by David Brand

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“Call in Peace and Love”
by Bhavani Lev & Kristin Hoffmann

With Love from UPLIFT

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