Dr. Khalid Al-Saleh
By Dr Khalid A Al-Saleh

you looking for inner peace? Who does not look for it? Self-comfort is internal peace- it is the first key for happiness and everyone dreams of it. If you miss that comfort, you will have a feeling of sadness and misery and you will keep searching. But even if you find it, most of us cannot keep it, unfortunately.

We are born in this world and die looking for internal peace. Some do not know it except on rare occasions and some enjoy it sometimes. Happy are those who experience it most of the time. Self-peace has its own secrets and keys. Not everyone among people who live in our planet succeed in getting its keys and knowing its secrets; rather, most people only have a few moments of it, and these are the true moments in this life.

Inner peace does not come from outside. You cannot buy with money, and it does not come to you through your position or prestige. Gandhi said: "Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony." All your saying, doing and thinking are internal elements that you do not find outside yourself.

If you want self-comfort and internal peace, then you should look after elements within yourself, strengthen your body, develop your brain and satisfy your soul. The wise know how to be in harmony with their elements and gain peace of mind and they have the longest periods of happiness. French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle said: "Be happy - it's one way of being wise."

Self-comfort and internal peace are the ways for wisdom. If you mend your body with physical activity and healthy nutrition and satisfy your brain with beneficial reading and listening and fill your soul with prayers and meditation, then you will have gained the keys of self-comfort. The thing that remains is to train yourself on the skills to leap over hatred to attain wisdom.

Leaping over hatred was known by few distinguished people. Ibn Taymiyyah said: "What can my enemies do to me while both my heaven and hell are in my chest. Peace is to leave your enemies without harm." Martin Luther King Jr said: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

As long as you are working, you will have enemies who attempt to get you. They may succeed in defeating you and you see that justice is missing from this earth, but if you lose inner peace, then you will have fulfilled their goals for them. Remember what the American author Helen Keller said: "A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships."

Control their hatred of you with love and forgiveness as they are the two elements of success that will never be defeated. Always remember that self-confirmation comes to you in the simplest of matters. Albert Einstein said: "A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin, what else does a man need to be happy?"

It is the internal peace that we all look for, and if we forget all of the above, we must not forget what Prophet Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah (May the blessings of Allah be upon him), said: "Whosoever begins the day happy with his family security and good health and possessing provision for his day, is as though he possessed the whole world."

This is inner peace - how easy it is to achieve, and how difficult it is to reach.

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