Serenity comes when the internal life and the external life are in the same state. Well–the same peaceful state. The internal and external life can be angry too, so maybe “Harmony” is the better word for it. Anger can be harmonious, but it’s better to be at peace than to be angry.
The point that I’m making is less about what happens when interior and exterior life are aligned and more about when they are not aligned. Lets start by defining what I’m talking about.
The Interior Life is the mental life, spiritual life. It is how we live with ourselves, talk to ourselves, pray to God in the quiet moments of our day, think about what we are doing, saying, etc. The Exterior life is the external manifestations of these ideas: It’s how we talk to others, live with others, pray when asked to pray aloud, it’s what we do, say, etc.
Lets talk about some emotional states.
It is possible to be externally happy and internally sad, and likewise to be externally sad and internally happy. This can be described as being ingenuine, but could also be described as conflicted. Schadenfreud is joy at the misfortune of others, and publicly expressing “Oh, I’m sorry that happened” and internally expressing “Haha loser” is not harmonious. Likewise, it is possible for depressed persons to go about their day and run the gamut of human emotions with an interior weight preventing full participation in those experiences.
I think that is the fruit of discord, and why being “ingenuine” is a related concept to being prevented from “full participation in experiences”. When there is discord between internal and external expression, you are not fully immersed in a given experience. You are either focusing on the one or the other, internal or external experience, but it is not all of you.
Is it possible to be internally content and externally emotive? At a basic level, yes, I think that’s what people call “relaxed” if you are internally content and externally happy. It is possible to be internally happy but externally content, I believe this would be described as “restrained”.
I think it is best to have an alignment between what you experience internally and what you express externally. Though far from advocating being subject to the whims of your passions, maybe it is better still to cultivate an interior contentedness such that external forces don’t disturb an external contentedness. This would be serenity.
I, for one, tend to wear my passions on my sleeve. Some might call this being “thin skinned,” which is not a description I like but one that is hard to argue with sometimes. I can certainly take my share of grief but also tend to express grief as a result.
So serenity comes from taming ones passions, internally and externally. External passions have their roots in the interior life, so internal peace moderates exterior reaction. The interior life can be disturbed by exterior events, and so the exterior life protects internal peace. These are two muscles that must be trained: The exterior life is the defense of the interior against the world; the interior life is the moderation of the exterior from excess. The two efforts are congruent.
How does one train the interior and exterior life? It seems to me it requires an honest assessment of how you are being assailed. If you are finding yourself internally uneasy, it would be good to strengthen exterior fortitude to buy yourself some room to settle and grow. If you are finding yourself externally impassioned, it would be good to cultivate an interior peace contra those passions.
This means intentionally acting against the way you are naturally feeling. Which will cause some interior discord. But when you command the interior discord, it can be constructive. If you are at the mercy of your passions then it is not controlled, and can be destructive.
The effort of taming ones interior and exterior passions is called self mastery.
AMDG
Times-Dispatch of Vichy Earth 