Is Peace an Emotion? If Not, What Is It? 

No, peace is not an emotion or a feeling. It’s a state of mind. You can also term it as a state of being or existence. 

It’s surprising that these basic questions are left unanswered in our world. However, understanding these fundamental distinctions among feelings, emotions, and states of being are pivotal in our journey toward self-discovery and personal growth. 

Yes, you might be wondering if peace is not an emotion or feeling, then why do we always say ‘feeling peaceful’ or ‘feel peace’?

The answer to that question would simply be — because we feel the states we are in. Here comes the need to learn the difference between emotions and feelings. 

Difference Between Feelings and Emotions

Although these two words are often used interchangeably, there are solid distinctions between the two things. 

Feeling is the sense, perception, and awareness of emotions. 

Just like you can feel the heat, cold, and a mosquito bite of the outside world, you can feel the inner heat, cold, and the bites of the emotional world within.

When you achieve something good, you feel all the happy emotions rise up within you.

When somebody cuts you in the line, you feel angry emotions.

In these cases, happiness and anger are the emotions that rise within you, and then you feel them. Just like when the temperature rises in the outside world, you can feel the heat. 

But because the rise of the emotion and the feeling of it occurs at the same time within us, most of the time, we don’t make any distinction between the feelings and the emotions.

Also, emotions usually start to form in the unconscious and the subconscious mind. It’s only when it sips into our consciousness through thoughts, ideas, beliefs, desires, or actions that we start to feel them. 

So, another difference between emotions and feelings is that emotions are unconscious or subconscious, however, feelings are almost always conscious. If you are not conscious of something how can you feel it, right? 

That’s the essential difference between feelings and emotions. 

Yes, there is much more going on in terms of the chemical occurrences in the physical brain. But that’s a much broader and more technical topic we might discuss some other day.  

Let’s get back to our main topic of discussion here: Is peace an emotion? And, if it’s not an emotion or a feeling, then what is it? 

What Is Peace?

As mentioned earlier, peace is not an emotion nor a feeling; it’s a mental state. However, you can feel it if you are in that mental state of peace. 

You can have peace at varying levels or degrees. As a result, your feeling of that peaceful state of being could be more or less intense depending on the degree of peacefulness you are in. 

So, you might as well ask — how’s that state of peace created in our mind and being? 

You have asked just the right question at this stage of discussion! 

How to Achieve Peace? 

Well, this has been the quest of the whole of humanity since time immemorial. And some have also opined that you can only achieve true peace only when you are no more. 

However, that’s not the case for many other peaceful humans that continue to exist right among us. We also know countless stories of people achieving enlightenment and bliss going beyond peace.

But how can we achieve peace being everyday humans living our regular lives?

Mathematically speaking, peace is achieved when you have no tormenting thoughts, emotions, and feelings within you. For example, if you are anxious, worried, angry, or afraid, you can’t be at a sufficient level of peace. 

Sometimes peace can be barred or hampered due to some intensely positive thoughts or emotions too, like excitement of intense sensations. 

On the other hand, you can also achieve peace if your mind is devoid of thoughts and emotions altogether. 

So, the quality and quantity of the thoughts and emotions you have at any given moment determine the level or degree of peace you can harbor.  

With continuous mindfulness and meditative practices, you can gradually learn to manage your negative thoughts, emotions, and life situations to sustain a reasonable degree of peace within you no matter what. That means, even if you become worried about or afraid of something, you can learn to keep that emotion at bay to not disturb the peace that you have grown within you. 

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