[Reflection] #34: Inner Peace, the Only Eternal Currency
Once again, I offer you a concise translation of a Vietnamese text I found truly fascinating:
Two forces can genuinely transform a human being’s destiny: gratitude and repentance. You can amass years of spiritual practice, explore countless teachings, but at the core, it all comes down to these two pillars.
True gratitude isn’t limited to when life smiles upon us. It reaches its deepest fullness precisely where it’s hardest: in the heart of adversity, when everything seems to run against our desires. It’s in those moments that the soul truly forges itself, that consciousness expands, that the most lasting merit is built. Being grateful in prosperity, anyone can do that. But being grateful in hardship is a whole different alchemy. Tradition says: in prosperity, cultivate virtue; in adversity, cultivate the spirit. The mind precedes all things. Without resistance, inner strength cannot be born. Gratitude in difficulty is, in this sense, the most authentic prayer there is—not a request sent to heaven, but an act of trust in the invisible order of things.
God doesn’t punish. He simply responds to what we’ve chosen: the path of awakening. And awakening cannot happen without going through suffering, without confronting illusion.
Wanting to awaken without accepting the pain of the passage is wanting light without consenting to cross the night.
By nature, we seek comfort, security, external validation. It’s a legacy of our survival instinct, necessary in an era when collective consciousness was still in its early layers. We fear emptiness, fear no longer being defined by anything. So we cling to identities, possessions, roles; without always understanding the deep laws that govern existence. But each era carries its own level of consciousness. A moment comes when this survival instinct is no longer enough, when the human being is called to a vaster question: Who am I really?
For a long time, the structures organizing the world (religions, laws, families, powers) operated from fear. They were necessary, for they maintained order when human consciousness was still in its infancy. Within this space, a restricted elite—those who had understood the laws of the universe, the symbols and rhythms of creation—wielded considerable influence over all of humanity. It’s not knowledge itself that’s the problem: ancient symbols, esoteric wisdoms belong to the whole universe; they’re neither good nor bad in themselves. It’s their use (to awaken or to enslave) that gives them their color. These elites understood the rules of the cosmic game and used them to write the world’s script. But they could only do so with our tacit consent, our refusal to take charge of our own energy. What we call “darkness” isn’t an external devil; it’s raw instinct, unintegrated needs, repressed desires dwelling in the deepest layers of our being.
The real paradox of the old system is this: on one hand, it condemned everything belonging to the lower chakras—instincts, desires, sexuality, anger, basic needs—dressing them in shame, sin, impurity. On the other hand, it subtly injected, via media, advertising, and entertainment, constant stimulation of these very energies. The result: beings kept permanently in the lower chakras, torn between the guilt of feeling and the inability to free themselves. Not because they were ever taught to understand and integrate these energies, to elevate them toward the higher chakras, but precisely because they were never taught that. They were taught to repress, never to transform. They were condemned to circle endlessly in this cycle of shame and desire, never given the key: know thyself.
When awakening begins, a temptation arises: that of blame. Blaming religion, society, family, elites. And it’s true that seeing the mechanisms of the matrix is a form of awakening. But it’s only the first threshold. For some, in trying to leave the system, simply enter another cage—that of perpetual rebellion, anger, fear dressed up as lucidity. True liberation isn’t in resistance. It’s in the turning inward. The matrix isn’t outside; it’s in our way of perceiving, reacting, telling ourselves stories. And the only way out always begins with that inner movement.
When we stop playing the victim and fully own responsibility for what we create, consciously or not, something settles. Systems of fear lose their grip, not because we fight them, but because we stop feeding them. We don’t become the world’s enemy; we become its lucid observer, then gradually, the master of our own reality.
That’s where repentance comes in, not as self-flagellation, but as an act of sovereignty. Acknowledging what we’ve created, what we’ve let pass through us unseen, and choosing differently. Sowing new intentions in the soil of the present. Transforming old karmic imprints, not through force, but through the light of consciousness. Ho’oponopono embodies this wisdom in its simplest expression: I’m sorry. Forgive me. I love you. Thank you.
At the start of the path, the universe often sends us difficult mirrors—people, situations that reflect our shadow sides, our unintegrated fears. Many believe this is a punishment. It is actually an invitation. The more we flee these mirrors, the more they return. The more we welcome them with honesty, the more they transmute into wisdom. These souls who test us are, in their own way, our most precious teachers; catalysts disguised as obstacles.
Merit (that invisible reserve of grace, luck, and protection that every soul carries) functions like a spiritual bank account. Every soul arrives in this life with an initial balance, made up of its past lives, its deeds, its intentions. This capital cannot be seen, but it can be felt: in the opportunities that arise, in the invisible protections that come into play at the right moment, in the doors that open without us really knowing why. Like any account, it builds slowly and spends quickly, and it can only be replenished by the depth of one’s being, never by the surface of appearances. Those who succeed too early, before their inner strength is sufficiently anchored, draw on this capital without replenishing it. The ego swells, the inner void deepens beneath the surface, and when the balance runs out, everything can collapse for lack of real foundations to support the weight of what has been built. Conversely, those whose blessing remains discreet for a long time (and who often do not perceive it themselves) walk a slower but more solid path. Neither in excessive lack nor in overwhelming abundance, their account quietly grows. They are protected, carried at the right moment. The universe only entrusts true abundance to those who have developed the inner capacity to hold it without being deformed by it. No external tool, no technique, no energetic intervention can replace a stable heart. What we attract without this stability, we cannot keep. And what we obtain by forcing the course of destiny, we often pay for with the resources of the future.
In the final analysis, the only wealth that remains is inner peace. Not the peace of one who has never been touched by the storm, but that of one who has learned to remain centered in the midst of it. Money cannot buy it. Glory cannot confer it. It is cultivated slowly, through gratitude in times of trial, through repentance without shame, through responsibility embraced with gentleness.
In an era of transformation and purification like the one we are going through, it is this peace—and only this—that constitutes a currency of eternal value.
Here is the original text in Vietnamese if you are interested:
