Staying in peace takes discipline and understanding about the ups and downs of emotions. You can still feel emotions deeply, so its not like you’re walking around like a zombie. It’s just that you recognize the fleeting nature of these emotions. You can be very sad, then go to anger, then to thoughts of hatred, and all these emotions are causing lots of changes in your body such as an increase in blood pressure and a release of stress hormones.
You recognize that a thought preceded these emotions. That’s what triggered them. You think of something someone said to you. You should have said such-and-such back to them. Your heart starts pounding faster. All from a thought. That person isn’t even in front of you. Now you move from them to all people and suddenly your reality is a living hell.
I meditation, you learn how to go deeper than these thoughts and their triggered emotions. You find that place that is one with the peace that lies at the structure of the cosmos and Universe. Your reality then become one of inner peace as you participate in life but do not get taken down in the undertow. You still experience all the colors of the emotions but it is in the context of deep peace.