There are moments, amidst the perpetual ebb and flow of life, when I find myself incredibly deep in the ‘ebb.’ A place where almost all ‘doing’ slides into a lull, and just ‘being’ beckons me into her domain. A place where inertia takes its rightful place of dominance in the cyclical flux of creation itself.
Learning to embrace the stillness is, oftentimes, a long and arduous practice. It requires patience to learn how to just BE for any length of time. Patience, and a determined sort of drive to understand what lies hidden and masked underneath the propensity for constant stimulation, endless activity, and space-filling chatter.
We have been cultured to move away from solitude and stillness, because in those private, internal spaces, there resides a holy sanctuary of power and truth… a sacred ground embedded in the spaces between the thoughts, the breaths, the interactions of life.
And sadly, our modern culture generally does not support any real connection to that aspect of identity, and we are not encouraged to understand this imperative side of self. Instead, the world we live in glorifies the busyness, the more-ness, the external noise.
But to sit quietly in the non-doing, is to walk through a gateway. A gateway to an inner dimension that simply cannot be experienced through any outward engagement, because outward engagement, by its very nature, eclipses this hallowed inner space.
A space which is the access-point to the mystical essence that resides within every human.
I have learned, first and foremost through my own experience, that solitude, stillness and quietude are unsettling for those who cannot bear to look inward and see, with true clarity, what lies below the surface-level of their life.
It’s true, that over the years, time and experience have molded me and divine guidance has led me, showing me the beauty of both actively engaging with the world at large AND of moving away from the life external toward the universe within.
And I understand the necessity of both. I see the abundant choices this ongoing push-pull provides for a fuller human experience, and it is ultimately why we live in world created through and of duality.
We learn much from the world around us and our interaction with it, and yet some of the most profound aspects of this human experience simply cannot be attained through external means. They can only be found in the field of suspended motion.
This field is the sacred pause, where stillness is observed, only to find the most subtle aspects of creation quietly metastasizing into forms hitherto unknown, but moving softly and stealthily toward manifestation nonetheless. A place where epiphanies and insight arise out of no-thought, and where layers of surface-tension dissolve in some sort of cosmic water. A place that is both not-understood and yet resonates as familiar truth somewhere in the depth of our being, where even things that make absolutely no sense, right themselves in some sort of divine order.
This is the space where the higher heart speaks as the human mind takes a much deserved rest.
But like any destination worth getting to, a difficult journey is often required. You must sit squarely in the ebb every time it arrives… and it arrives with beckoning arms and bated breath much more frequently than you realize. You must sit in the discomfort, the pull of wanting to escape, the vulnerability and pain of what your heart has been trying to show you, but your mind cleverly and eagerly pushes aside.
You must get still and let that stillness quietly expand your inner landscape until it unfolds and presents you with the multitudes of self that have been compressed by life and hidden from view.
Finding this inner sanctuary is a silent, almost unseemly process that, if given proper attention, becomes the anchor of what this human experience is ultimately about… which is, to quote every master that has ever walked this earth,
To Know Thyself.
The world cannot tell you who you are, and you are only defined by those around you because you allow it to be so. Only you can identify the deepest aspects of who you really are. And here you will discover that your being-ness has nothing to do with your doing-ness.
And yet, as is the case throughout the entire cosmos, there always comes a time when the tides shift, and the ebb is required to become flow once more. Where stillness leads you into action. Where the seeds found in the non-doing turn into fruits of labor. But the labors must be ones born of love… from a wisdom found only in the quietude of heart, not in the antics of the mind.
In today’s world, a world designed to keep you perpetually enmeshed in confusion, chaos and yes, fear, please bear in mind this ancient aphorism, which has never been more true:
The only way out, is in.
