I invite you to close your eyes, and just be quiet for a few seconds.
What happens when you sit in stillness?
When I am quiet, first I hear cacophony inside. I stay longer and usually find a place of stillness.
Adyashanti says: all forms of spirituality, at essence, are saying be quiet. Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, Zen. It’s all one way or another of just saying be quiet.
The central Jewish prayer, begins: She’ma, O Israel… Hear… Listen.
Quiet can be found in the midst of chaos, if you know that place inside. Quiet becomes the reality under everything. Stillness becomes center.
Isaac of Nineveh says:
In the beginning we have to force ourselves
to be silent. But then from our very silence
is born something that draws us into deeper silence.
When are you quiet?
Why do we so rarely sit in stillness?
Rumi says:
This silence, this moment, …
brings what you need.…
Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, ‘Be more silent.’ …
Your old life was a frantic running from silence.
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
What happens then? The mind stops fussing, and awareness opens, deepens.
We are receptive, listening, yin rather than yang.
Quiet is giving up the struggle, the effort to be elsewhere, or to make things different. Quiet is being right here, right now.
Can you let go of your thinking, your ego?
Can you surrender, and just Be?
Ramana Maharshi teaches:
Your duty is to BE, and not to be this or that. … The method is summed up in the words ‘Be still’. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. …Give up the notion that ‘I am so and so’. All that is required …. is to be still.
Eckhart Tolle says
Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.
The simple truth is this: despite all our striving and reaching for Spirit, Enlightenment, or Nirvana, we actually need do nothing at all, except be still.
As Mahatma Gandhi tells us:
In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
Out of quiet comes clarity, and purpose. Out of quiet comes right action, and the clear, strong voice.
As Eckhart Tolle says:
It is the stillness that will save and transform the world.
Let’s just be quiet, and listen, before anything else.
From that stillness, let’s then move forward.
