Stillness

Q. Living in a remote mountain spot, it was very easy to fall into silence and stillness. Now, in a sprawling, metropolitan environment, I feel the pull of action and outward focus. Please talk about how to find stillness in the midst of the "doing" energy that is in cities.

A. Stillness is not necessarily a matter of doing or not doing. In stillness, doing may arise. It arises in the natural inclination of the moment, a meeting of the personal and the transpersonal, the inner and the outer, so that the doing is syntonic with all the elements of the moment, is in alignment, and brings a sense of rightness, joy and healing.

The doing of which you speak is more in the nature of ambition. Ambition in this sense is always self denying. It is the imposition of a non-manifest image, an idea, onto the present, with a refusal to listen to what is natural in the moment. In other words, goals that are imposed from the outside, cultivated through seduction or social conditioning, bear no relation to truth. And in truth is stillness, whether there is also action or not. Contemplate this: a raging river is still in the sense of which we speak: it follows it's nature without effort or doing. It flows. This is the stillness to which we refer. When you are true to your own nature, no doing is needed. It is only when you go against the natural flow of things that doing is required.

In modern times, young people are conditioned to impose long-term goals upon themselves from early on. For a very few of these, a natural inclination towards a life goal, an avocation, is there. For the many, there is a development of discipline, a sort of self-imprisonment, a reduction of hope and joy in life over time, and a buckling down to the way life is presented to them through cultural conditioning. With luck, they will find hobbies and interests that will give them a taste of living in alignment with who they are, tasting themselves in freedom, and this will bring them joy. Without it, they will spend their lives watching television, bereft of the essential spark which makes life worth living.

We mention the pattern of social conditioning for two reasons. It is important that as many people as possible become aware of the cultural choices that are being made on the planet. Although many feel that they have no choice, in fact, the whole is made up of individual choices made daily by each of the 6 billion on the planet. The world and the life dedicated to capitalist market values is only one option. Though you may feel imposed upon by this, if it is not your personal choice, you can make a difference. Even the conscious acknowledgment of dissent makes a difference. When you cultivate an alternative vision, that makes a difference. When you meditate and pray on that vision, that makes a difference. When you act in your daily life to effect the whole, that also makes a difference. Manifestation is the outcome of attraction or desire. The world is energy made form. Therefore, even your thoughts around this make a difference. In time, thoughts become facts.

The second reason we mention this conditioning is because in order to find new ways of being, the conditioning needs to be recognized and released or cleared in some way. When your own impulses go against those of the mass mind, there is a perpetual tendency to fall back into the habits that are paramount. Recognizing what those habits are and whence they arise makes dropping them or bypassing them much easier. Know, then, that in order to find stillness in the market place many habits must be dropped. The compulsion to fear for one's own survival, to believe oneself to be alone and unsupported, to see others as opponents or enemies, to think in terms of scarcity and lack, all of these are habits of a market economy. To find stillness, these conditionings must be dropped. Trust must be developed. Relaxation and the ability to listen inward and outward to the movement of the moment must be cultivated. A willingness to let go, again and again, to that which in the social conditioning looks safest, must be born.

Stillness and silence can arise only in the present. Once you enter the present, life's mystery is met. In this place, all doors open. Everything is possible. But the moment you bind yourself to a known future, mystery is dead.

Q. How then can one make commitments? They seem so necessary in life.

A. The moment you make the commitment to truth, all other commitments are subsumed to this. It is not that you may not live somewhere for 50 years, it is not that you may not stay in the same job all your life. It is that you stand ready in every moment to follow truth, no matter the cost. Then your choice to remain in anything becomes a million choices made in a million moments, always with the door open to the possibility of change. This is the only way true commitment can happen, arising in every moment, moment to moment.

Q. This seems to open the door to tremendous irresponsibility, to enormous self-centeredness.

A. My dear, truth is the epitome of love. It is compassion. It is the open heart. The question arises out of conditioning, do you see? The fear that to honor truth means to become bad or lax in some way is conditioned. In this, you cannot play the game of 'what if'. Trust is required. When truth is honored there is a tremendous responsiveness to the moment, a broadening of awareness, an embracing of more aspects of the moment as the obsession with 'I' naturally diminishes. Freedom is not loveless, though historically that is how it has been portrayed. True freedom is imbued with love. And true freedom can be lived as easily in a jail as it can in the mountains. It is the presence of light, of connection, of love.