Stillness...

There is a lot of power in stillness.  Don’t think so?  Look at a mountain.  Look at a flat ocean or lake.  Look at the Buddha meditating.  There is a great deal of power and prominence in sitting still.  And it has taken me a long fucking time to get this.  Or see it.  Or be able to practice it.

And, for me, it all starts with practicing myself.  I have to sit still every day in order to appreciate and value the concept.  I meditate every day.  Usually 20-30 minutes.  And the value I receive from giving up 30 minutes of my day to being still, has effects I can’t even begin to describe...I feel like the time I spend in meditation is a great gathering of strength, resiliency, worth, patience, fortitude, and grace.  It is like all of those things are floating around in space all of the time and the chance of them settling in with you is minimal unless you sit still long enough for them to find you, land and permeate.

There is a great rising tide when I meditate.  And unlike when I attempt to propel my life on self will and busyness, stillness gives me the ability to harness the power of the universe and hone it into something greater for the good of all...it is quite exquisite.

I never knew.  I mean, I had to kind of know.  I have been meditating since I was 13.  I had to see some value in it to begin so young and continue it all these years.  But I swear, I have never before felt the effects I am feeling now.  The power I feel conjured up in me daily is extraordinary.

I think the part of stillness I didn’t get before is all the momentum that builds before you take action.  And meditating is actually an action, even in all its stillness.  There are a lot of things that happen while you are just sitting there.  Your body settles, your mind flits all over the place as usual, but every once in awhile there is a gap in the ongoing, incessant chatter and narrative.  And that gap is filled with such wondrous peace and equanimity.  So much power is manifested there in all that quiet stillness, power that I need for other things to come later.

It is no accident that I started meditating daily, in earnest on November 24th. I do not know how I would have survived the last two months if I had not returned to practice.  I seriously do not know.  I mean, I am sure I would have survived.  I would have been ok, I am sure I would have persevered.  But persevering is a very different thing than feeling carried through hard things.  I honestly feel like I have floated through the past few weeks.  Floated!

Sure there have been times where it didn’t quite feel like floating, but it didn’t feel like persevering either.  I wasn’t trudging or battling.  I was just living.  Each moment as it came, and I think I did a pretty good job of riding the tide of whatever came up and through for me and those I love.  I was present.  I was sad.  I was grief-stricken.  But I was fucking here.  For all of it.

I have a renewed fondness for still.  A willingness to get to know it better, and more completely.  It is an amazing skill, this whole sitting with what it is with the idea that I am not to change it so much as I am to understand it.

A friend once said to me, “honestly at this point in life, if people call me for help and they aren’t willing to meditate, then I tell them, I really can’t help them...”  And when she said this, I knew she was wise and what she was saying was true.  But it was kind of more metaphorical to me.  Now, I fucking get it and feel the same.  If your life isn’t going the way you would like, please, for the love of all that is holy, please do not do something, just sit there...for about 20-30 minutes, every single day.  It will change you, I promise, more than all the action you can muster and assail.  Sitting still, in quite reflection and grace will change you from the inside out and grant you to access to your life already in progress but wholly new to you...

Again, still...