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Sunday, January 23, 2011

Silence and Stillness

When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.

Stillness is your essential nature. What is stillness? The inner space or awareness in which the words on this page are being perceived and become thoughts. Without that awareness, there would be no perception, no thoughts, no world.


You are that awareness, disguised as a person.

When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world. 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 equivalent of external noise is the inner noise of thinking. The equivalent of external silence is inner stillness. Whenever there is some silence around you — listen to it. That means just notice it. Pay attention to it. Listening to silence awakens the dimension of stillness within yourself, because it is only through stillness that you can be aware of silence. See that in the moment of noticing the silence around you, you are not thinking. You are aware, but not thinking. When you become aware of silence, immediately there is that state of inner still alertness. You are present. You have stepped out of thousands of years of collective human conditioning.

Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness. When you look at a tree and perceive its stillness, you become still yourself. You connect with it at a very deep level. You feel a oneness with whatever you perceive in and through stillness. Feeling the oneness of yourself with all things is true love.

Silence is helpful, but you don’t need it in order to find stillness. Even when there is noise, you can be aware of the stillness underneath the noise, of the space in which the noise arises. That is the inner space of pure awareness, consciousness itself. You can become aware of awareness as the background to all your sense perceptions, all your thinking. Becoming aware of awareness is the arising of inner stillness.

Any disturbing noise can be as helpful as silence. How? By dropping your inner resistance to the noise, by allowing it to be as it is, this acceptance also takes you into that realm of inner peace that is stillness. Whenever you deeply accept this moment as it is — no matter what form it takes — you are still, you are at peace.

Pay attention to the gap — the gap between two thoughts, the brief, silent space between words in a conversation, between the notes of a piano or flute, or the gap between the in-breath and out-breath. When you pay attention to those gaps, awareness of “something” becomes — just awareness. The formless dimension of pure consciousness arises from within you and replaces identification with form.

True intelligence operates silently. Stillness is where creativity and solutions to problems are found.

Is stillness just the absence of noise and content? No, it is intelligence itself — the underlying consciousness out of which every form is born. And how could that be separate from who you are? The form that you think you are came out of that and is being sustained by it. It is the essence of all galaxies and blades of grass; of all flowers, trees, birds, and all other forms. Stillness is the only thing in this world that has no form. But then, it is not really a thing, and it is not of this world.

When you look at a tree or a human being in stillness, who is looking? Something deeper than the person. Consciousness is looking at its creation.

Do you need more knowledge? Is more information going to save the world, or faster computers, more scientific or intellectual analysis? Is it not wisdom that humanity needs most at this time?

But what is wisdom and where is it to be found? Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.

~Written by Eckhart Tolle

Replacing Turmoil with Peace

I am often asked, “How do I know whether it is my ego or my higher spirit beckoning me at any given moment in life?” At any given moment, you are choosing between two pictures or evaluations of yourself. Your choices include the one offered by your soul, or higher self, which I think of as the voice of God, and the one offered by the ego, or your false idea of yourself.

The answer to the question above is, “If it brings you a sense of peace, then it is your higher self at work.”

Your higher self is always nudging you toward a resolution of the conflicts that you experience in your life, so that you will have room for serenity and harmony. If you are living with inner turmoil, continually quarreling with yourself and feeling anxious and fearful, then you are allowing ego to dominate your life.

In every moment, you have the option to choose peace for yourself. Your false self thrives on inner anxiety because that is what it thinks it needs to stay alive. Ego promotes thoughts like these: I cannot be happy or content; I must be a bad person; If I am feeling peaceful then I will simply vegetate; I must constantly look at how others are living and performing in order to assess my value.

The ego wants you in a constant state of turmoil. It convinces you that if you are not always on edge, you can’t grow. Keep in mind, though, that experiencing this inner turmoil is a choice you’ve made to allow your false self to dominate your life. When you make the choice for peace, you are literally allowing the Divine into your life. And rather than vegetate, you will discover that you can be busy, purposeful, blissful and still have peace.

Replacing the turmoil you feel with peace is then a simple matter of allowing your higher self to take over in any situation where you are about to allow turmoil to enter. Your ego will push you in the direction of the fight. You must be ready to see it as it is about to happen and invite your higher self to send your ego a not-wanted-right-now message. Know within that you always have the choice.

When you opt for turmoil and anxiety, you allow your ego to take over. You can instead be a home for peace.

~Written by Dr. Wayne Dyer

A Gift To Yourself & Others

Think, “Whenever I am trying to control another with my beliefs, opinions, views, self-righteousness; this is an egoic-state of consciousness.” 

Love, being kind to others, having compassion, selflessness, brings people together. Ego, of the mind, separates, creates bitterness, anger, hatred, resentment, defensiveness, and ultimately separates oneself from others. 

Stillness of the mind, silence, and awareness allows you to return to your natural state of being; allowing peace to be uncontaminated by the mind is a gift to yourself and others.

~Written by Pamela J. Wells