I seem to keep coming back to this quote, so I guess it has a continuing message.
“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”
Our society teaches you have to get out there and ‘make’ things happen, that if you work hard you can achieve whatever you put your mind to. It is often challenging in the midst of a busy life to slow down enough to be still for even a few minutes. The idea of simply staying still and listening, or just being ‘quiet, still and solitary’ can feel almost impossible. How long would I have to sit? Mind wants to know. What should I look for? How would the information come to me? And on and on in its chatterbox ways.
The Eye of the Storm
True inner stillness is like the eye in the middle of the storm. You know the storm is all around you and that you will be entering it again, but for this brief moment, all is peace and clarity. When you are deeply anchored in this stillness, you are able to take it with you as you pass into the storm again.
Timing Segments of Your Life
I recall some time ago, setting my iPhone timer for hourly periods and at the end of the hour, my goal was to stop and take 3 deep breaths. This was designed to bring me into the Present Moment and to detach just a little from the current projects so that Infinite Intelligence might have a tiny gap through which to flow. But oh how hard an endeavor that was. Mind hates to have to stop and be still, especially when you are deeply immersed in something. It wants to just keep racing on and on, and get things done. Mind’s focus is on the end result. It doesn’t care one iota for the journey, which is the bigger purpose for anything we do.
I still practice timing segments in my day. I have discovered something called the Pomodoro Technique – bursts of intense focus for 25 minutes then a 5 minute break – the goal being to eliminate distractions and so be more productive and fulfilled. So for the 25 minute period you can’t do anything else, not check email (turn off your notifier), take a quick look at texts, absolutely nothing. I find that if I take some of the 5 minute break to take those 3 deep breaths and focus on my phrase of the day – like a positive belief I want to install in my unconscious or something inspirational – that also helps with the project at hand. The universe in its wisdom can use these small breaks to re-energize and inspire me.
I’ve even learned to take this method into other areas of my life, like cleaning my house, or gardening, or photography study.
Consciously Creating Your Dreams
Consciously creating your hearts desires is very different from creating from an unconscious place. Unconscious creation happens when we aren’t aware of the greater sense of Self and are identified only with the form of self, with what we see, hear, taste, touch and feel.
Sitting in Presence and allowing Presence to flow through your dream creating can be the ‘world rolling in ecstasy at your feet‘ as Franz Kafka says. It’s also called getting out of your own way. Mind has so many ideas and theories and beliefs about what and how we can create in this world and yet if those dreams are not grounded in Presence there will be struggle and a lack of fulfillment.
Practice Makes Perfect
It takes a lot of practice I have learned, to know the difference between dreams rooted in Presence and dreams created by the mind. The mind can be so excited and full of enthusiasm that you can very quickly be off on a tangent or distraction before you even realize it. But a dream rooted in Presence will come back to quietly haunt you, over and over, until it gets your attention. Hence the need to know that you can trust the source of these inner promptings and you learn to do that from constantly and consistently dipping into the Present Moment, finding stillness in the middle of chaos.
The more I focus on those moments of quiet ecstasy, the more those moments seem to grow and the more I able to rise above the endless maneuverings of the ego, and the easier it is to know if I am operating from mind or Inner Being.