That seems strange, doesn’t it? To be still and be rebellious at the same time? Hear me out.
Some people understand what I’m talking about, it’s when they’ve taken time to meditate or just have quiet time. It’s an opportunity to reset, to connect inward to our own inner wisdom, knowledge and sense of BEing.
Some of us have been so used to living in the loudness of life and chaos that being still will feel very uncomfortable. That’s because if you truly connected into your own stillness, removing all the layers of what is there to keep you from connecting, you would discover so much empowerment and connection to more. More light, more peace, more self-love and a deeper understanding that you are supported and never alone.
I just spent a week in Santa Fe, New Mexico with my daughter, Britt, and we had down time, where we were away from each other, not talking or interacting, the stillness that each of us crave. Sometimes I would just be creating art in the quietness and she was doing her thing. My body slowly released the tension and stress it naturally carries and a deeper peace was allowed to enter. It took a couple of days for this to kick in, which is not uncommon.
None of us navigate very well when there is so much noise, confusion, chaos, switching from one thing to another, getting dopamine hits over and over to keep us stimulated. When we are still, the quietness can be deafening. It can feel super loud, isn’t that a concept, silence being deafening?
I recently saw online an anechoic chamber, that is created primarily for companies to test the noise level of their product. This room is devoid of light and sound, people that have been able to test out the room say they can almost immediately hear/sense their heart beating and in a short time hear their bones grinding and blood pumping. I would not want to be that silent, that’s a bit extreme from one side of the pendulum, chaos and loudness to the absence of it all.
What if you explored less doing and looked for more stillness? Get curious, if you have a lot of thoughts that bubble up to fill the quietness, simply acknowledge them, don’t follow them, just let them float on by.
I recently saw an exercise of asking the mind, “What’s the next thought?”, and continue to ask’ “What’s the next thought?”, eventually the mind slows down and doesn’t have a thought to offer.
Most of the time, we follow the thoughts as if they have something important to say, however, the majority of the time, it’s just streaming information with no idea where it’s going. Were you aware, you, the original one, get’s to guide these thoughts rather than them guiding you?
A technique I’ve started, is to just ask the thoughts to slow down, I’m not trying to stop them, in fact, that takes too much work, I simply slow them down, then slow down a bit more, and then get the thoughts down to the point that one word at a time is happening, and I don’t have the energy to try and figure out what the thought is, and I’m also not giving it energy to have my mind process. This has helped me to relax and sometimes to fall asleep.
Give this a try, explore getting still, quieting, BEing and after a period of time, you just may find that stillness is so empowering that you truly are able to be defiant in such a way that all the outside chaos no longer can get to you. It’s not a quick fix and there’ll be days it won’t work, but that is why you practice.
