[Postscript yesterday: I felt inclined to google today’s phrase: ‘I am sensing my heart’. Interestingly, second on the list was an article on Sensing Your Qi. The writer shares a 4m meditation, where he refers to sensing your heart smiling. So I shall also endeavour to sense what makes my heart smile.]
My heart revealed and shared plenty of distress and troubledness yesterday. It was a turbulent day. I sure sensed my heart, but not my heart smiling. Maybe that’s for today. I’m rather late after a broken night. Let’s read:
-16- Empty everything out; hold fast to your stillness. Even though all things are stirring together, watch for the movement of return. The ten thousand things flourish and then each returns to the root from which it came. Returning to the root is stillness. Through stillness each fulfils its destiny. That which has fulfilled its destiny becomes part of the Always-so. To be aware of the Always-so is to awaken. Those who innovate while in ignorance of the Always-so move toward disaster. Those who act with awareness of the Always-so embrace all, are not possessed by particular desire, and move toward the Tao. Those who are at one with the Tao abide forever. Even after their bodies waste away, they are safe and whole. (Tao Te Ching Chap 16)
Beautiful. A key chapter. ‘The ten thousand things‘ so resonated with me when I first read the Tao Te Ching and felt utterly swamped by life (some 8 years ago?). What is the key phrase for me here today?
Looks like it’s to do with stillness, dunnit?
Yeperoo.
And the Always-So.
Yes… It’s as if all that really counts is the eternal essence, which is found in stillness. Or zummit like that. Your advice, please.
When you truly rest, you get insights, don’t you?
Yes! Like going away on holiday, or staying at someone else’ house… New perspectives appear.
Can you learn to rest in stillness in your everyday life?
I stop and then I canter headlong, don’t I? But it gets the work done.
It gets some work done. What would it look like if you had a greater sense of the ‘Always-So’?
I’d stop innovating? Stop reinventing the wheel? I read yesterday about how, in the world of spirit, we learn to create things by ‘pressing’ the mind. I guess it’s hard to create by ‘pressing the mind’ if we have our mind wheel-spinning in first gear. I am of the subconscious belief, I guess, that if I shoot off in first gear, I’ll get things done. No wonder, therefore, I get so full of dread about Doing The Things That Need To Be Done.
May I can learn to see the thing, and press my mind for its creation – instead of seeing a vacuum and pouring energy into it to ‘solve’ it.
And what thing would you see?
Today, I would see a talk prepared, an article written, a training prepped, my taxes done, a meeting easily accomplished…
And how would that feel?
Settled. Like a magician standing in a storm and conducting the elements.
Nice.
Anchored in the Always-So and in internal stillness, and then approaching the 1000 things as needed, or not. Unmoved. No struggle. Grounded.
Resting in stillness.
Resting in the stillness of the Always-So. May I rest in stillness today, fully anchored in the Always-So – not merely ‘on pause’, but nestling in the heart of the eternal peace of All That Is, succoured by its remedies. May we all, on this planet, in this extraordinary Day, return to the Source of All and rest in its Stillness. May all beings find refuge in the root, which is the Eternal. May we be lifted up from scrabbling in the dirt after the thousand scattered things, and may we be held in peace. May all those I love, and all those I am yet to love, and all those I will never know, find peace this day. May we all rest in stillness, today and always.
I am resting in stillness
*****
Later…
Resting in stillness seems to be about having the courage to sit in neutral gear and know that you’ll reach your destination faster that way than by revving up into first, second or even fifth gear. Resting in stillness is faith and trust that the destination will actually come to you!
In the Always-So the things get done effortlessly.
Ah… Man. Cool.
********
Later still – my car nearly conked out on the way to a meeting in town. So, I let it virtually drift towards the garage I use in town… Revving was not going to work! The destination came to me! 🙂