Finding Stillness
Not sleeping well? Facing challenge? Feeling tired or exhausted allot? Getting run down, unfit? You might be thinking "I need a break" or to "change my workplace" but think it through, "if you always do, what you've always done, you'll always get, what you've always got" What you might need is a change of heart. Smarter thinking, less work hours, more precision, less confusion, more energy for the other side of your life.
The key to all this is how you manage your ego.
Your ego is a mass of thoughts, both conscious and unconscious. So, getting through it is complex, drawn out process, similar to cleaning the mud out of muddy water in a bucket. The more you dip you hand in, the more you stir up the mud and the harder it is to clean.
So, rather than get tangled cleaning up the ego, the better way is, to jump over it. Your heart and mind need a home that is not centred in that muddy world of your ego. Money needs a bank, an aeroplane needs a runway, your body needs safety at night and your mind and heart need a home outside the ego.
The unique home your mind and heart need is stillness, it is a space, a state of mind. Stillness is a space from which sleep is deep, facing challenge is easy, certainty comes and thinking is clearer. It is a space where calm and rest are automatic. This space of stillness is also the primary requirement for inspiration and love. It is a solid base from which you can launch and return when you need it.
Your ego can win and these are the spoils of its victory over your heart -mind space.
Sleeplessness
Depression
Anxiety
Stress
Uncertainty
Long working hours
Unproductive mind states
Emotional drama
Stubbornness
Regret
Anger
Envy
These are the battles the ego can't win
Gratitude
Presence
Certainty
Love
Jumping the ego - finding stillness
In order to learn the skills of jumping the ego, you will need to be prepared to practice certain disciplines. The learning can take some weeks but in the end, the space you will own and be able to return to at will, is worth the effort.
Practice Discipline 1. Dead stillness
If your body, mind and heart were a horse and carriage. The horses would be the body, the carriage the heart of it, and the driver the mind. For the vast majority of people, the horses drive the cart rather than pull it. In other words most people let their body rule their head and heart. Therefore, the first skill requirement for understanding the art of stillness, is to train the body to obey the mind. That means, being dead still for 10 minutes, in one place, not even moving a finger. Try it. It is harder than you think.
Practice discipline 2. Observation
How many times have you found yourself angry and frustrated because someone doesn't understand you? This reveals a common human issue. We think that we are what we think. Attachment to our knowledge, beliefs, stories, expectations spells trouble for everyone of us. It is from this fundamental place that all our struggles and challenges begin. Therefore, separating ourselves from what we think is a magic pill, an automatic release from a very troublesome habit. See if you can conceptualise this. You are not your morals and ethics. You are not your achievements. You are not what you think. Your opinions about things are your egoistic projection of who you think you'd like to be. Everything that you think, know, believe and worship is simply your ego trying to create some sense of permanency in an impermanent life (you are going to die one day for sure)
Once you have learned to be "dead still" the second discipline is to kill the power of the ego. "dead thinking" - In a state of dead stillness, and preferably only after you master that skill for 10 minutes, you start to withdraw yourself from your thoughts. You achieve this by just watching them. Now, this is more challenging than it sounds because you must not try. Therefore, you must let any thought that chooses to be in your head, surface. These might not be "nice" according to your self projection of who you are, but this is the art of emptiness. To just watch your thoughts without expectation or judgement. It sounds boring to some people, a waste of time to others, but please, tell those ego's it's ok, you will return to your ego after you finish.
Practice discipline 3. Non Violence - Seeking order
This is the most challenging step because it is the re engineering of the structure of the ego. Disturbance comes to us because our expectations are not met in life. But sometimes those expectations are at fault, not the event. As a result, we commit a grave act of violence on ourselves and others, expectations that are false. So, this third and most difficult step is to change the way (not what) we think.
Innerwealth means thinking with real expectations. There are five key principles that underpin these real expectations, a sort of filter through which, illusion cannot pass. At first these five principles are challenging, it can take some tough love to cause your ego to let go of false stories and attachments, but it will if you just persist.
The five universal laws of nature are simple, but your ego mind might just kick like a horse when you consider them.
1/ Balance - support and challenge are balanced and you live on the border of both.
2/ Harmony - What you appreciate grows. What you don't appreciate you attract.
3/ Abundance - Nothing is missing it just changes in form.
4/ Growth - Evolve or devolve, about growth you have no choice.
5/ Higher order - There's order in the chaos and someone always sees it more than you.
The skills required in the development of these five ego filters can be challenging. For example; most people think there can be a right without a wrong, a bad something (like global warming) without a good. That fails the first law. Another myth, is that of gratitude. People are so grateful for what they can see benefit in, and want to change the things they call bad. That's not gratitude. Gratitude means not wanting to change anything, appreciation for things as they are. These concepts challenge the constructs of our ego mind. And because we think we are what we think, they cause huge confrontation as we try to save our selves from extinction. (ego loss)
Practice discipline number 4. Mind Control
The final step is the cream on the cake. The final step involves the taming of the mind to work for you, to create what you want and deserve in life.
This final step of mind control involves just four states of mind from which all can flow. Those four states of mind are:
Gratitude
Presence
Certainty
Love
Gratitude
Although we have spoken about gratitude earlier, we have not explored the consequence of ingratitude. Wanting to change, fix, make better can be motivated by many things, but the worst is ingratitude for what is. Sitting looking at your dinner plate, wishing it were different, causes illness no matter what the food. Some people spend a fortune on organic food and then fill their mind with complaints about global warming. Health and gratitude are the same topic, but how can we be thankful for everything?
Maybe the answer lies in the middle path. If there are two sides to everything, (the first law of nature) then surely we will be thankful for one side (the positive) and unthankful for the other side (the negative) the consequence is neutral. Neutral is referred to as "An Open Heart" and this is an amazing state from which to act. Thankful for the gifts that come from the negative and the positive means that in the pain or suffering that comes from any event or circumstance there is good. (please avoid the idea that the reaction to pain, challenge, suffering is the gift - pain takes us somewhere and that is the gift.
Presence
Emotion and presence are enemies in battle. Emotions cannot exist in the NOW. They can only exist when we think about the past, or the future. Fear and guilt. So the emotional person is both dwelling in the past, and hopeful into the future. This turbulence eventually sabotages all they desire. Learning the art of presence comes automatically to those who practice stillness.
When we are not present, our relationships both at home and at work suffer. As a consequence we become forgetful, possibly clumsy and accident prone. Long term lack of presence will result in problems with the nervous system, mental health problems and stress related illness.
Certainty
For most people, hard work and certainty go hand in hand. The average business person might perceive that the harder they work the more they are guaranteed of achieving their goals. A performer and an artist knows better. Surely, discipline and application are keys to positive results from our time and effort, but hard work and stress does not cause any increase in the certainty of the outcome.
Certainty comes through simplicity. Name the four things that, if you did them with absolute diligence on a daily basis, you would achieve your 10 highest priority dreams. For example; my purpose in life is to guide people to love. So my four things to do every day are to; explore, write, share and inspire. If I do these those every day, I can forget the goals, my daily habits will cause them automatically.
Uncertainty comes from the lack of patience, greed, hunger, distraction and dissatisfaction. When you stop wanting, and appreciate what you have, this is the energy that generates the certainty to manifest. Greed makes us reach without discernment, hunger leads us to fulfil our appetite with substitutes, distraction causes us to loose our focus (drop the bone) and dissatisfaction (fear) drives away the energy and support that people want to give us, naturally.
Love
Many people say "do what you love" but they are fooling you. Wisdom is to learn to "Love what you do" - no matter what it is. Love is an unstoppable force - to love, but this force cannot be applied exclusively. The individual who cannot learn to love their circumstance, will forever find cause to run from it either physically or emotionally. Many therapist, healers, yoga teachers, change consultants don't know how to love. They have divided the world into lovable or unlovable. They run to create more of the lovable half and work diligently to eradicate the unlovable half.
What separates us from love is our ego. As we now realize the ego is a complex and most essential part of human nature, without it there'd be a rather emotionless world. It's these emotions, some good some bad, that motivate the average person to get out of bed, donate to charity, compete in business and of course, shoot their neighbour in the head. If you choose to subscribe to good emotions, then you'll just have to accept the presence of the bad ones. There is no half life, with good emotions without bad. Love is the absence of both. A timeless, spaceless place in which authenticity exists. Love therefore is without expectations, and without expectations, we cannot be disturbed, mind, body or heart. This is the resting place of all truth, in the stillness of unconditional love.
Please feel free to share this article in its entirety
Chris Walker
July 2007
http://www.chriswalker.com.au Chris Walker is a world leading change agent, an environmentalist and author of more than 20 books. Born and bred in Australia, he consults to people and organisations throughout the world on improved relationships, health and lifestyle through the application of the Universal laws of Nature. The result he offers is that we stay balanced, share loving relationships, work with passion, enjoy success, and live our personal truth. To learn more about Chris?s work and journeys to Nepal, visit http://www.chriswalker.com.au -- http://www.chriswalker.com.au
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