The Purpose of Stillness

The purpose of stillness, within a worldly routine, is to use time to return to a deeper awareness of your Self. It is not a departure or resistance of anything in particular. However, stillness is a releasing of all distractions that keep you believing in a struggling self. When I ask you to rest, or to be still, I am asking you to return to God’s Knowing, rather than a knowing within your mind or intellect. This experience is not as much about a physical routine as it is about a mindfulness. And no, its not mindfulness in the sense of analysis or contemplation, but it is a mindful awareness of being aware rather than shallowly distracted. Therefore, when practicing stillness, positions, postures or environments do not matter as much as where you see your self settling within.

The mind, which you are most aware of, is a mind spinning through time on a path of judgment. It is constantly seeking to find itself through comparing what it thinks it is with what it thinks it is not. This mind is always qualifying in duality. Its comparisons never reveal anything other than more comparisons. This is then how you can realize that your judgments are never worthwhile. Take a moment to recognize what your judgments reveal. Do they not reveal only more judgment, consternation, and confusion? Do not these questions result in more questions and challenges result in more challenges?

As you see this, I can promise you, that God never acts in a haphazard manner. His answers are always certain and never mislead. In hearing God’s Word, you can never be left wondering about clarification or seeking loopholes. There is no possibility for misinterpretation when you know your Self completely and hear God reveal this knowing to You.

If I can put this point in metaphor, I would say that the ego mind is always putting on a show for you. It is always creating scenes and spectacles to distract you into its weavings. “Wait!” it says. “Before you settle down, don’t you want to take a look at this??!” Then, it dances for you. As it twirls, you feel enticed, almost entranced by its many fanciful moves and hypnotic mannerisms. Soon, you begin to think, “Uh, yeah... wow look at that idea. Hmm, maybe God can wait. I need to go check this out.” Then, the next thing you seem to recognize is another spinning tale of time and circumstance, challenge and wanting, all of which only leave you wondering where in the world your journey began from the start.

Therefore, and I want you to pay attention to this next part, stillness is a vigilance for the Spirit of Truth. Yes, you heard me correctly. When people often think of vigilance, they define it in terms of battles. They see their dedication to vigilance for the Spirit as a constancy of arguing with the ego. This is not the true meaning of the word. The word vigilance, if you are to go to its origin, means “wakefulness.” It is “an occasion for devotional watching or observance.” Consequently, the word vigil also means, “awake, strength and enliven.” Therefore, here, in this origin, we can see that there is no calling for battle. Likewise, there is no pizzaz or dance of the mind of seeking or discernment. Instead, vigilance is a simple beckoning. It adheres only to Spirit’s constancy. This constancy is the observance of strength, life, and light within you and has no need for challenge.

As you choose to be vigilant for the Kingdom, you rest solely in your knowing of what is True. God has no need to challenge anything, because He knows He is an expression of all and has no opposing force. This is what the concept of omnipresence is wholly. God does not earn His omnipresence through comparison. God does not realize Himself by sifting through what is or is not part of His Presence. No, this is not so, because that would mean that there could be things or circumstances that God is not, which would then lead to the need for comparison, duality, and all the vicissitudes of uncertainty.

However, God is certain and knows He is certain. This certainty expresses only for one awareness and this is Love. Therefore, as you choose to recognize God’s Certainty, you simply gain an awareness of your own omnipresence. You gain an awareness of how Love enthralls all and is never limited. This affirmation of certainty leads you to realizing that nothing can wholly distract you that is not another expression of Love (remember, omnipresence is a one and whole presence). Likewise, instead of seeing a need to fight for your certainty in every manner of experience, you simply and completely rest within its Love, accepting that all is a guiding Light to realizing your Self through all.

Now, comes the question, how does a mind perceiving itself as split, realize the one omnipresence within him or her? The answer is merely to return to stillness. This is not a stillness of a body, but it is the still beingness of God unchangeable. What this has you do is seek beyond forms and rest in a Self that is infinitely indefinable. Stillness has you opt out of the physical, mental, emotional and circumstantial distraction and rest completely in the openness of all moments. Stillness is not a mentality or individual doing a task right or wrong, but it simply IS. Stillness pauses and does not need to know, only because it already knows and rests comfortably there.

Only the ego tussles around wide-eyed and mad in its seeking. Only the ego squirms and screams at the top of its lungs, “I do not know! I do not know! How do I do this??!” Do you notice the adherence to an “I” in that statement? Therefore, what we are seemingly doing in our stillness is to rest the confused part of the mind that needs anything. Here we drop the "I" and choose instead to return only to the omnipresence of Love that is knowing. This is the Holy Instant, and here, a desperate you is not struggling to know, but all that wills to step aside gratefully bows to God’s awareness. This willing Self, asks for only one awareness, and this is the realization that only God can lead the way.

Therefore, settle your mind and seek not to accomplish anything with your thinking. Breathe, release and rest. Trust and accept that God leads the way in His Knowing. Focus within on the path that is unwritten and without your own expectations. Accepting this is the only purpose of stillness. It is a rest from all that once appeared to be in need and now chooses instead to see its Self complete in all. This completion is not left to suffer in any manner and is not dependent. This completion, that You are in every moment, is a one verse which sings out through the harmony of all experiences, gathering only the melodious Voice of Love for its choir. You may consider this to be a lullaby for the ego, where God only says “Hush Beloved, rest with Me, for I know you as You are.”