‘Everything is part of a manifestation of spirit.’ Photo: Josh Marshall on Unsplash.
‘Opening to stillness and stepping back from our thinking mind is not necessarily comfortable.’
Still thinking: Gabrielle Scott on how stillness alters our perception of the world – and ourselves
Do you sometimes find yourself pondering a blank page, enjoying its emptiness? Emptiness that is full of potential, the promise of creation. It’s a bit like the silent stillness that we find in Quaker meetings, meditation or quiet moments in nature – where we ‘step back’ from the noise of the world and our thoughts into a place of quiet awareness. It’s not an absence that we find when we do this.
Eckhart Tolle captures this well in his book Stillness Speaks: ‘Is stillness just the absence of noise and content? No, it is intelligence itself – the underlying consciousness out of which every form is born.’
Tolle rarely uses overtly religious language. But his insights can help those on many religious paths to deepen their spiritual experience and understanding. His way of putting spiritual truths gives very little for the thinking mind to cling to – no ‘rule or form to walk by’ as Quakers might put it. It reminds me of the Biblical phrase quoted in an old Quaker pamphlet: ‘Be still and know that I am God.’ This ‘knowing’ is not meant to be done with the thinking mind – it’s a state of being.
In Falling into Grace the US spiritual teacher Adyashanti looks to The Gospel of Thomas to explore this. The second logia (saying) attributed to Jesus there states: ‘The seeker should not stop until he finds. When he does find, he will be disturbed. After being disturbed, he will be astonished. Then he will reign over everything.’ Opening to stillness and stepping back from our thinking mind is not necessarily comfortable – we may well be disturbed. There is a tendency to identify with what is referred to as the ‘ego’ and the ‘beliefs’ that we hold. We create an image of ourselves and identify with this and present it to the world. How can we let this go and enter what Adyashanti refers to as ‘a very deep well of unknowing’ without discomfort?
When we are truly still we get an inkling that perhaps we are not quite who we thought we were. When we are completely still, we can experience something like an empty state of awareness – Adyashanti calls this the ‘great internal space’. Is this what early Quakers referred to as ‘the place of inward retirement’?
Words can’t easily convey this state as it is not something you can ‘think’ your way towards. In Mark’s Gospel Jesus says: ‘No one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins – and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins.’ It’s hard to experience this new state with our habitual way of thinking getting in the way. We need to approach it in a new way.
And if we do make this shift and experience this still realm, what happens? Is the experience of ‘stillness’ the end of the journey? It’s certainly a profound experience but what might spring from that ‘well’ of unknowing? Quakers have been described as ‘practical mystics’. How does our mystical experience shape us?
When we experience stillness, it opens us to still awareness both within and outside of ourselves. We sense how it pervades everything. George Fox spoke of an ‘ocean of light’ covering the darkness. This stillness is like that but it’s not only above, it’s also below, surrounding, within, and in the background of everything. When a Quaker meeting ‘centres down’ we experience a deep state of stillness, openness and connection.
Our thinking minds are not likely to lead us to experience this. We have what Buddhists and some other traditions call a ‘dualistic’ perception. We think in terms of light and dark, good and bad, real and not real, and so on. Even modern digital computers function through this ‘binary’ principle. But the reality of this still realm is not like that at all. This is quite shocking. Perhaps as shocking as quantum computing is in comparison to the binary model. Quantum physics embraces the connection between awareness and the material.
I studied History at university and was fascinated by ‘chains of causality’. It is enticing to grasp at an understanding of how the world around us works – in a subject/object type relationship. Science and the ‘scientific method’ give an impression of a slow progress towards ‘the truth’. But does studying the atom and its properties let us understand what it really is? The human mind is great at seeing patterns and coming up with theories. But if you ask ‘why?’ to every answer a scientist gives, where will it take you? We had a long car journey once where my young son asked ‘why’ to every explanation that a scientist gave. He certainly chased the rabbit down the hole and watched it disappear out of sight.
Biology is the main life science but does it give us even an inkling of what ‘life’ actually is? It may help us in many practical ways but it does not solve the age-old mystery of our existence. It’s a little like trying to define and communicate the taste of chocolate. A million words or thoughts cannot replace the knowledge that we have through experience.
When you are still, not only do you sense that this stillness pervades everything, but you also start to experience a shift in perception of the manifest world around you. It is as though you have ‘new eyes’ to see the world. Looking at a simple flower or a mountain, one is struck by its immanent peace and beauty, the stillness – that it is a manifestation of the Divine. David R Hawkins describes this in his Eye of the I: ‘There is no emptiness anywhere as the Presence fills all of space and the objects in it. Every leaf shares in the joy of Divine Presence.’
Hawkins also has a profound insight into the nature of this reality in relation to what we term ‘causality’: ‘In Reality, nothing is “causing” anything else. Everything is the expression of its own existence and is self-existent. Its appearance is dependent on everything else in the universe and the point of view from which it is observed. Everything is actually self-existence in its reality because everything is part of All That Is and has no individual parts, separateness, or independent existence.’
If you stand in stillness and look at the natural world you may begin to sense this. Everything is part of a manifestation of spirit. That which is formless manifests as form – the creator shapes creation, but that creation is not separate from its creator. Why is this important? What does it mean for the ‘practical mystic’? We are part of this manifestation, which is the expression of the Divine. With the realisation that we are not separate, an authentic love stirs deep within us for this One Creation – a love for ourselves and for the world – for God incarnate.
The world pandemic that we are experiencing has surely underlined our connection with each other and with Creation. Now, what does love require of us?
Comments
This article speaks to me so much!.
It’s speaks of what is at the heart of meeting for worship and being a Quaker. It’s at the heart of being, life it self and Non duality.
This is the article I wish I had written.
By Kevin Ceney on 26th December 2020 - 8:20
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