"Stillness. One of the Doors Into the Temple" - (from Mary Oliver's poem, "Today")
Humanity is experiencing an epidemic of soul-chaos. Numbness and antipathy as responses to the disasters of daily news give credence. Calm, depth, grounding, adaptability, centeredness, creative flow and energy - the fruits of stillness - elude us. Anxiety, depression, inertia, lack of imagination, rampant anger, malevolence, and suicide abound. We have a communal "affliction."
Besieged by frenetic information overload, over-stimulation and activity, bloated consumerism, and anxious fear brought on by attachment to instant gratification and an attempt to insulate ourselves from suffering and dying leaves us collectively bereft of energy, compassion, and soulfulness.
*Rather than an insidious big-pharma ad to "cure" depression/anxiety, we pause here for an alternative antidote: Stillness.*
Colleagues, clients, friends, neighbors, family, and loved ones who find life overwhelming - try stillness. It heals what my favorite God-Mom referred to as "the family affliction." This is the tendency to create constant foment, noise, tension, drama, industry, excessive activity, and commotion. One thing truly heals it: being still.
As a kid, being still doesn't often come easy.
So, I prayed.
Ps. 46:10 - "Be still, and know that I am God."
Ps. 131:2 - "I have stilled and quieted my soul. Like a weaned child with its Mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me."
I grew to learn that "praying about" stillness and "being still" were not the same. One has to practice the art of stillness. And it takes time.
So, over time, I learned to meditate. I learned to breathe. I learned to breathe into my center. I learned to listen deeply, to pay attention. I learned to discipline my awareness, attune the senses, let go, let come - non-discursive meditation. I learned interior observation free from judgment, expectation, and reaction. I learned to approach and reside in the still, silent, center point, where I was floating - held in the buoyancy of detached awareness - not preferring one outcome over another, health to sickness, wealth to poverty, success to failure, strength to weakness. I learned to be present, to be. In the center, all is One, the yin and yang of pure Being. I learned to go deeper, past silence, into stillness, and past stillness, into the heart.
Every day. Practice. Repetitio.
Stillness. It heals the family affliction. And by family, I mean all of us in the human family.
And stillness doesn't just help cure what ails us, it truly heals us by endowing us with what we need to grow in depth, wonder, and gratitude. Stillness stimulates creative awareness and energetic flow. It helps us concentrate on NOW.
(Photo: Bernadette Peters & Mandy Patinkin, "Sunday in the Park with George")
There is a poignant moment (https://youtu.be/8io-sAU0JK4?feature=shared) in Act 2 of "Sunday in the Park with George" (Sondheim & Lapine's brilliant paean to Pointillist/Impressionist Artist, Georges Seurat) in which Georges' mistress/model "Dot," reappears in the 20th century to her fictional great-grandson, George. She meets George the younger in his worst state - the state of the "family affliction" described above. He is despondent because he can't "move on." His art has gone stale, his family "tree" (his family legacy) is barren -his marriage is in ruins - and his art has become passe. The famous tranquil island setting of the senior Georges' painting is obscured by industrial pollution and chaos. George is overwhelmed by the frenetic pace and demands of "the art of making art," and his creative energy is completely depleted. He is experiencing deep disconnect, depression and loss. Sound familiar? The family affliction.
When Dot appears to him and mistakes George for her 19th century artist, Georges, she showers him with effusive gratitude. She said as an artist, he taught her about "concentration." She says he opened her eyes, "taught her how to see." She explains, "At first I thought it just meant being still, but I was to understand it meant much more..." She learned that being still was not just remaining in place, but to be where she was, "not some place in the past or the future," but being fully present in the moment, concentrating on NOW. The artist had mastered the art himself as he rendered his subject's beauty and stillness in his magnum opus, "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte," an innovative work that captures a moment of utter tranquility and peacefulness in an island park in the Seine. Seurat captured this moment of timeless stillness by creating thousands of dots - points of color - allowing the human eye to fuse color and light, creating a shimmering, astounding work of art that each person creates and recreates upon each viewing. He left a stunning masterpiece and an experiential meditative focal point. We recreate the work of art just by being still.
How about that for an antidote to malaise and chaos?
Unblocking creative flow is one magnificent side effect of practicing stillness. Dot's wisdom from "Sunday in the Park": "Move on! Everything you do, let it come from you. Then it will be new."
"Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte,"
(Georges Seurat, 1884, on display at the Art Institute of Chicago)
Seurat's inspiration came from a gentle Sunday afternoon in the park. Nature can teach us the art of stillness if we cooperate.
Poetess-of-Earth Mary Oliver made an entire life's work from this practice. She understood that stillness is "one of the doors into the Temple":
"Today" by Mary Oliver
Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.
The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping,
the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.
But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.
(From A Thousand Mornings, Poems by Mary Oliver, Penguin, 2013)
If we are still, if we pay attention, we can learn to go deeper. A poem from Chris McCombs suggests that going deeper - even beyond stillness - leads to the heart. Go deeper!
"Go Deeper" by Chris McCombs
Go deeper
Past thought, into silence
Past silence, into stillness
Deeper still
Past stillness, into the heart
Now
Let the love
Consume
Whatever is left of you.
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