Stillness Speaks

Those are the first words of the book.

Reminds me of that golden Buddha within each of us.

In Running Down a Dream, Tim Grahl tells the beautiful story about the historical golden Buddha we talk about in this +1 (and this +1).

He also gives us some great practical advice. He says: “Instead of ‘I am broken and in need of fixing,’ I could start believing ‘I have a valuable, powerful, perfect force within, and I have everything I need to release it. There are just some layers on top of the gold that I need to scrape away.’ …

So taking the experimental mindset, I decided to test out a new theory. First, I would start assuming I was good and had my heart in the right place, instead of a rickety monster that had to be held in check and put on a tight leash.

Second, anything I did that was bad or wrong or unhealthy, I would just tell myself it was a layer of plaster on top. That wasn’t really me. Therefore, changing the behavior wasn’t so threatening.

Third, I would only worry about scraping away layers. I was done trying to be a good father, writer, husband, friend, or businessman all at the same time. If I stuck to my single-minded pursuit, all of that stuff would take care of itself.

I never felt good enough anyway even when I thought I was under control. Instead I would just worry about this one thing… scraping away the plaster.”

Here’s to removing that which separates us from the truth of who we already are and what we already know in the depth of our being.

Those are the first words from Chapter 1 on “Silence & Stillness.”

I think we can look at that wisdom from both a mystical and a practical perspective.

Thich Nhat Hanh comes to mind for the mystical side and Cal Newport for the practical.

First, let’s chat about Thich Nhat Hanh. He wrote a whole book on the same basic theme. His is called Silence.

He tells us just how important it is to create pockets of silence to invite stillness into our lives and encourages us to consider the fact that: “Our mind is filled with noise, and that’s why we can’t hear the call of life, the call of love. Our heart is calling us, but we don’t hear. We don’t have the time to listen to our heart.”

His practical advice? “Many cultures practice fasting for a specific period of time for religious holidays, for initiation rituals, or for other reasons. Other people fast for health reasons. This is worth doing not only for our body but for our consciousness as well. Every day we take in a multitude of words, images, and sounds and we need some time to stop ingesting all those things and let our mind rest. A day without the sensory food of e-mail, videos, books, and conversations is a chance to clear our mind and release the fear, anxiety, and suffering that can enter our consciousness and accumulate there.”

Then we have Cal Newport and his wisdom on the subject.

In Digital Minimalism, Cal walks us through some scary stats on what happens when we “lose touch with inner stillness” and experience something he calls “solitude deprivation.”

He says: “Returning to our canary-in-the-coal-mine analogy, the plight of iGen provides a strong warning about the danger of solitude deprivation. When an entire cohort unintentionally eliminated time alone with their thoughts from their lives, their mental health suffered dramatically. On reflection, this makes sense. These teenagers have lost the ability to process and make sense of their emotions, or to reflect on who they are and what really matters, or to build strong relationships, or even to just allow their brains time to power down their critical social circuits, which are not meant to be used constantly, and to redirect that energy to other important cognitive housekeeping tasks. We shouldn’t be surprised that these absences lead to malfunctions.

Most adults stop short of the constant connectivity practiced by members of iGen, but if you extrapolate these effects to the somewhat milder forms of solitude deprivation that have become common among many different age groups, the results are still worrisome. As I’ve learned by interacting with my readers, many have come to accept a background hum of low-grade anxiety that permeates their daily lives. When looking for explanations, they might turn to the latest crises—be it the recession of 2009 or the contentious election of 2016—or chalk it up to a normal reaction to the stresses of adulthood. But once you begin studying the positive benefits of spending time alone with your thoughts, and encounter the distressing effects that appear in populations that eliminate this altogether, a simple explanation emerges: we need solitude to thrive as human beings, and in recent years, without even realizing it, we’ve been systematically reducing this crucial ingredient from our lives.

Simply put, humans are not wired to be constantly wired.”

Cal shares wisdom from Lead Yourself First by Raymond Kethledge and Michael Erwin. He shares their definition of solitude as “a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds.”

Then he shares his own definition: “Solitude Deprivation: A state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your thoughts and free from input from other minds.”

THEN he gives us the very first of the four practices to engage in his digital minimalism philosophy: “Spend Time Alone.”

All of which brings us back to YOU.

Are YOU spending any time alone (free from the input of other minds) these days?

How can you spend a little more time with yourself TODAY?

P.S. I also thought of our Notes on The Power of Agency. Do you remember THEIR #1 tip to create a deeper sense of personal power/agency in our lives?

“Control Stimuli.”

Aka: Create some solitude/silence/stillness.

It’s impossible to read the phrase “spontaneous right action” and NOT think of Edward Slingerland and his great book Trying Not to Try.

Slingerland is one of the world’s leading experts on both ancient Chinese thought AND modern cognitive science. In his great book, he basically walks us through the science of “spontaneous right action” and the fact that the ancient Chinese philosophers actually had a word for this optimal state: wu-wei.

As he says: “Wu-wei [(pronounced ooo-way)] literally translates as ‘no trying’ or ‘no doing,’ but it’s not at all about dull inaction. In fact, it refers to the dynamic, effortless, and unselfconscious state of mind of a person who is optimally active and effective. People in wu-wei feel as if they are doing nothing, while at the same time they might be creating a brilliant work of art, smoothly negotiating a complex social situation, or even bringing the entire world into harmonious order. For a person in wu-wei, proper and effective conduct follows as automatically as the body gives in to the seductive rhythm of a song. This state of harmony is both complex and holistic, involving as it does the integration of the body, the emotions, and the mind. If we have to translate it, wu-wei is probably best rendered as something like ‘effortless action’ or ‘spontaneous action.’ Being in wu-wei is relaxing and enjoyable, but in a deeply rewarding way that distinguishes it from cruder or more mundane pleasures. In many respects, it resembles the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s well-known concept of ‘flow,’ or the idea of being in the zone, but with important—and revealing—differences that we will explore.”

In the book he walks us through the four different approaches various philosophers encouraged us to take to reach this state of effortless right action.

He says: “Fortunately for us, the early Chinese explored every conceivable strategy for moving a person from a state of alienated trying into perfected wu-wei. You can carve and polish: subject yourself to rigorous, long-term training designed to eventually instill the right dispositions. You can embrace simplicity: actively reject the pursuit of goals, in the hope that the goals will then be obtained by themselves. You can cultivate your sprouts: try to identify the incipient tendencies of desirable behavior within you, and then nurture and expand them until they are strong enough to take over. Or you can just go with the flow: forget about trying, forget about not trying, and just let the values that you want to embrace pick you up and carry you along.”

Where do you think Tolle falls in that spectrum?

And how do YOU tend to lean?

P.S. We *could* say that the *opposite* of “spontaneous right action” is the dreaded “choking.” Which makes me think of Choke by Sian Beilock.

She tells us: “When athletes think about themselves screwing up, they are more likely to do so.”

Plus: “Highly self-conscious people are more prone to choke under pressure.”

Hearing any strange voices in your head? :)

Reminds me of Michael Singer’s brilliant wisdom in Untethered Soulwhere he tells us: “In case you haven’t noticed, you have a mental dialogue going on inside your head that never stops. It just keeps going and going. Have you ever wondered why it talks in there? How does it decide what to say and when to say it? How much of what it says turns out to be true? How much of what it says is even important? And if right now you are hearing, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t have any voice inside my head!’—that’s the voice we’re talking about.

If you’re smart, you’ll take the time to step back, examine this voice, and get to know it better.”

He continues by saying: “There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind—you are the one who hears it. If you don’t understand this, you will try to figure out which of the many things the voice says is really you. People go through so many changes in the name of ‘trying to find myself.’ They want to discover which of these voices, which of these aspects of their personality, is who they really are. The answer is simple: none of them.”

Singer also echoes Tolle’s wisdom that “knowing yourself as that awareness behind the voice is freedom.” Here’s how he puts it: “Right in the middle of your daily life, by untethering yourself from the bondage of your psyche, you actually have the ability to steal freedom for your soul. This freedom is so great it has been given a special name—liberation.”

P.S. One of the best way to cultivate the ABILITY to create the freedom that arises from being able to see our thoughts? Watching waterfalls.

Here’s how Jon Kabat-Zinn puts it in Wherever You Go There You Are: “Another way to look at meditation is to view the process of thinking itself as a waterfall, a continual cascading of thought. In cultivating mindfulness, we are going beyond or behind our thinking, much the way you might find a vantagepoint in a cave or depression in the rock behind a waterfall. We still see and hear the water, but we are out of the torrent.”

Reminds me of Seneca and Walter Russell and Dan Millman.

In Letters from a Stoic, Seneca tells us: “There is nothing the wise man does reluctantly.”

In The Man Who Tapped the Secrets of the Universe, Walter Russell tells us: “There should be no distasteful tasks in one’s life. If you just hate to do a thing, that hatred for it develops body-destructive toxins, and you become fatigued very soon. You must love anything you must do. Do it not only cheerfully, but also lovingly and the very best way you know how. That love of the work which you must do anyhow will vitalize your body and keep you from fatigue.”

And… Dan Millman echoes the wisdom of that Zen Master in The Four Purposes of Life. He tells us: “Decide to decide—and when you act, do so with the full force of your being. Second-guessing yourself is a form of self-abuse. As Zen master Ummon reminded his students, ‘When you sit, sit; when you stand, stand—just don’t wobble between the two!’

Remain committed to whatever course you’ve chosen unless you get new and compelling reasons to change course. If you’ve committed to cross a rushing mountain stream only to realize a third of the way across that the current is too swift and deep for a safe crossing, a change of plans may be not only appropriate but wise. The same is true in your larger life. If you’re staying in an abusive relationship or punishing job, it may be time to reconsider and recommit to a more life-affirming direction, taking into account your boundaries, rights, and worth. (There’s a difference between commitment and masochism.)

However, for most decisions we make, even as doubts and difficulties arise, commitment means marching forward, persisting through challenges, and keeping faith in yourself and in your course of action. Faith is the courage to live as if everything that happens, and every choice we make, is for our highest good and learning. Faith is also nourished by the higher understanding that every decision eventually leads to wisdom.”

Sit or stand. Don’t wobble. Take empowered action!

Want to master the process of loving what is and let stillness speak as joy in our lives?

Let’s quit labeling. Or wishing this moment was something other than what it is. Let’s practice accepting the ‘isness’ of each moment.

Here’s to inviting the enormous power of life itself into our lives as we take the time (and create the space) to listen to stillness speaking!!