Doing less in stillness
… a necessity to achieve inner and outer love and peace.
This rainy evening, I read a brilliant piece about the wisdom of doing less, to strike a perfect balance to meaningful living. This inspired me to write just a few words on the virtues of finding stillness within.
We have been programmed to pack many items in 16 hours of awakeness, our lives became a long to-do list, and still, we never manage somehow to tick all the items off, as we add more. Our brains have become addicted to information overload which effectively drives our ego-selves as we become information churners in an attempt to sound more intelligent in the boardrooms, classrooms, or bedrooms! Our same inner computers would never shut down as sleep becomes programmed by our smartphones.
With the help of an amazing app, we programme our eating habits, sleeping patterns, work-outs, socialising and dating habits. The art of true enjoyment of food, exercising, sleep, hanging out with real friends and of being simply loved for who we are, has slowly become numbingly robotic and dull. The very technologies that were meant to make our lives better, improve our careers, making us healthier and live an easier life, have possibly become our fiend in finding peace and calm. Has the rhetoric of needing to do more to achieve more become a sell-by mantra?
“Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.” Eckhart Tolle
Our quest for mindful living has become more poignant than ever as we were forced to do against our will earlier this year in lockdown. In an environment of forced confinement, we learned the benefits of living at a slower pace, of paying more attention to our real selves rather than what is expected from us. By no means am I advocating 6 months of lockdowns and collective mass seclusion, but perhaps a month of not having to rush to work has its benefits. As gyms were closed some of us were fortunate enough to find pleasure in connecting with nature and bask in beauty. Sadly, many countries would not allow their population to leave their homes, so we ought to be grateful for what we have. Overall, it felt like collectively, people were slowly awakening to the need of finding inner stillness and peace.
It is rather unfortunate that it has taken a pandemic for us to come to the realisation that living for a show was not living at all, but acting with our masks on. Now that we do have to literally wear these, we crave for our voices to be heard and for our facial expressions to be seen. Masking our true beauty in makeup or regurgitating information becomes pointless as we realise that we have been holding back our ability to communicate our truths and showing our true selves to the world. The desperate need to look beautiful or intelligent is just the pretense we have been programmed to do. The stillness we eventually find perhaps makes us far more interesting, attractive and wise, without the need to impress anyone. We become our authentic selves, exude magnetic peace, calm, and a clearer vision. I dare say, something very lacking from our World leaders.
Doing nothing is no longer seen as a sign of laziness in a world that was running on an adrenaline high by doing too much. It is a means for us to recharge and re-source. Speaking less but more with meaningful depth is seen as wisdom as we are hearing more. Slowing down and taking deeper breaths is perhaps the very thing that we need to boost our immune systems in this pandemic. Connecting our minds, bodies with nature is the cure to our serotonin deficits, that no app could cure. Walking in aloneness is no longer anti-social but a need for us to build a relationship with ourselves. Often one rushes manically to find the ONE. What if the ONE is just ONESELF. I believe that we can only build stronger relationships and bonds if we have a strong relationship with ourselves. We can truly love others only if we love ourselves; we perhaps do so when we find our inner stillness.
I recently told a dear soul, we come to know many people in our lives, but we form deep connections with very few. Deep connections are sacred, and I believe it is only when we are still inside that we create a sacred space to create lifetime bonds and make soul connections. Personally, I believe that sacred connections come from a place of love, compassion, and peace. I believe these are brought on by our ability to find inner stillness. Less noise, more silence, and deeper meanings in our voices, in our actions, and in our relationships with one another.
Finding our stillness is a connection to the Divine as we are silent in our prayers and in meditation. Our connection to the Divine brings us closer to the inner peace we desperately seek and helps us exude outer peace, the World so desperately needs. Rome was not built in a day, neither are we. Each second is a chance for us to become better versions of ourselves, each second brings us the chance to make our immediate environment and the World better. Positive changes always happen when we are still and in a place of peace.
I absolutely love this quote by the German-Swiss poet Hermann Hess.
“Within yourself is a stillness, a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” Hermann Hesse
Gently let us find our inner stillness, our inner guides of wisdom, and let us exude our true authentic beauty to the World.
