Stillness: September 20 - 26

"God’s first language is silence. Everything else is a poor translation."

Thomas Keating

I'm craving silence these days. I know the reason. From the moment I wake up in the morning until I put my head on the pillow at night, everything screams for my attention. Texts, emails, Facebook reels, spam, AI bots, screen after screen are designed to distract and hold my attention hostage. My frazzled brain fills up faster than my inbox. Each day is worse than the day before.

I also know the remedy. I unplug and reset. I turn off the screens and silence my cell phone. I used to think of mindfulness as a healthy habit like going to the gym or drinking green smoothies. Now it feels like something much more critical. In this age of artifical everything, mindfulness is an essential activity like eating or breathing. Taking care of my mental health means paying attention to what I'm paying attention to. It means building a fence around my awareness and tending to my heart. It means gathering the scattered pieces of myself and holding them with gentleness and compassion. It means wrapping my self in silence and settling into stillness. Without fail, whenever I touch the deeper part of my soul, I know peace and once again I feel whole.

Practice

Make this a day of rest or at least a moment of rest. Find a place where you can unplug and reset. Take a minute or two to read through this practice, no need to memorize it but absorb its general flow.

Close your eyes or glance downward at a spot on the ground a few feet in front of you. Just by narrowing the field of vision, you've already eliminated 80% of sensory input. Shift the focus of sound from outside yourself to inside yourself and you've muffled another 10% of sensory input. Gently place your hand on your heart. This simple act of touch helps to quiet the mind and opens the heart. Allow the body to wake up and guide you. Patiently follow your awarness as it sinks downward and inward from head to heart to soul. Know the deepest part of you. Know the part of you that is always centered and still. Know the part of you that abides in peace. Remain a minute or two longer. Just be.

No more need for words or instructions. Turn off the screen. Be your own mediation teacher. Turn down sight and sound and turn up your inner knowing. Listen deeply. When finished, resume your usual activities but carry mindfulness into the rest of the day.