Stillness

My friend Dave shared a quote from Yeats with me today:

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may
see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.

I'm discovering the principle of stillness. Yes, it's very Zen. My first experiences with quiet have been in the childhood insomnia I suffered. I would just lie awake and be still, trying to let my mind drift off to sleep. But I remember being a kid who had a lot of nervous energy and it was hard for me to let my mind empty.

Then as I got older I found stillness in the repetition of my modern and ballet technique. The constant movement and repetition gave me a sense of calm and quiet.

I used to go for walks in New York City late at night. Those drunken walks home. Those were pretty quiet, except for all of the talking I'd do to myself.

The ocean is calming to me. Driving to work without the radio on.

Now my yoga classes. The moments before I get out of bed in the morning. Writing. All moments of stillness. But I'm still seeking more.

I hear more now. I hear when things are wrong. I hear when it's time to move on. My walking out of my house was stillness.

And I'm still here. In the stillness. In the quiet. Hearing the messages that life is trying to give me. Being here in my family home with my father and mother has my Dad recovers. Reconnecting with a high school friend who seems to understand the solitude I felt in high school. Because he felt it to.

All of these things are related and it's because I'm letting myself be still that I know that. Amazing. I'm connecting.

I'm going to start a daily prayer practice. A meditation. Learning to be quiet. I never liked talking much as a kid. The silence however felt like a trap. It felt like I had no choice but to be quiet because no one wanted to listen. I didn't feel heard. That's a different feeling from the feeling of stillness.

All the knowledge and wisdom already exists within, so why not listen to it?