Week 4. Spiritual Practice
Stillness
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So, let’s start out with the question: Why is stillness important?
“Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.”
— Meister Eckhart
“The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
It has even been said that...
“It has been said: Stillness is the language God Speaks, and everything else is a bad translation. Stillness is really another word for space. Becoming conscious of stillness whenever we encounter it in our lives will connect us with the formless and timeless dimension within ourselves… Thought is form. Being aware of stillness means to be still. To be still is to be conscious without thought.”
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
“The very best and highest attainment in this life is to remain still and let God act and speak in you.”
— Meister Eckhart
So, ultimately...
“You are never more essentially, more deeply, yourself than when you are still. When you are still, you are who you were before you temporarily assumed this physical and mental form called a person… consciousness—unconditioned, formless, eternal.”
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth
Which means...
“When you allow yourself to be still, listen with intention, and raise your vibration, you connect to a higher frequency, enabling truth to come through more clearly.”
— John Rainey, Finding God, Losing God, Becoming God
“To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.”
— Lao Tzu
“In my stillness I am the eternal possibility. In my movement I am the cosmos.”
— Deepak Chopra
“Be still. Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity.”
— Lao Tzu
“What other language might your heart speak? It is a language spoken so quietly and with such gentleness that those who cannot come to stillness know it not. The language of your heart is the language of communion.”
— Mari Perron, A Course in Love
“My heart is tuned to the quietness that the stillness of nature inspires.”
— Hazrat Inayat Khan
For example...
“Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.”
— Eckhart Tolle
And when it comes to prayer...
“The highest level of prayer is not a prayer for anything. It is a deep and profound silence, in which we allow ourselves to be still and know Him.”
— Marianne Williamson
“My spiritual ideas didn’t come from the Lord’s Prayer or church or pictures in the Bible, they came from the stillness.”
— Steven Tyler, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?
Furthermore...
“Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great.”
— Leonard Bernstein
“In the inner stillness where meditation leads, the Spirit secretly anoints the soul and heals our deepest wounds.”
— John of the Cross
“Anything you do has a still point. When you are in that still point, you can perform maximally.”
— Joseph Campbell
“Stillness is where creativity and solutions are found.”
— Meister Eckhart
“Learning how to be still, to really be still and let life happen—that stillness becomes a radiance.”
— Morgan Freeman
So, pertaining to the OCA movement, we must...
“Learn to become still. And to take your attention away from what you don't want, and all the emotional charge around it, and place your attention on what you wish to experience.”
— Michael Beckwith
For example...
“If you want to relax, watch the clouds pass by if you're lying on the grass, or sit in front of the creek; just doing nothing and having those still moments is what really rejuvenates the body.”
— Miranda Kerr
“Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it.”
— Saint Augustine
“In the midst of movement and chaos, keep stillness inside of you.”
— Deepak Chopra
“But in my worse moments I’d shut my eyes and be still.”
— Prince Harry, Spare
And in summary...
“It is the stillness that will save and transform the world.”
— Eckhart Tolle
So let us embrace solitude, not as an escape, but as a return.
“So, let us embrace solitude, not as an escape, but as a return—a return to the self, to the stillness that holds the answers we seek.”
— Pamela Anderson, Open Journal
And in conclusion...
“No thought, no action, no movement, total stillness: only thus can one manifest the true nature and law of things from within and unconsciously, and at last become one with heaven and earth.”
— Lao Tzu
So yes—to be so still, with a mind so quiet that you become one with unmanifested consciousness (i.e. God)—is an extremely divine and spiritual existence.
And I’ll come clean with you right now: this level of stillness is necessary to create Heaven on Earth.
This means that for both the individual and collective participants of this movement, this level of stillness is our spiritual goal—not in the future, but to be manifested in the moment. As you’ve just learned, time is an illusion.
Of course, our conscious breath will help us find this stillness within ourselves. Meditating can guide us to it as well. Even descending spiritual practices such as tai chi, qigong, and yoga will assist us in reaching the stillness required to experience Heaven on Earth.
And maybe—just maybe—this level of stillness is what Jesus meant by “losing your life.” That in this stillness, life as you know it is replaced by being one with all that exists, while still existing in the manifested world.
As we know, unmanifested consciousness (Heaven) can only enter the manifested (Earth) through the heart. And what is the language of the heart? Stillness, of course—not that voice in your head, the ego, that drowns it out.
Now, your ego will never, ever be satisfied seeking Heaven from within. Being still is unthinkable to the ego mind. It will continuously try to convince you to seek Heaven somewhere else—preferably outside yourself—in sacred knowledge, relative truth, or organized religion.
You see, the ego does want you to know God—but as a separate identity. This only reinforces its illusion of separation.
The heart, on the other hand, wants you to be God—to be one with all that is, eternal and infinite, your true identity.
So take a nice, cleansing breath now. Be still in this moment. Listen to your heart.
That is the only place where Truth will ever be known—and where Heaven on Earth can be found: within yourself, not in this plan or in words on a page, but in the stillness of the moment.