The Recipe for Realizing Your True Self

by Guy Finley

Key Lesson: There is nothing as certain as silence, stillness, and solitude to introduce you to the secrets of yourself.

How to Stop the World and Be Still

In one respect, everything about one's spiritual life is so terribly simple. There is only one time and one way in which to be still, and that is to be still.

So the first thing is to understand that we don't need to stop the world. What we need to do is understand that the world whirling around us is the world of our own reactions. It isn't until we can start to see some of this that it becomes possible for us to realize that it isn't our task to stop our own mind. If we can see clearly our reactions and our identification with the reactions, then we can realize the way to stop the world is to understand that it's not our world that is moving. It's not our world that is in jeopardy. It's not our world that is caught in fear. That's how the world stops. There is nothing we can do. Everything we've tried to do to stop our mind, to be quiet, contradicts the wish we have because it is a form of resistance.

It is not a curse that the only way to be still is to be still. It just means that you have to wade into your own life. That is what meditation is. Meditation isn't just sitting someplace with your eyes closed. Meditation is a constant, direct relationship with the sum of yourself in the moment. When one is truly meditative there is always stillness, because the act of meditation takes place from the awareness of movement instead of being a captive of movement through reacting to it.

When its time to be still, let yourself be still... and just see all that isn't. Then don't react or identify with all that isn't. Let all that isn't reveal all that isn't you -- meaning all the noise, the fitfulness pulling you left and right, revisiting the past, planning the future, getting caught up with how much you want to be a good spiritual person. Watch it all. If you work at this, and are willing to enter into it, slowly and certainly you will begin to realize that the reason you have not been able to be still is because you have not understood that who you are is not the noise.