On this one point all saints, sages, and illumined beings agree: there is nothing as certain as silence, stillness, and solitude to introduce you to the divinity within.
The first step in learning to be still isn’t really an action at all, meaning that it’s nothing like we might ordinarily think of doing when we want our world to stop spinning like a top. Being still begins with being quietly aware that whatever seems to be whirling around you is really just a reflection of the world of unseen reactions within you. Here we come upon one of the cardinal rules of realizing higher consciousness. If you will remember this timeless injunction, you’ll never find yourself lost for an explanation as to why any moment in your life appears as it does to you -- or what to do about it:
The inner determines the outer.
In these five short words lives all the power you need to transcend any unwanted experience in your life, starting with this realization: what we receive in -- and from -- each moment of life is inseparable from our perception of it.
To help make this last idea clear, imagine a man who complains to his friend that for the whole day he has felt dark and gray, only to be reminded that he’s wearing his dark gray sunglasses. Once he realizes that his sense of self is being negatively affected because of his dark lenses, he removes them. Now he sees the light, in all meanings of the word. He understands that before he could alter his gloomy experience of that day, he had to first change what was causing him to see it that way. Any other action was not only doomed to fail but could only serve to lead him further and further away from the one realization that set him free. Which brings us to this next cardinal rule:
There is nothing to do, only something to see.
Blind reactions based on an incomplete understanding of your circumstances always sow the seeds of yet other unwanted moments yet to come. Everything you “do” in this manner only serves to create more of the very disturbance that you had set out to silence in yourself. This is always true because resistance to any disturbance in yourself ensures its repetition.
Trying to escape a noisy mind may seem as if you’re putting some real distance between yourself and all its chattering, but here’s why this kind of action never really resolves the problem. Only a noisy mind wants to get away from itself -- something that it can never do any more than the tip of a pencil can escape the eraser on the other end that it fears is trying to rub it out!
Think for a moment: does silence fear any noise or does it just let it pass through unmolested? This means any frantic wish to be still must belong to a part of your lower nature that’s already disturbed -- one that is trying to hide its pain by sending you to look for peace! So now you know the truth.
There’s nothing you need to do in the face of anything that frightens you other than agree to be still and see it. This order of awareness has its own power; all you need to do is place yourself where this living light can act for you, upon you. That’s the first step; take it, and then see how the Divine takes the next step for you. Watch it to prove -- over and over again -- that there’s nothing you can bring into its stillness greater than its ability to transform and transcend it all at once and once and for all.
