Stop – have you ever asked yourself what
would happen if everything around you would just stop, if all those on going
impressions & events of your life would just stop acting on you for a while
to give you a break? A break in which you become free of sense overload and the
constant demand to respond, to interact and to complete and fulfil what is
expected of you, day in and day out.
But the wheel of life is rolling,
unfolding and revealing its contents at any given moment in time. Whether we
like it or not is irrelevant. The driving force of cause and effect, action and
reaction has gained its own momentum. And from the very moment our innocent
soul took its first step out of unity into duality by means of its ultimate
freedom of choice, each of its actions ignited an equally strong reaction that
was ordered according to the unfailing judgement of universal laws. Multiplying
themselves in myriads of endlessly aggrandising events, ultimately manifesting
the world as it is known to us today, including each of our personal lives we
are bound to relate to and deal with every second of the day, which will be the
case until the day we will die.
We might not easily accept this truth,
but deep inside we all know that life can’t be stopped, and that it is not in
our power to stop the unfolding of life, because life simply just happens.
Stop – have you ever asked yourself what
would happen if everything within you would just stop, if all those thoughts,
emotions & your inner voice would just stop acting on you for a while to
give you a break? A break in which you become free of your uninterrupted and
sometimes compulsive thought patterns, as well as your constant considering
about the never-ending incoming impressions and events of life, day in and day
out.
But the wheel of your mind and thoughts
is rolling, creating and unfolding its contents at any given moment in time.
Whether we like it or not is irrelevant. The driving force of all what we have
acquired, all our deeply engrained habits, conditionings and non-conscious
states, have gained their own momentum. And from the moment our innocent soul inhabited
our physical body gradually becoming the slave of our five senses, our initial
pure state of being was forgotten and got buried below the waves of our
ever-changing and uninterrupted thought and mind activity. Multiplying
themselves in myriads of endlessly aggrandising features and contradictions,
ultimately manifesting as mechanical set ways that make us respond to the different
events of life the same way again and again. Repeating and meeting the same
cycles and life patterns again and again will be the case for most of us until
the day we will die.
Stop - simply just stop for a moment and
wake up to the fact that you can’t stop life or the event you are experiencing
right now, that is - whatever you are experiencing right now is nothing more
than an incoming impression, predominantly perceived by one of your five
senses, that is asking for your attention.
Become aware - that by simply waking up
to this fact you are slightly further removed from the event and the incoming
impressions it generates. By waking up to this simple truth you have become
more conscious and your attention has naturally withdrawn and manifested a
liberating sense of separation from the impression or event that now lies there
in front of you. You have ‘stopped’ being one with the impression or event. You
have stopped placing your whole sense of self or sense of ‘I’ into the
impression or event, hence more space has been created in which you gained a
greater sense of self as well as a greater awareness of the spaciousness
surrounding things, which allows the impression or event to be recognised for
what it actually is in essence.
You just have started changing a less
conscious way of perception into a more conscious way of perception, as well as
that you just have begun with what is called work on yourself by applying
‘conscious effort’, which is the beginning of self-study.
Consciously making yourself wake up to
the fact that life is nothing more than a succession of incoming impressions
that form an event, is called self-remembering that leads to the gradual
realization of the full truth of what you are. Knowing the full truth of what
you are, which includes all that had been hidden in your non-consciousness, is
called self-realization or self-consciousness.
To consciously fully stop for a moment
from the depth of your being, is not going to stop life and its events or
incoming impressions, but will gradually change the way you respond to life.
That is - each time you have stopped being the event you have automatically
shifted onto a higher level of consciousness from which you are able to respond
to life in a more conscious way, i.e. less mechanical. Simultaneously it will
gradually teach your five senses that they will be able to work much more
efficiently by not having to drag our faculty of attention along with them each
time they are stimulated by an incoming impression.
To truly stop and to wake up to the actual
Isness of things again and again, will invite precious moments of stillness within
us in which nothing needs to happen. Those moments of stillness will accumulate
and will gradually penetrate deeper, all the way down to the cellular level,
creating a living memory in our connective tissue. This living ‘stillness
memory’ will play a vital role further down the line of our path of
transformation.
Stop - have you ever asked yourself what
would happen if your physical body would be allowed to simply stop, if all this
sensory stimulus, all those complex movements and all those physical tensions
would just stop acting on you for a while to give you a break? A break in which
your body would become free of having to act out what your mind, emotions and
thoughts expect from it day in and day out.
But the wheel of our physical actions is
rolling, keeping this body continuously engaged. Whether we like it or not is
irrelevant. The driving force of our adrenals that profoundly impact on our
nervous systems has gained its own momentum. And from the moment our innocent
soul took its residence in this physical confinement, it became entangled by
the veil of forgetfulness, taking the back seat in this vehicle that is made of
flesh and bones, humbly surrendering to the mind that took on the role of the
driver without having sufficient knowledge of how to drive and deal with the
servicing. From then onwards the body is being raced along by the mind and
emotions facing all sorts of accidents and difficulties, as well as being
fuelled with all sorts of wrong food, which gradually leads to a malfunction of
the organism. Multiplying themselves in myriads of endlessly aggrandising wrong
work of systems and brains, creating dis-balance and disorder that profoundly
impact on the homeostasis in the body, creating physical friction and stress.
The experience of physical friction and stress will be the case for most of us
until the day we will die.
The practice of Meditation is in actual
fact nothing more than a prolonged conscious ‘stop’, in which the physical body
is finally allowed to be motionless and still. Allowed to assimilate and shut
down all sorts of stressors and sense stimulus, as well as becoming passive to
the demands of mind, thoughts and emotions. Once the body is allowed to fully
surrender to not having to do and perform, once the whole weight of the body is
allowed to fully surrender into gravity by completely releasing its hold and its
tension by means of gradual undoing, and once the body has found satisfaction
in sitting still and fully stop for a more prolonged period of time, actual
stillness will enter and manifest, creating an even greater longing to undo.
This is the stage in which every pause after the exhalation will be experienced
as a profound sigh of relief that leads to a greater separation from our mind, emotions
and body unit in which one experiences glimpses of absence of sense of self or
sense of ‘I’, as well as prolonged moments of absence of thought in which the
depth and profoundness of stillness and peace is creating the pathway to what
lies beyond.
