Moving into Stillness
By Wendy Grant

I remember when I was a kid in crowded swimming pools that one of my favourite things to do was to take a deep breath, dive towards the bottom of the pool and then look up at the surface. Looking up I'd see the bright sunlight and the churning of swimming bodies, while where I was the noise was muted and my movements were gentled by the press of water. I could observe the noise and action from a place that was quiet and calm. But I could only hold my breath for so long and soon I would have to return to the surface and all its activity.
The phrase 'moving into stillness', seems to say two things--that stillness is a place, somewhere we can get to and that we get there by action. Do we act into inaction, do into non-doing, use effort to let go? Do
we move into a place or a feeling that is already ingrained in us? Maybe the phrase could be uncovering the stillness or connecting with the stillness. A digging out and revealing of a state that is usually buried under layers of busyness and fear. Back to the swimming pool--the more effort, the more swimming or moving I
do the further away the sense of stillness gets. But if I stop the movement the boundaries between me and the water dissolve, the fight with the water ends and I float (or sink) without effort, with ease. The action was in the way of the stillness, the stillness that was just there, in me, around me and always available.
So what is this place or sense of stillness? Like many simple words, concepts, and ideas, words tend to fall short or mislead but if I were to try to describe what I feel when I have 'gone still' I would say calm, centered, balanced, solid, aware and connected. It is my touchstone, foundation and anchor-the real sense of self that is not separate from all else and is unaffected by the surface clutter. In stillness I hear what needs to be heard not just what I want to hear, see with a little more clarity, know what I need to do when I return to the surface. I think we do live in two worlds- the churning surface and the quiet deep, but they don't need to be mutually exclusive. When I am busy at the surface world I can still carry the deeper stillness. I can carry the quiet aware observer that holds firm to an integrated and ethical path into any activity. Moving into the world with all its demands, temptations and complications- some part of us knows this place of stillness, retains a memory, a knowledge and feeling of it and it can guide and feed us. Our busyness and movement
at the surface sends energy out and about. Stillness lets the energy build and gather and when we move from there we can move with clarity and focus, less controlled by our conditioning and old patterns.
Without stillness we are shallow puddles, ruffled at every breeze, drying in times of drought, flooded by every rain and harried by the passage of time. With stillness we have the depth of an ocean, no matter what affects the surface we have calmness, an eternal place of no time, an infinite connection.
Moving into stillness or stopping into stillness? Quit the flailing about with arms and legs at the surface of the pool and just let yourself sink and there you are-in the depth and stillness of the universal ocean.