Where is your Stillpoint? What happens when you land there? What does it feel like to rest deeply in your stillness? A short prosaic and gentle slide into a deep place of equanimity. Rest there. Always Available at all times.
It's time out for you right so you can just kick back a bit and um yeah just start to get comfortable and the the theme today is stillness in movement I was watching uh Baraka I don't know if you've seen it it's a Philip Glass production 1992 I think um a movie showing you know culture um geography and what's going on in the world it's very beautiful I really recommend it and in the middle there's this uh there's this Vietnamese monk and he's he's walking with his traditional zen attire on in the middle of New York it's very busy and there are all these people walking around him and some of them coming out of these shops with you know massive great bags of shopping and he's there in his beautiful kind of gray brown monks robes and this beautiful kind of wicker basket top headpiece and he's got these little moccasins on and he's walking very mindfully with with a with some little bells in his hands so he's really focused and now and again he taps the bells and the bells really are beautiful and clear and with each gentle and purposeful step he appears to be in another time almost in another realm and people aren't really noticing him so you've got this very beautiful contrast between busy materialist autopilot chaos and then you've got this kind of centered purposeful beautiful presence with the bell that rings every you know 30 seconds so mindfulness is like that we learn to have a relationship in our busy lives we can find the still point that is not to say that we're not busy often but we can keep returning to the still point even in movement so just pausing here so here is a still point in this pause pause stilling and very gently being available to where your feet meet the ground contact so the still point in earthling there's a very beautiful sense of connection there very simple where the earth meets the feet just noticing how your body responds it might have a stilling influence calming even and we can be available to the body sensing the shape of the body noticing sensations here and there resting with these sensations briefly a little bit of stillness there just for a moment or two and in the seeming stability and stillness of the body we can notice the flow of air the movement flowing in and flowing out noticing the rise and fall of the tummy and chest but what's interesting about the breathing there are two still points on the turn between the in-breath and the out-breath and the out-breath and the in-breath just acknowledging these still points so you've got movement and you've got stillness in movement the stillness where the feet meet the ground and the flow of breathing and you can be still with the flow resting here and you can notice the space around you and the different sounds perhaps just letting them be and in some ways the sounds representing movement and yet as you extend out into space beyond the walls of your building up into the stars there can be a tremendous sense of stillness in the quality of space open spacious still and we know there's movement out there the rivers and the oceans the lakes the winds and gales the rain the storms and the silt stillness of the blue open skies the dark night skies so the movement in the grass as the wind blows across it through the great open deserts and all the movement of beings coming and going just resting with it all feet on the ground being available to the space around you sensing into the breathing flowing in and flowing out and sensing any stillness here stillness of spirit stillness where the feet meet the ground and sometimes the mind is thinking that's okay the stillness between the thoughts the spaces between the thoughts and as the blood pumps around the body there's movement and stillness between the pulses there's a brief moment of stillness with a gentle focus perhaps just resting with the whole body breathing and as you sense the movement you can also sense the stillness stillness of the heart stillness in the resting so like a full moon resting in the sky whole and beautiful although seemingly still it is actually moving it itself is still just like us the mind and body can be still like a mighty ocean whilst the right of the waves roll on the stillness of the depths remain resting from this stillness entertaining the waves as they come and go resting here with and in the whole of this so we too can be like that monk mindfully poised amidst the stillness yet engaged purposeful thank you for listening please visit us at living-presence.
