Stillness

In a 40 minute meditation there are perhaps just one or two moments when I feel a real stillness. They come after 30 minutes or so of constantly bringing the mind back to focus on breathing, just breathing. Then it is simply I who am aware, nothing else. It almost seems that an itch, the sharper and more irritating the better, becomes a blessing because it helps focus the attention. But not even that lasts. Nothing lasts. There is a constant stream of mental activity. In fact the mind is like a butterfly fluttering here and there, wherever there is something to attract and interest it, never still for more than a moment. And the aware I is constantly turning into a me caught up in the thought, or the memory, or experience, or whatever. That is why it is so important to find the stillness, simply to be aware, nothing more. It is a sort of hunger, simply to be in the stillness. It is here that one begins to touch reality, out of the head and in the body, at the centre of a circle of awareness of all that is going on within and round about. That’s all. Nothing more.

But there is more, though the ‘more’ is not a datum of experience. It is deeply felt, though, beneath the threshold of thought and awareness. One is at the limits of awareness and existence. They are there like an impenetrable wall. To be aware of the wall is to know, however dimly, that there is a beyond the wall. There is another side. But when one’s nose is right up against the wall, eyes less than an inch away, one cannot see it for what it is; whether it is as high as the sky, or just an inch or two above one’s head; whether it is so long it girdles the world or is only as wide as an arm’s stretch. Only when one can stand back a bit will one be able to see the wall for what it is. Perhaps it is not a wall at all, but a door.