Most people have no idea what it means to have a still mind, because they have never experienced such a state.
Being still means allowing your mind to be utterly at rest, free from concerns and calculations, obligations and distractions.
It takes a great deal of practice to be still. A responsible, socially active person has many demands on his or her time. It is easy to fall into the habit of always being engaged in one or more tasks, or in rushing to the next task.
And yet, few among us could convincingly argue that each moment of their day is well spent. Most humans waste a great deal of time and effort on tasks that do not bring them closer to their goals, or worse, that move them away from their goals.
Follow a friend or co-worker around for a day, and you will almost certainly wonder, “Why did he do that? And that? And this?”
For the past few years, I have been practicing being able to be still. It is a bit like learning to juggle five balls. At first, it doesn’t look that hard. Then, you try it and it seems impossible. But you hang in and practice, although it doesn’t get much easier. Except every now and then, perhaps just for a moment, you succeed and it feels wonderful. But the second you think, “Eureka! I did it,” you are back to square one.
I have enjoyed enough successes to motivate myself to continue. Although I am a long way from being utterly still for extended periods of time, I can often clear my mind at will, and am growing better at letting stress roll off my shoulders instead of settle into my gut.
By taking time each day to practice being still, I’ve made some valuable observations.
Many of the insights I’ve stumbled upon in recent years occurred when I backed away from whatever project I was pursuing. I frequently come back from vacation with an idea for an article or book, or with a solution to what once seemed an intractable problem.
Likewise, after being still for 20 or 30 minutes, I often end up with a valuable idea in my mind in the minutes that follow. In this manner I have come up with quite a number of innovative tactics for both clients and my own use. Sometimes a question occurs to me that upon investigation proves to be highly productive; in other cases, I see the wisdom in an argument that someone previously made but that I found unconvincing.
I used to think through problems endlessly in my mind, often brainstorming on my own or with others. But lately I’ve realized that my conscious brain is poorly suited to this sort of work, while my subconscious mind excels at it… as long as I give it time and space to work. This means – you guessed it – being still for a modest portion of each day.
At this point, you might be thinking that you take plenty of time to be still when you sleep. Certainly there are plenty of examples of people who went to sleep thinking about a problem and woke up with the answer. This can be a productive process, but it is not what I’m talking about.
There is a profound difference between sleeping and deliberately entering a waking state of stillness. When someone gets “in your face” and tries to get you to lose your cool, going to sleep isn’t an effective tactic. But stilling your mind is, and the better you get at this, the easier it is to choose your state of mind rather than allowing events or other people to choose it for you.
I’ve found that merely moving towards stillness is enough to enable me to stay relatively calm in situations that once would have caused me to utterly lose my temper. Generally speaking, once you lose your temper, you say and do things you later regret.
The more innovative and insightful I need to be, the greater my willingness to take the time to be still. Doing so requires more discipline than I have ever been able to previously muster in my life. But it’s worth it.
