Saturday, November 21, 2015

SPIRITUAL EXPLORATIONS -- 6

WE ARE EXPLORING THE PRACTICE OF STILLNESS

You imagine a spinning top. Stillness is like a perfectly centered top, spinning so fast it appears motionless. It appears this way not because it isn't moving, but because it's spinning at full speed. Stillness is not the absence or negation of energy, life, or movement. Stillness is dynamic. It is unconflicted movement, life in harmony with itself, skill in action. It can be experienced whenever there is total, uninhibited, unconflicted participation in the moment you are in - when you are wholeheartedly present with whatever you are doing. -- Erich Schiffmann in Moving Into Stillness.

What a fantastic definition or description of the gift of stillness which, Schiffmann tells us, is what Yoga is all about.  In the next post, I will offer another paragraph from Schiffmann’s fantastic chapter on Stillness in Moving Into Stillness, his great book on Yoga, a spiritual feast as well as a practical guide.

His chapter on Stillness is available on the web at http://www.movingintostillness.com/book/meditation_moving_into_stillness.html (link no longer works as of August 2016).

Much, but not all, of the book can be found on the web at http://www.movingintostillness.com/teachings.html (link no longer works as of August 2016). You can buy the book at http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Spirit-Practice-Stillness-Schiffmann/dp/B00DO8H8Q4.

+ You can always find a link to any of the Spiritual Explorations posts by going to http://abundancetrek.com/sepostsaccess.html

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