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.
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