2nd week: Stillness as the background of being

My office is on a busy street that runs along Central Park. Traffic and people move by all through the day and my clients and I learn not to hear much of the passing noise of the City. Once in a while, between traffic lights, there are no cars or buses and – once in a while – no voices drifting in from the sidewalk. At these moments, I become enveloped in the delicious stillness, grateful for the ease it brings. Usually lasting less than a minute, the silence and stillness reach into me with a gentleness, ease, and comfort that I always take a moment to acknowledge within myself. Sometimes, the moments of stillness are touched by birdsong from the park, and the familiar voice of a resident cardinal becomes the only sound in the moment.

No matter what I may be doing, one corner of my mind, the benevolent witness, notices these gifts of silence and stillness. My capacity to recognize and sink into these moments of ease has developed as I have learned to experience a meditative stillness that translates into an ongoing, everyday awareness. This has created for me a place of comfort that I cannot lose.

In the experiment that follows, I invite you to get to know the stillness that exists within and behind every thought, feeling, physical sensation, action, or urge. It is a stillness that comprises the background of all perceptual awareness. It can become a home base – a place to lean into for a moment or a while – that you can carry with you all the time.

This experiment offers you an opportunity to explore the following exercise and notice how you can create a place to rest, psychologically, in the midst of the challenges and busy-ness of daily life. It offers you a “place” of stillness you can “lean into” – even for just a moment. Being able to lean into the stillness allows us to re-center quickly, and to have the added benefit of feeling held by something larger than ourselves.

And so, imagine what I mentioned earlier - that right behind you, right “behind” everything – every thought, feeling, physical sensation, action, movement, or urge – exists a profound stillness. It’s the background of everything that is. Take a moment to ask yourself what it would be like if you could sense that background of stillness. What qualities would you discover? Would you notice that everything in your awareness could still be there, but that you wouldn’t have to pay attention to it for the few moments you’re concentrating on the background of stillness? Allow yourself to imagine what it might be like to lean into the stillness, psychologically, and imagine that you can take just a moment or two to enjoy not having to do anything but notice what’s moving through the stillness.

The stillness can provide a ‘mini stress break’ at times during the day when you just need to take a breath and disengage from all the pushes and pulls for a moment or two. With the stillness right there in the background, all it takes is a brief shift of the focus of your attention from foreground to background. Play with the presence of the stillness and notice how its support and potential for comfort develops for you.

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