Tag: stillness

So Much Stillness and Beauty

Gopika and I decided to take a canoe back to the ashram yesterday after visiting Amma’s Vrindavan Field, the Ayurvedic Herbal Garden, and the Ayurvedic College, School of Engineering and School of Biotechnology grounds. I will write about our visit to those places another time but wanted you to see the canoe photos now.

Pushing away from the dock on the town side of the backwaters.

 

Starting to turn towards the Amritapuri ashram. I’m looking to the south.

 

I’m looking to the north.

 

Quote of the Week: Wayne Muller

Wayne Muller

When discussing the importance of brevity and simplicity of speech when one is trying to create inner silence, Muller  provided information that I have recalled time and time again.  He said:

Someone once noted that the Lord’s Prayer contained 56 words, the Twenty-third Psalm 118 words,and the entire Gettysburg address only 226 words– while the U.S. Department of Agriculture directive on pricing cabbage contained 15,629 words.  One could easily conclude that we place a higher value on pricing cabbage than on liberty, prayer, or serenity.

 

 

From Legacy of the Heart:  The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood by Wayne Muller, Simon and Schuster, 1992, page 104-105.

 

 

When the Mind is Still

Many years ago, I learned from Stephen Gilligan, an Ericksonian hypnotherapist, that our bodies must have trance (i.e. altered state) experiences, and that if we do not get that trance in  healthy ways  such as through meditation, singing, guided imagery, gardening, drawing, etc, we will create it through unhealthy behaviors such as obsessive thinking, compulsions, and addictions.

In an altered state experience, our minds become significantly slower than in our normal state and we are much more in the moment.  As humans, our most powerful insights usually occur, not when we are thinking about them, but when our minds are silent. Creativity is the same in that art, inventions, and scientific inspirations so often emerge during times of stillness.

I will share two experiences where new forms of self-expression were birthed in this way for me. Continue reading “When the Mind is Still” →