Art arises from a spiritual longing that all people share: to make our mark on the world and to spend our life energy in a work that rises above the mundane, adding grace to existence. We respond to the light of the world around us by giving expression to our own inner light, and when the two are on the same wave-length, the world seems more brilliant and finely focused.
Stillness is tranquility of the inner life, the quiet at the depths of its hidden stream. Stillness is a collected, total presence, a being all there, receptive, alert, ready.
Stillness is not a technique, but rather a lifestyle which arises from a personal commitment to take up citizenship in the internal world and a willingness to pay attention to the age-old question, "Who am I?" The best tool we have to begin this inward journey is the breath. As we begin to reclaim our birthright of a deep, smooth, even, diaphragmatic breath, the physical feeling of stillness begins to touch both the body and mind. The more we embrace a lifestyle of stillness, the less time we spend being tossed by the wind.
~ From "Stillness and the Healing Process" by Ginger Cunes
The silence of the storm dominated everything. There are no words to describe a quiet so potent. I knew the snow was echoing a stillness that exists, hidden, in everything. I do not understand how I suddenly knew this, but the knowledge filled me. I saw that this stillness generates all life. And sitting there in the snow, I wept at the profound sound and power of that silence. It was hard to witness its beauty, knowing I'd lived many years never suspecting it was there.
To return back into ourselves, there are three things needed, for which you don't require a computer, television or radio: the first is a bit of stillness. Nothing can happen without a certain stillness. We also need silence. There is nothing so vocal and articulate as silence; all good language, all great words, are born of it. And the third thing we need is solitude. We need to acknowledge that solitude is an invitation to the soul to come alive. Solitude is utterly luminous if we lose our fears and begin to enter it more deeply.
~ from "Earth's Inner Light," an interview with John O'Donohue in "Earthlight" # 27
In stillness we add a grace and a benediction to our lives. For a short period, through a daily practice, we choose to create an interval where we are in communication with Spirit. In this holy stillness we find the deep peace we most need and want in our lives. To be still with the attention in the heart ... all other things are beside the point.
... the silence in the mind is when we live best, within listening distance of the silence we call God ... It is a presence, then, whose margins are our margins; that calls us out over our own fathoms.
What to do, but to draw a little nearer to such ubiquity by remaining still?
