How the Beauty of Stillness Can Improve Your Life Right Now
Photo courtesy of FelixMittermeier from Pixabay
Listen. Stop making any noise at all for a moment and just listen.
What do you hear?
Bustling traffic and sirens? Children giggling or arguing about whose turn it is? Office sounds, phones ringing, fingers on keyboards? Someone griping, another needing more coffee, music playing?
Listen a little more closely. Television droning, voices in a nearby room, birds outside? Ticking clock, barking dog, faint church bells?
Close your eyes and listen again. Never mind all of those external sounds. Whatever you’re hearing in your environment, check it off the list as “noticed” and listen again.
Listen to the sound of your breath. Focus on its gentleness, its evenness, in… and out… in… and out… Feel yourself relax as you sit, eyes closed, listening to that beautiful, hypnotic rhythm.
Listen to your body. Tune in and listen to what it’s telling you. Does something ache? Is something sore? If so, is there a message with that pain? Is your body tense and tight or is it comfortable and relaxed?
If you’re feeling tense and wound up, focus again on your breath. Close your eyes and just for a few moments, pay attention to nothing but your breath. Imagine that you’re inhaling peaceful energy that floods your whole being and as you exhale, see all the tension and worry flowing out of you.
Keeping your eyes closed, push aside the noise, push aside the work, just for a few moments. There is only your gentle breath, filling you with peace and relieving you of the tension. Breath… after breath… after breath…
After a minute or two, listen to your body again. Listen to yourself. In this settled state, what little bits of wisdom are coming to you?Your “Higher Self” is always speaking to you, but you can only hear it when you are calm and receptive.
You don’t have to have a half-hour meditation to achieve that state. You don’t have to sit in the lotus position and get leg cramps while chanting “Ommmmmm”. It takes only a moment or two to ignore the external noise of life and focus on going inward, if for no other reason than to enjoy the stillness it brings.
Not only will you feel a sense of peace and calm in those brief moments of stillness, doing this every now and then throughout a busy day can help to keep your stress levels down. It helps to keep you focused and relaxed as you make your way through the list of things you must get done. It makes it easier to cope with the rush and noise of a hectic life.
And in that stillness, if you check in and ask yourself if there’s anything you need to know, or ask about a particular situation that’s troubling you, answers will come. Sometimes immediately, sometimes not. They might hit you sometime later while washing dishes or fixing your car or in the shower. But you’ll never hear them if you don’t tune out the noise, tune in to the stillness, and listen.
It can take 30 seconds. It can take a minute or two. Doing a handful of these mini-meditations every day can make a world of difference to your overall sense of peace and relaxation, to keeping you focused, and to allowing you to hear the answers that you can only get from the wisdom of your Higher Self.
And all you have to do is…listen.
Spiritual Arts Mentor and Master Teacher, Liberty Forrest, guides you in discovering who you are, why you’re here, and how to follow that path.